Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (Direct X)


Lost Coast is the free technology demo that Valve created to show off their HDR rendering technique.  Because this method of doing HDR (high dynamnic range) lighting uses integer math instead of floating point, both ATI and NVIDIA cards can do both HDR and AA at the same time. 

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 90

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 91

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 92

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 93

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 94

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 95

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 96

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 97

In our Lost Coast test results (which are also indicative of the Episode 1 and Day of Defeat: Source performance) the X1950 XTX shows as a great performer, but just behind a single 7950 GX2.  At 2560×1600, the performance numbers get much closer though as the GDDR4 memory gets some use.

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 98

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 99

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 100

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 101

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 102

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Review and CrossFire Evaluation - Graphics Cards 103

Here in Lost Coast, the 10xSuperAA performance is lower than the Quad SLI 8xSLIAA by various margins; the least at 2560×1600 as we’d expect.  Running in CrossFire without SuperAA allows for much higher frame rates but slightly less impressive image quality.

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