Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

The Lost Coast technical demo is far more difficult for the graphics subsystem than the original Half-Life 2 , so we decided to include it into this review, too. At the maximum graphics quality settings the demo requires Shader Model 3.0 support and displays a number of advanced HDR-using special effects.

The CPU still plays a bottleneck in 1024x768 resolution: the GeForce 7800 GTX SLI, the single GeForce 7800 GTX 512 and the RADEON X1800 XT CrossFire all have almost identical results. In higher resolutions the GeForce 7800 GTX SLI is on top notwithstanding its lower clock rates and two times less memory. Moreover, it boasts a higher efficiency because the single GeForce 7800 GTX and the single RADEON X1800 XT have almost the same speeds. Unlike in Half-Life 2 , not all resolutions are playable in Lost Coast . The speed is sufficiently high only in 1280x1024 and only on the multi-GPU platforms even when you use only 4x FSAA.

There are changes in the rankings at higher antialiasing levels, yet the gap between the RADEON X1800 XT CrossFire and the GeForce 7800 SLI remains small in low resolutions. It’s only in 1600x1200 that the ATI platform is quite far ahead, evidently because it has more and faster graphics memory.

The GeForce 7800 GTX SLI loses its speed suddenly when it begins to perform the resource-consuming 16x SLI AA. Contrary to this, the speed of the RADEON X1800 XT CrossFire remains almost the same as in the previous test. Well anyway you may only want to play the game in 1024x768 with this level of antialiasing enabled.