Big GPU-Shootout; Part III, PCIe 1.0 vs. PCIe 2.0
Half-Life2: Lost Coast
Lost Coast Playable Tech Demo
Half-Life2 is still a popular game and is the oldest game we review for this series. Half-Life2: Lost Coast is an additional level for this 2004 game. Lost Coast was released October, 2005 as a free download to all purchasers of Half-Life2. Lost Coast was developed as a playable tech demo, intended to showcase the newly-added high definition range lighting – HDR – features of the Source Engine. Lost Coast features some very minor storyline details that were scrapped from Half-Life2. A flyby of this level is played during the HL2 video stress test and it is very repeatable and quite accurate. All in-game settings are fully maxed out, including 4xAA/16xAF.
This old Source engine barely benefits from a newer platform and each of our modern GPUs easily hit the frame rate cap. Still, we generally see some improvement in all of our video card configrations in favor of upgrading to X48 – but not for Half-Life2.
[The top 1920×1200 resolution chart is mislabeled – the last two GPUs, 4870-X2 (1.0) and 4870-X2 (2.0) should instead be labeled CFX3-512M and CFX3-1G respectively.]
Curious, why’d you set Catalyst A.I. to “Advanced”?
How about a few links to explanations of Catalyst AI and what “advanced” really does? Here is an old article on it:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjY2LDI=
Here is the tweak guide which supports my own research:
http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_7.html
“Catalyst A.I. allows users to determine the level of ‘optimizations’ the drivers enable in graphics applications. These optimizations are graphics ‘short cuts’ which the Catalyst A.I. calculates to attempt to improve the performance of 3D games without any noticeable reduction in image quality. In the past there has been a great deal of controversy about ‘hidden optimizations’, where both Nvidia and ATI were accused of cutting corners, reducing image quality in subtle ways by reducing image precision for example, simply to get higher scores in synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark. In response to this, both ATI and Nvidia have made the process transparent to a great extent. You can select whether you want to enable or disable Catalyst A.I. for a further potential performance boost in return for possibly a slight reduction in image quality in some cases. If Catalyst AI is enabled, you can also choose the aggressiveness of such optimizations, either Standard or Advanced on the slider. The Advanced setting ensures maximum performance, and usually results in no problems or any noticeable image quality reduction. If on the other hand you want to always ensure the highest possible image quality at all costs, disable Catalyst A.I. (tick the ‘Disable Catalyst A.I.’ box). I recommend leaving Catalyst A.I enabled unless you experience problems. ATI have made it clear that many application-specific optimizations for recent games such as Oblivion are dependent on Catalyst AI being enabled.
Note: As of the 6.7 Catalysts, Crossfire users should set Catalyst A.I. to Advanced to force Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR) mode in all Direct3D games for optimal performance. Once again, Catalyst A.I. should only be disabled for troubleshooting purposes, such as if you notice image corruption in particular games”
In other words, one can choose the aggressiveness of your optimizations, either “Standard” or “Advanced”. The Advanced setting ensures maximum performance – as for benchmarking games – and with no noticeable image quality reduction. However, if you are doing IQ comparisons as BFG10K did, and want to guarantee the very highest image quality, then disable Catalyst A.I. [but not for crossfire; set it to “Standard”]. I have always recommended leaving Catalyst A.I enabled unless you experience any glitches in games.
You have to realize that Cat AI is not necessarily supposed to give you a boost in every single game. It tries to do optimizations, if possible, but many times these are either not possible with a particular game, or the settings you’ve chosen in the game may be too low for it to make any noticeable impact.
That is why I recommend leaving it on “Advanced”; you get a possisble performance boost; if not then you lose nothing. Or you can set it to standard or off if you feel your image quality is being degraded.
Hope that explains it.
Very interesting, I’ll definitely be I check your site on a regular basis now.