The Big GPU Shootout: Part I, Upgrade Now or Wait?

Half-Life2: Lost Coast

HL2 is still a popular game and is our oldest game we review. Half-Life 2: 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-Life 2. 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 minor storyline details that were scrapped from Half-Life 2. A flyby of this level is played during the HL2 video stress test and it is very repeatable and quite accurate.

Half-Life2 Lost Coast Tech Demo performance test at 16×10:

Half-Life2 Lost Coast Tech Demo performance test at 19×12:

Here CF-X3 shows decent scaling and all of the videocards tested have no problem running this DX9c game.  We see the stronger cards all approach 301 FPS with very decent minimums.  No one we are addressing needs to upgrade for Source Engine yet.