CrossFire-X, eXplored

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

Half-Life 2 is still a popular game and it is the oldest game we review for this series. 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 that was evidently intended to showcase the newly-added high definition range (HDR) lighting features of the Source Engine. A flyby of this level is played during the HL2 video stress test and it is very repeatable. All in-game settings are maxed out, including 4xAA/16xAF.

Now at 1650×1080 resolution:

Although all of our configurations breeze through this benchmark, the overclocked HD4890-XOC wins. They are all grouped tightly and we notice that the HD4870-X2 and CrossFire do not scale positively. It may well be that the game’s 300 FPS cap will also influence the average scores, as many setups are hitting that ceiling. But no matter how you look at it, our overclocked HD4890-XOC wins as best bang for buck here.