DIRT 2

Codemasters’ 2009 off-road racing game continues its reign as the token racer in our benchmark suite. As the first DX11 racer, DiRT 2 makes pretty thorough use of the DX11’s tessellation abilities, not to mention still being the best looking racer we have ever seen.

We’re once more looking at a game that generally favors NVIDIA cards, so there are not a lot of surprises to find in our results. The GTX 560 enjoys a 15% lead over the 6950 1GB at 1920, and it even enjoys a small lead over the 6970. As far as NVIDIA’s cards are concerned we’re looking at a typical 30% advantage over the GTX 460 1GB, and interestingly enough even the GTX 470 is nearly 10fps behind at 1920 resolution.

STALKER: Call of Pripyat Mass Effect 2
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  • martixy - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link

    Looks quite good.
    Would get it for the GP compute power just as much as the pixel-pushing power.

    I just question the end price in my little corner of the world. :) Most likely it will be double that($249). 250 I can do, 500 - nah... Go figure.
  • tonyblair - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link

    Ah, do my eyes decieve me or has good old Anandtech gone back to using bog standard reference GTX460's for Nvidia launches? Haha.
  • mapesdhs - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link


    Yeah, it's kinda lame, given nobody in their right mind would buy a stock 460
    anymore. Many places don't even sell them now, and a highly oc'd 460 is
    easily $50 to $60 less than a 560, so a proper comparison would be useful.
    Alas, they succumbed to the moaning minnies.

    If anyone's interested, I can run the downloadable Stalker COP benchmark
    using this review's settings (my own 460 FTW tests have been using 1920x1080,
    Extreme detail, SSAO = Default/High, Enhanced Full Dynamic Lighting, so not
    directly comparable).

    I can't test 2560x1600, but I can test 1680x1050 and 1920x1200, also with
    FTW SLI.

    Ryan, what full settings did you use for the Stalker test? ie. the SSAO (or
    other) mode, etc.?

    Ian.
  • JimmiG - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link

    I agree.. GTX460 cards are available at speeds up to 850MHz or perhaps even more, a huge difference from the 675MHz that the card supposedly launched at (though even at launch, cards running at anything under 7xx MHz was pretty rare).
  • Parhel - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link

    Ha! I just bought a stock 460 1GB two weeks ago. Terribly cheap cooler, so the thing only OC's to about 750Mhz before it throttles and I have to reboot. But I only paid $130, so I'm thrilled with the card. I'm on 2560x1600 screen, otherwise the 768MB card would have been the better value.
  • overzealot - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link

    I remember the Geforce 2 Ti, back in 2001.
    It wasn't the highest end offering then, either - but it sure was a great cost/performance offer.
    It's so bad!
  • Belard - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link

    The GF2ti was really a die-shrink GF2Pro at 50Mhz faster GPU clock, nothing more. In the real world, it was cheaper than the GF2Pro and was a new CHIP process/series they used for the GF3-TI series. Still, the GF2ti was a pretty good deal in its day at about $125 or so... far cheaper than the $300 GT2-Ultra which just lost its crown to the GF3 series.

    A little history lesson.

    All GF400mx /4000mx series are GF2 technology built on a smaller process, nothing more. Sadily, even now, you can STILL buy NEW GF2mx and GF4000MX cards. The 4000MX is a Frankenstein card. Nvidia took a very slow GF2mx GPU and stuck in DX8...

    Check out the stats on Wikipedia - (Basic mid-range cards $200~250)
    GF2ti (2001 - 10 years ago) = Fillrate = 00.2 GT/s Bandwidth = 006.4 GB/s DX7
    GF4 4200 TI (2002 favorite) = Fillrate = 00.2 GT/s Bandwidth = 008.0 GB/s DX8
    GF 6600GT (2004 favorite) = Fillrate = 04.0 GT/s Bandwidth = 014.0 GB/s DX9
    GF GTX 260 (2008 favorite) = Fillrate = 41.4 GT/s Bandwidth = 112.0 GB/s DX10
    GF GTX 560 (2011 Today) = Fillrate = 52.6 GT/s Bandwidth = 128.2 GB/s DX11
    *While the fillrate of GF2 & GF4 are the same, GF2 is a DX7 card, so the GF4 might do the DX7 benchmark at 0.3~.4.

    Wow, bandwidth wise, the 560 is 20x faster than the old GF2. Graphic Texture Fillrate is way beyond what those old GF2~4 cards could handle.

    Hence, playing Crysis on 560 in 1280x1024 could be around 65fps, on a GF6600, it would be under 10fps with LOW details and maybe 1 frame every 6~10 seconds on the GF2... :)
  • Lepton87 - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link

    This card hardly even caught up to my over-a-year-old Radeon 5870. I don't know why this card looks comparatively slow in anandtech's reviews whilst on other tech sites it is about on par with 6950 and thus ever-so-slightly faster then 560Ti.
    http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_...

    so far I find those charts the most informative when it comes to relative performance between cards. It looks like anandtech's blend of games somewhat favor NV hardware.
  • SolMiester - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link

    This is a mid range card that in some benchies surpasses your high previous generation card, at a cheaper price, is quieter and smaller to boot. What more do you want?
  • MeanBruce - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link

    The Asus 560 looks really amazing, guess it's faster than my brand new Asus 6870 directcu, but that's ok I knew the 560 was coming out, and wanted the Asus 6870 for it's beautiful triple heatpipe and gorgeous backplate heatsink the way it looks thru the window of the Corsair Obsidian 650D. Yup it's not out yet, April but man thru that window with my new Corsair AX850! I'm just buying parts for a window! Oh man the sweetness, that view while I work with Microsoft Word. The 6870 came with dual full sized DisplayPorts fantastic, but the Asus 560 comes with just a mini-HDMI. What is that all about? I didn't even know they came in mini. Maybe AMD will release the 7000 series early this year die shrink and all, 7870 for Christmas ahhh life is good.

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