DIRT 2

Codemasters latest racing game marks the return of a racer to our benchmark suite. As the first DX11 racer, DIRT 2 makes pretty through use of the DX11’s tessellation abilities, not to mention being the best looking racer we have ever seen.

DiRT 2

DiRT 2

DiRT 2

DIRT 2 is a game that NVIDIA’s cards do well at, so long as they’re not overly crippled like the GTX 465. Here the 1GB GTX 460 is effectively tied with the Radeon 5850, while the 768MB GTX 460 trampled the 5830 by 14%. Among NVIDA’s cards the 1GB GTX 460 pulls off a 9% advantage over its cheaper sibling, and the GTX 465 falls to even the 768MB GTX 460 here by a frame.

We’re also seeing the first signs of being CPU limited, with a pair of GTX 460s coming to within 10% of a pair of GTX 480s.

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  • Howard - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    What?
  • Zok - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    Excellent writeup! I really enjoyed you going into depth on the architectural changes. I couldn't agree more that it's superb to see NVIDIA get back into the efficiency game - whether it be performance/price or performance/watt (and, by extension, temperature). Here's to hoping that AMD was sitting on something to combat this!

    P.S. Small typo: For everything but the high-end, this year is a feature yet and not a performance year.
  • thekimbobjones - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    Let the price war begin.
  • homerdog - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    "Here we use the DX11 renderer and turn on self shadowing ambient occlusion (SSAO) to its highest setting, which uses a DX11 ComputeShader."

    I don't think that's what SSAO stands for. Sorry for the nitpick.
  • chizow - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    Yeah I believe the proper term is Screen Space Ambient Occlusion but self shadowing is how its often explained to give an idea of what it is.
  • gentlearc - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    The graphs shown are leaving out too many new derivatives of cards, making is good for contrasting results, but poor for consistent data comparison. Conveniently left out are many cards in one graph that are in another. I'm disappointed in your presentation and find you've concentrated too much on the presentation of your article.
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    Out of curiosity, what's not in our graphs that you'd like to see? At 2560 we run a limited number of cards because most cards are too slow to post a passable framerate, otherwise at 1920 and 1680 we have the complete 5700/5800/5900 series, GTX 400 series, GTX 200 series, and Radeon 4800 series, along with a 3870 and 8800GT. Is there something else you would like?
  • SpaceRanger - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    What I'd like to see is the ATI card that is in direct competition with this highlighted as well. Having to search for the 5830 or 5850 out of all those bars turned me off.
  • estaffer - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    need some cheese with your whine?
  • SpaceRanger - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    Sure.. a good Gruyère please...

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