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.

NVIDIA has in the past and continues to do rather well in DIRT 2, an amusing outcome given that this was an AMD promoted game. The GTX 580 is not only over 20% faster over the GTX 480, but enjoys a small lead over even the 5970, falling to only the 6870 CF. Not that it’s hard to do well here; even the GTX 480 can almost hit 60fps at 2560.

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  • Pantsu - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    A good article, and a good conclusion overall. Much better that the fiasko that was the 6800-article.

    I do lament the benchmarking method AT uses though. Benchmarks like the Crysis Warhead one are not really representative of real world performance, but tend to be a bit too "optimized". They do not reflect real world performance very well, and even skew the results between cards.
  • carage - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    No DOLBY/DTS HD bitstream = epic fail as far as HTPC usage is concerned.
    Thank you nVidia for failing again this round.
  • Sihastru - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    Yes, you must be one of the only two persons in the world that was considering the most powerfull GPU on the planet for a HTPC setup.
  • carage - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    And somehow you still buy into the argument that mid-end offerings at half the price has more features than the top of the line card?
    nVidia has been doing this since 6800 era...
  • QuagmireLXIX - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    And I am the other :) What some people don't see is that someone may only want 1 desktop to do everything well.
  • buildingblock - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    I'm impressed that my local hardware dealer here in the UK has no less than 5 GTX 580s in stock today. It also includes, yes in stock, the first overclocked 580 the Palit Sonic which has a 835 Mhz CPU up from 772, 4200 memory up from 4008, and 1670 shaders up from 1544. All this for about 5% more than the price of the standard Palit GTX 580.
  • buildingblock - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    I meant 5 different makes of GTX 580 of course.
  • mapesdhs - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link


    Are you near Bolton by any chance? ;D

    If not, which company?

    Btw, shop around, the Sonic is 30 cheaper elsewhere.

    Ian.
  • buildingblock - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    I was looking at a standard Palit GTX 580 for £380, and the Sonic version for £398. These were about the best prices I could find today.
  • nitrousoxide - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link

    But how far it can go depends on its counterpart, the HD6970.

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