DiRT 3 Gameplay Performance Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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DiRT 3 Gameplay Performance Review - DiRT 3 is out, and we aim to find out how this DX11 sequel to DiRT 2 performs across current generation AMD and NVIDIA video cards. We will cover highest playable experiences, App2App, performance and IQ comparisons. DiRT 3 proves that a well balanced DX11 game can perform great and look good doing it.
 
Nice review. We are lucky to have a huge lan center in the area and as you can imagine, it's a breeding ground for guys wanting to show off their machines and to sit down and game all day. I will say, rarely, very very rarely do we see Nvidia cards down these. It's been like this for a good year. The GTX 580 at 600 dollars or whatever it costs is just lulz. We did see some 460s for a bit. The main card we see is the 6970 2gig card. Oh I had to come back in here and edit this. I can't tell you how many times I keep hearing random 15 year olds to 35+ yeah old men mention the Hardocp 6970 2gig review as their main reason for having the ATI card. A good 20+ times and 1/2 the time I am not even really paying attention to these guys. A bit off subject, the new hot thing I am seeing now is Hackinstosh's since Apple just released their native Sandy Bridge and ATI 5xxx and 6xxx support for Snow Leopard. All the guys are rocking the Apple OSX for web / mail and apps and game over on the PC partition.
 
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Good read. Especially going through the graphic options and letting us know what affects performance the most, and what options don't do much.

I might have missed it, but have you guys tested driving with the different views? (bumper, hood, etc) to use worst case (which in my experience is *normally* behind car as used...).
 
Excellent Review as usual!!!

It is also a very fun game to play. I played it for 3 hours Friday night and did not realize that it was almost 1AM when I finished playing.
 
Druneau said:
Good read. Especially going through the graphic options and letting us know what affects performance the most, and what options don't do much.

I might have missed it, but have you guys tested driving with the different views? (bumper, hood, etc) to use worst case (which in my experience is *normally* behind car as used...).
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We tested them all and found the far chase cam to be best for testing performance.
 
This would be a good game to do some Eyefinity testing in.

I am currently gaming at almost all Ultra/High settings (Mirrors off due to an AMD Crossfire Bug that kills performance in Cockpit with them on) on 2x 6950's @ 6048x1200 and rarely dip below 60 FPS (There is also seemingly a Crossfire bug on tracks with rain that sends FPS into the 30's)
 
Is this game like Dirt 2 where it does nothing but crash every 10 minutes with no fix anywhere to be found?
 
Budzman said:
Is this game like Dirt 2 where it does nothing but crash every 10 minutes with no fix anywhere to be found?
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I've never had any problems with Dirt 2. Kyle and the guys didn't mention anything about trouble with this game either. You should probably stop blaming the game and figure out what in your system is causing the instability.
 
Budzman said:
Is this game like Dirt 2 where it does nothing but crash every 10 minutes with no fix anywhere to be found?
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I had a crash when exiting the game once. Examining the error report indicated a driver fault. I re-installed the video driver i was using, and it never happened again.
 
Flyinfinni said:
I've never had any problems with Dirt 2. Kyle and the guys didn't mention anything about trouble with this game either. You should probably stop blaming the game and figure out what in your system is causing the instability.
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but....but..its easier to blame the devs cause i gave them my money to make a game without issues....

QQ FTW!
 
Budzman said:
Is this game like Dirt 2 where it does nothing but crash every 10 minutes with no fix anywhere to be found?
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I never had a crash with Dirt 2 either. Even after I applied a no-CD crack, because, darn it, having to keep the disc in the drive was a pain.

Dirt 2 wasn't nearly as fun as I thought it was going to be, based on the reviews. The big truck class was particularly annoying. I did like that little Dallenbach Special, though. I ended up selling it on craigslist for about 20 bucks after I finished.

This [H] review is tempting me to go get Dirt 3. Damn it, you guys :D.
 
or NVIDIA needs to dramatically lower prices on video cards to compete in this game
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Nvidia cuts prices in order DiRT 3 ? , this is really funny
 
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My 6970 is doing great at 1920x1200! Great write up, and nice comparison. I really like the "apples to apples" part. It is nice seeing the top performers in each class.
 
Nvidia will not cut prices for DiRT 3 alone, but every new game changes the value of their cards compared to the competition.
 
Great review guys! I am getting ready to purchase DIRT 3 on Steam so the timing of this is perfect. It looks like my 5850's in crossfire will live to see another game. I was just a bit disappointed that you guys didn't evaluate performance across different brand processors, but I really wasn't expecting it since you guys mostly stick to just comparing video cards. At this stage, i'm actually curious whether my PII 965 is handicapping me in any game outside of GTAIV which has been the only game i've played where I appear to be hitting a CPU bottleneck.

Budzman said:
Is this game like Dirt 2 where it does nothing but crash every 10 minutes with no fix anywhere to be found?
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I spent a massive amount of time with DIRT 2 and never had a single crash with my 5850's in crossfire. If you had the latest patches along with the latest drivers for your hardware, maybe you need to boot into safe mode with that driver sweeper program to clean things up?
 
Always been a fan of CMR series. This still runs well on my aging 4870x2 at 1920x1200 with high settings.:D
 
Brent_Justice said:
What did you guys think of our youtube video on page 3, showing our manual run-through
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video was good, but who ever was driving looked like they were driving on a street course.. no sliding in the corners(which could of effected performance because of the dirt), over braking going into the corners.. :p as a performance aspect you guys may want to do an e-brake turn on one of the sharp turns or slide it into one of them and see if theres any performance hit on the dust. just an idea. other then that it was good.


also thanks for the write up on the graphic settings, now i know what i can enable and disable on my 8800GS, after 5 or 6 tries i finally got sick of changing settings to figure out which ones were the biggest performance hits.
 
Yeah, I'm a lousy driver. And that was like my 2nd or 3rd run through that course. I've gotten it down better since then (having raced it many, many, many times).
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
video was good, but who ever was driving looked like they were driving on a street course.. no sliding in the corners(which could of effected performance because of the dirt), over braking going into the corners.. :p as a performance aspect you guys may want to do an e-brake turn on one of the sharp turns or slide it into one of them and see if theres any performance hit on the dust. just an idea. other then that it was good.


also thanks for the write up on the graphic settings, now i know what i can enable and disable on my 8800GS, after 5 or 6 tries i finally got sick of changing settings to figure out which ones were the biggest performance hits.
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Using the "Casual" setting applies automatic breaking going into turns. Now, we can still force an e-brake, however if we mess up and end up doing a 360 then our run-through is inconsistent, and we have to start over, unless we are able to do the same 360 in the same spot each run-through so its the same. In an attempt to reduce the chance of screwing up a run-through, and keeping everything consistent, we opt for the casual setting. Now, as we gain more practice playing, we can perhaps take more chances and do some drifting around corners. Note that our actual gameplay testing, to figure what settings are playable, are not done in this track only, and not only in this style of driving, we do play through several tracks, and styles of driving to find the highest playable settings, then we use this track and a consistent run-through to show you data that its playable.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Using the "Casual" setting applies automatic breaking going into turns. Now, we can still force an e-brake, however if we mess up and end up doing a 360 then our run-through is inconsistent, and we have to start over, unless we are able to do the same 360 in the same spot each run-through so its the same. In an attempt to reduce the chance of screwing up a run-through, and keeping everything consistent, we opt for the casual setting. Now, as we gain more practice playing, we can perhaps take more chances and do some drifting around corners. Note that our actual gameplay testing, to figure what settings are playable, are not done in this track only, and not only in this style of driving, we do play through several tracks, and styles of driving to find the highest playable settings, then we use this track and a consistent run-through to show you data that its playable.
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yeah thats what i figured, i forgot about the automatic braking. been running on the normal difficulty i think so i forgot about all the assists with the casual setting.
 
i played the game on amd and nvidia cards.

they are nothing alike, so that extra AA advantage over gtx580 makes up for the less visual fidelity.

i know people are going to be saying both look the same, but not on my monitor.

you cant trick professional monitors.
 
xorbe said:
keyboard driver! :D
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i was thinking more xbox 360 controller driver. i play on keyboard and the movements with the keyboard are a little more exaggerated then that was.


DualOwn said:
i played the game on amd and nvidia cards.

they are nothing alike, so that extra AA advantage over gtx580 makes up for the less visual fidelity.

i know people are going to be saying both look the same, but not on my monitor.

you cant trick professional monitors.
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maybe not, but i'd say the majority of people playing this game don't have a professional monitor so its going to look pretty much the same. in this case you would be considered the 1%'er of gamers.
 
anyway to make it fullscreen on 2 monitors with a radeon 5870?
thanks!
 
note235 said:
anyway to make it fullscreen on 2 monitors with a radeon 5870?
thanks!
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eyefinity but i believe thats limited to 3 monitors or more but i don't know since i don't own an ATI/AMD card to test it. otherwise the only option is playing on one of the monitors.
 
i have a group of 2 eyefinitie's so i have to get another monitor? haha lol
 
Thx for a great review guys, video was specially nice, since you get a better feel for the surroundings, though I hate that "follow" camera mode.

Anyone tested this game with a pad? I held off buying shift 2 because ppl reported the controls were laggy and poor, and F1 2010 felt too arcade like. Still plays GTR evolved.

Controls any good? Responsiveness with a pad. Is the controls customizable?
 
The 6870 you linked is $165 after rebate, not $187. That's a huge difference. Plus it comes with Dirt 3!

The HIS brand also comes with Dirt 3.
 
The results seem off? Not sure why, though. Everything seems to be about 10-15 frame lower then what I'm seeing in other articles/benchmark threads. Though I suppose that could be the lower clock speed on the processor, and some of the others being on Sandy Bridge.
 
Great review.

The game is a lot easier on the graphics then I was expecting. I almost never see my FPS drop below 60. But the 5760x1080 Res was a bit much for a single card at max settings. Excuse to buy another!!! (Yea I wish that reasoning really worked also)

Also I fully support driving drunk in this game!
 
xorbe said:
keyboard driver! :D
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sirmonkey1985 said:
i was thinking more xbox 360 controller driver. i play on keyboard and the movements with the keyboard are a little more exaggerated then that was.




maybe not, but i'd say the majority of people playing this game don't have a professional monitor so its going to look pretty much the same. in this case you would be considered the 1%'er of gamers.
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Keyboard. A proper wheel would be impractical for my use.
 
Thanks for the outstanding break down of the settings, it would take some time to figure out what each one did otherwise. Also noticed that a number of AMD cards do have Dirt3 coupons making it even sweeter with AMD. Been playing Dirt2 lately and really like it. Dirt3 menus look less obtrusive and faster as a note but this wasn't a game review but a performance review using Dirt3. Awesome job!
 
well i figured out my 8800GS(702/1728/999) can play this game at 1920x1200 with everything on high/postproc low, 2xMSAA in bumper cam at 52fps average, not bad for a 4 year old card. :p

still 100mb of video memory left over as well. kinda sad how non graphically demanding this game really is in dx9.


Mark_Warner said:
Keyboard. A proper wheel would be impractical for my use.
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yup i'm a keyboard person too.. i tried using a wheel with dirt 2 and it just didn't feel right to me. almost like the controls are to arcade like. i just set my car up to have less roll in the corners so its easier to drive with the keyboard.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
well i figured out my 8800GS(702/1728/999) can play this game at 1920x1200 with everything on high/postproc low, 2xMSAA in bumper cam at 52fps average, not bad for a 4 year old card. :p

still 100mb of video memory left over as well. kinda sad how non graphically demanding this game really is in dx9.




yup i'm a keyboard person too.. i tried using a wheel with dirt 2 and it just didn't feel right to me. almost like the controls are to arcade like. i just set my car up to have less roll in the corners so its easier to drive with the keyboard.
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Have you tried using a wired Xbox 360 controller? It works incredibly well and much better than the keyboard worked for me when playing DIRT 2. I can't wait to see what i'll be able to run DIRT 2 at with my setup.
 
DualOwn said:
i played the game on amd and nvidia cards.

they are nothing alike, so that extra AA advantage over gtx580 makes up for the less visual fidelity.

i know people are going to be saying both look the same, but not on my monitor.

you cant trick professional monitors.
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If you want to believe that, fine. Keep telling yourself that there's a difference to justify your purchase because if this was REALLY that case, then why has there not been a SINGLE COMMENT from ANY reviewer out there? The [H] staff would definitely mention it if there was a difference as they are all about the best experience. Anyway- you can keep lying to yourself, or you can wake up and realize that they're really pretty equivalent. You see what you WANT to see, not whats actually there.
 
Great review, except for the fact Dirt 3 doesn't use the Ego 2 engine!! :p :D

http://community.codemasters.com/forum/7070805-post16.html

Sorry to have to correct you but thats not actually true mate we haven't put out a title yet using EGO 2 and it is currently still in development. DiRT 3 as well as F1 2011 will use updated and modified versions of the EGO engine. This engine is constantly being updated and modified which is why DiRT 3 can contain the weather tech developed for F1 2010 for example.

I'm intrigued where all this EGO 2 stuff started actually.
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