DiRT 2: DirectX 11 Game Performance Compared And Analyzed

[cleeve]

DiRT 2 promises to be one of the first compelling games to make use of DirectX 11 enhancements. We have a look at the title, its presentation, and its performance in this month's game analysis, comparing graphics cards from both ATI and Nvidia.

DiRT 2: DirectX 11 Game Performance Compared And Analyzed : Read more

 

[eklipz330]

im sure when true dx11 games come out, the difference won't be so subtle anymore.. game looks great either way

 

[rbarone69]

I have to say, Dirt 2 is a great game if you like the rally/baja type car racing. Regardless of the graphics differences the game play is simply fun. It's not "real to life" like Forza, but it is a blast playing if you like sliding around corners on track that's not necessarily pavement.

 

[Onyx2291]

Looks good, gotta be honest though I probably wouldn't see much of a difference if I just played the game without taking a good look at stuff. Maybe except for the water.

 

[Sihastru]

One down, one or two to go

Until DX11 does not become mainstream (eg. 90% of the users will have DX11 capable cards) you can't expect to see differences between DX11 and DX9/10 modes. Why? Because they won't make games where one player sees something and the other does not, to the point that will actually mean something and affect the gameplay.

So anyone that bought the cards for DX11 will not get anything extra from the DX11 code path. No developer that wants to sell a game would code it so that you'd need a new card to play the game. They would not shoot themselves in the foot.

DX11 is now in the position PhysX was, and I'm not necessarily speaking about the CUDA PhysX version, but the original PhysX by Ageia, when you needed a PCI card for it. It had and still has great potential, but you can't use it to it's full extent until people embrace it and make it mainstream. Until then, all the developers can do is to use certain features here and there, so that it gives you a glimpse of what it could be, but not so much that it makes a difference and modifies the experience too much. They just don't want to give up customers, it's not just that they don't want to use the technology.

And when DX11 finally becomes mainstream, in 6-12-18 months, the current DX11 cards will be nearly obsolete performance wise... truly tragic. But that's the way the cookie crumbles...

It's a bit of a troll-ish post (it may seem that way, if you have an ATI DX11 card), and I will get "-1" all round but it's the truth if you think about it from a safe distance. Too bad you... yes... you... the one clicking the "Useless message" icon, won't even get to this last paragraph.

 

[coolronz]

DirectCompute 11..? Doesnt my GTX260 support that? So will I beable to enable that, but not hardware tesselation etc..?

 

[cryogenic]

Dirt 2 uses a DX 9 engine, so I guess this is not such a big surprise, although I've expected more from DX 11 integration, actually **allot** more, considering that the game was marketed as the first DX 11 title out there.

It's rather disappointing to see such small visual differences between DX9 and DX11 versions, even though I've never expected rather major ones from this title.

My hope is that DX 11 will become mainstream very fast, and developers will focus on getting the most out of it soon. Congrats to all that got DX 11 cards this christmas(me included). The DX9 performace is great and the fact that DX11 gains market share is even greater.

 

[cryogenic]

Dirt 2 uses a DX 9 engine, so I guess this is not such a big surprise, although I've expected more from DX 11 integration, actually **allot** more, considering that the game was marketed as the first DX 11 title out there.

It's rather disappointing to see such small visual differences between DX9 and DX11 versions, even though I've never expected rather major ones from this title.

My hope is that DX 11 will become mainstream very fast, and developers will focus on getting the most out of it soon. Congrats to all that got DX 11 cards this christmas(me included). The DX9 performace is great and the fact that DX11 gains market share is even greater.

 

[frederico]

"And when DX11 finally becomes mainstream, in 6-12-18 months, the current DX11 cards will be nearly obsolete performance wise... truly tragic. But that's the way the cookie crumbles..."

I think, I'm not sure though, but I think he is somehow trying to say that in the 'future' your DX11 graphics card may need to be upgraded to a more powerful DX11 graphics card. Something that has been happening with every graphics card for the last 20 years. I am not sure I can deal with all the tragedy.

 

[h83]

I could be wrong, but i think that the only game that will probably show the full potential of DX11 it´s going to be Crysis 2, so prepare your wallets for the PC upgrade...

 

[LATTEH]

dirt 2 looks awesome in DX 9 or DX11 anyone who buys it will be able to enjoy its beauty

 

[gti88]

You ARE wrong, h83, because Crysis 2 will use a cut-down ("light") version of the CryEngine2, wich is DX9 engine.

 

[hannibal]

Good article! It clarifies that DX11 is not allways superior, but offer some improvements that can be usefull in other type of games.
It will be nice to see how DX11 affects games like LOTRO online and other character based slover moving games. That Alien vs Predator seemed promising as allso those ofroad nature pictures from Dirt2. Allso Stalker Call of Pripyat is something that is interesting to take a look for.

DX11 also seems to be using 4* resolution in post prosessing vs dx9 version in Dirt2. It's like comparing 640*480 vs 1920*1600 together.
Not bad results at all when takin that in account. It would allso be nice to see, if you could togle those effects on and of, to see how much each of them actually affect the performance. It seems that with same visual effect the dx11 would be even faster, but that would really be a waste of resourses.
Allso it will be nice to see how Ferni will handle this. It really have enough calculation power for all those subtle gimmicks.

 

[envolva]

[citation][nom]sihastru[/nom]And when DX11 finally becomes mainstream, in 6-12-18 months, the current DX11 cards will be nearly obsolete performance wise... truly tragic.[/citation]As you said, DX11 will take a while to become mainstream. Developers that use DX11 will try to use features most users actually can use. No matter what new cards ATI or NVIDIA produce in the future for at least two years game developers will use the ATI 5850 as DX11 baseline to follow. They don't want to exclude more of the few gamers capable of using DX11. Besides the ATI 5850/5870 will be a great deal in a year.

Performance wise the current cards will do just fine. There will always be something better around the corner, but that doesn't mean the "old" will be obsolete. PC gamming is way ahead the consoles, now we have to wait for a new console generation (2011?) to actually need more processing power for games.

 

[Pei-chen]

I hope to see a comparison between DX10 and DX11. The visual differences are dramatic for the most part but I am not sure if the improvement is due to DX11 over DX10 or DX10 over DX9. I think the jump is too great to actually show advantage of DX11 over DX10 cards (which most of us are using).

 

[nforce4max]

Disappointed to say the least worse still dual gpu benches.

 

[WarraWarra]

The title is wrong it should have been "Win7 DX11 Office Joke VS WinXP DX9c gamers platform"

This just confirms Win7 "Vista 2 Submarine" + DX10/DX11 is not worth buying and everyone will be removing it and downgrading to Win XP DX9c.

I can not tell you how many players have issues with Win7, it is annoying to try and help them, they play in XP Sp3 compatibility windowed mode just to play games and then still have to exit after each online map and start the game again.

I would love to get a better video card but DX11 is not Win XP SP3 compatible so no sale and will stay that way.
New games suck so much that it is not worth paying $60/MW2 and regretting it.

The Gaming market recession is just starting and caused by rip-off MW2 + Win7 DX11.

 

[WarraWarra]

PS
Why not do a proper quality test like my video cards run at, 16X, 24x boxed edge everything on high quality, 1680x1024.

This game might only last 8 months or 2 months like MW2 before obsolete / useless so push that cards same as normal users would.

 

[lradunovic77]

Another proof that DX10/11 are useless at this point. Everything can be done under DX9 and really there is no example of any advantage of DX10/11.
The best example is still Crysis, and as far as i know there is no game out there to reach the level of details Crysis game has. We all know that Crysis runs under DX9. I am not sure what level of graphic Crysis 2 will push, perhaps Crytek team will truly use DX10/11 but in meantime XP x64 Edition is more then you need.

 

[lradunovic77]

Physx is more important then DX11 and DX10 at this point. Nvidia is absolutely right about it. Physx brings more details then actually DX11 over DX9 at this point. CUDA has a lot of more potential then just Physx, and that's doing a lot of calculations CPU does which is joke compared to raw performance of GPU.

 

[CoryInJapan]

Im just glad DX11 has obvious improvements instead of the huge placebo that DX 10 was.Cant wait till True DX 11 games come out.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

From what I can see in the supposedly improved graphics (or lack of), I can't see the justification now to jump to a DX11 GPU considering my GTX260 is "only" 6 months old. This game doesn't seem to have the "oooh factor" that will prod the masses to rush out and upgrade to the DX11 videocards. It also seems that DX10 videocards have held their prices if not increased in the last few months which tells me there's no glut in supply and gamers are still looking for value rather than gimmicks.

I'm not against DX11. In fact I love the rapid technology pace, just wish software would catch up and newly released games would fully utilize the new DX11 in something more significant than "barely perceptible details on the crowds' fingers" or an "extra sheen" on rocks along the road.

 

[SchizoFrog]

It's the same story we had with DX10 all over again. As developers continue to push the cash cow that is the console market every game (bar an exception like Crysis) will be built around a model that can run on console hardware with a few tweaks to enhance graphics for those with DX11 hardware. But is that extra cash layout forth it, I think not.

 

[falchard]

Isn't DX11 backwards compatible down to DX9? I'm wondering why you didn't try to force on DX11 using DX10.1 and DX10 parts to see if it will have an impact.

 

[SchizoFrog]

[citation][nom]p4l1ndr0m3[/nom]I am very very confused. Are these benches accurate?... 'm not at home, but I'll be happy to provide screenshots from the Dirt2 benchmark. I mean, am I really missing something here? I thought the i920 systems raped anything AMD. Am I wrong?[/citation]

Well as far as I can see you have over 500Mhz clock increase on your CPU and more RAM running at much faster speeds... maybe this has something to do with your results?