Dirt 2 issues

I purchased a 5870 vapor-x and it came with a copy of Dirt 2 downloadable via Steam. I too have been having major issues with this game.

I was at first running it with windows XP, but upgraded to Windows 7 64bit. In Windows XP it ran perfectly fine. 60fps at 1920 x 1080 8 x MSAA with v sync on. Excellent, now, installed windows 7, re-installed the game via steam and its now not launching at all…

Got around this by running the dirt2.exe with Admin rights in the SteamApps\commonfiles\dirt2\ folder, it takes an age to load up, then when it finally does, it’s stuck in windows mode.

I solved this by going to
MYDOCUMENTS\MYGAMES\DIRT2\HARDWARESETTINGS\hardware_settings_config.xml In this file is a line: <resolution width="1920" height="1080" aspect="16:9" fullscreen="false" vsync="1" multisampling="8xmsaa">

Changing fullscreen="false" to fullscreen="true"

Now the game launches in full screen by running as an Admin, it requests me to load some Sony ADC thingy, copy protection no doubt, and then runs full screen, and it runs like a bag of spanners… Fraps shows it jumping all over from 20 – 57fps….. Its not good. Lots of stuttering…

I really can’t believe upgrading to Windows 7 64bit has broken the game. Thread mentions re-installing the game?

How can I do this via Steam? I can’t even launch it via steam anymore. It says game not available…

Thanks…
 
Camelpaw said:
Runs fine for me on Win7 with a 5850 :)
Click to expand...

Is that the retail version or steam version? Sadly not been so lucky and I simply cannot get this game to run fine...

Check my sig - this game should be flying on my rig, sadly its doing anything but...

Read a LOT of complaints about the Steam version not running correctly under windows 7. Codemasters are not known for fixing their mess of games when they hit troubles, I mean you've only got to look at their past games...

However when a codemasters game runs, it does normally run really well.... Bad luck on my part I guess.
 
Yeah, I had the same problem mate, all I did was redownload dirt 2 via steam and played it with the 10.3a's on my 5850, plays maxed out, locked at 60frames, the new drivers do work a dream :D
 
Ben-Irvine93 said:
Yeah, I had the same problem mate, all I did was redownload dirt 2 via steam and played it with the 10.3a's on my 5850, plays maxed out, locked at 60frames, the new drivers do work a dream :D
Click to expand...

ooh OK. So do I need to delete the local content and re-download? Ah man thats a 6GB or more install, it took me nearly a day as it was to download... I haven't really got the fastest of BB connections... :(
 
iv-tecman said:
I purchased a 5870 vapor-x and it came with a copy of Dirt 2 downloadable via Steam. I too have been having major issues with this game.

I was at first running it with windows XP, but upgraded to Windows 7 64bit. In Windows XP it ran perfectly fine. 60fps at 1920 x 1080 8 x MSAA with v sync on. Excellent, now, installed windows 7, re-installed the game via steam and its now not launching at all…

Got around this by running the dirt2.exe with Admin rights in the SteamApps\commonfiles\dirt2\ folder, it takes an age to load up, then when it finally does, it’s stuck in windows mode.

I solved this by going to
MYDOCUMENTS\MYGAMES\DIRT2\HARDWARESETTINGS\hardware_settings_config.xml In this file is a line: <resolution width="1920" height="1080" aspect="16:9" fullscreen="false" vsync="1" multisampling="8xmsaa">

Changing fullscreen="false" to fullscreen="true"

Now the game launches in full screen by running as an Admin, it requests me to load some Sony ADC thingy, copy protection no doubt, and then runs full screen, and it runs like a bag of spanners… Fraps shows it jumping all over from 20 – 57fps….. Its not good. Lots of stuttering…

I really can’t believe upgrading to Windows 7 64bit has broken the game. Thread mentions re-installing the game?

How can I do this via Steam? I can’t even launch it via steam anymore. It says game not available…

Thanks…
Click to expand...

if you get it into windowed mode press ALT and ENTER and it changes it to fullscreen mode .
 
Well, finally managed to get this right pain of a game to run…

I rechecked the gaming cache from Steam. No errors found, game would still not launch correctly, in fact I really screwed it up and the game BSOD the system.. Great.

Deleted the hardware config file, tried to launch the game again. This time, blank screen dirt.exe had hung. I then decided to remove my PS3 USB pad, thought it might be a conflict. Nope. So, removed Games for Windows and re-installed and allowed to auto updated. Nope.

So, ran the game with Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode, and this worked but it kicked the nuts out of the performance. Less then 35fps in some areas whilst racing a lap around London. Looked at the hardware config, and noticed Rapture 3D as my audio device…

Ok… Removed rapture 3D from add remove programs, set the game to no compatibility, set the screen res and removed forced DX9 in the config file and now the game runs 60fps pretty much constant with it dipping when you get a lot of cars on screen….. Fantastic. Only took me an hour of swearing and tearing my hair out….

No idea if rapture 3D is needed (I don't have EAX either) but either way it’s a POS on my system, as when I re-installed rapture 3D it not only broke Dirt 2 again, it also buggered up my speaker configs. I use Windows 7 to control my speaker configs using a Xonar D2 audio board.
 
Sounds very similar to the audio problems that there were with the original DiRT. Hardware audio acceleration tended to cause stuttering of the engine with a lot of cars around, and it was even still present with software to a lesser extent. They never fixed that bug. The closest thing to a fix was to replace some dlls from GRID into DiRT. I can't remember the exact names, but they were in the main folder of the install and related to the sound. GRID always ran buttery smooth, just I had probs with DiRT. I don't have DiRT 2, but the demo ran smooth on my setup.
 
As far as I know there is a new patch out in the last week or so which fixes some issues. Look on the codemasters site. Other fixes I've read of include reinstalling games for windows. No issues here myself however with Win 7 x64.
 
I must have been lucky as I played it & completed everything to 100% back in early Dec when it first came out on a GTX260-216 with Vista 32 bit + Asus Xonar D2X & the FPS were fine.

Codemasters are however well known for making buggy broken games & Dirt2 has a very annoying savegame bug which causes random loss of all save progress which they have not fixed so backup your game saves folder often otherwise be prepared to redo large parts of the game both MP & SP :(
 
iv-tecman said:
No idea if rapture 3D is needed (I don't have EAX either) but either way it’s a POS on my system, as when I re-installed rapture 3D it not only broke Dirt 2 again, it also buggered up my speaker configs. I use Windows 7 to control my speaker configs using a Xonar D2 audio board.
Click to expand...

There's a fixed version of rapture at their website.
Site page
Direct Link to file

I had problems with rapture till I installed this. Rapture isn't essential, but does improve the audio especially if you have surround sound gear.
 
MeMeMeMe said:
There's a fixed version of rapture at their website.
Site page
Direct Link to file

I had problems with rapture till I installed this. Rapture isn't essential, but does improve the audio especially if you have surround sound gear.
Click to expand...

Fantastic tip mate... I also installed new Xonar D2 drivers, I was using Windows Vista drivers. I installed them from the CD I got with the card:eek: Stupid, should know better..

So, now its all working and the FPS has now gone to 60fps and pretty much stayed there..

It wasn't the game, it was me being a tad silly with drivers.... oops.. However I've also installed the rapture file and this works as well..

Thanks..
 
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