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Dirt 3 GPU + CPU performance

Marvin

Marvin

Marvin

Soldato
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27 Nov 2009
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Maidstone, Kent
Clicky

I'll highlight the important bits:

At 1680x1050, all cards above the 5750 (6750) will have playable frame rates at full settings with 4x MSAA. Those with the GTS450/5750 would have to probably just drop AA to get playable frame rates.

At 1920x1200, you're looking at ~5830/6850/GTX460 1GB cards for full settings and a smooth frame rate.

At 2560x1600, a GTX560 Ti or 6950 and above cut the mustard at full settings.

Interestingly, even at full settings, the 1GB cards don't suffer from VRAM shortages, despite the memory hungry engine (seeing as the 6870 1GB somehow outperforms the GTX480 in this test).

Overall, it looks like AMD cards do slightly better than Nvidia cards, but it's all quite even.

They also tested triple monitor set-ups with the 6970, 6990 and GTX590.

At 5040x1050 (three 1680x1050 screens), all three cards produced playable frame rates, though the 6970 was a little low. The 6990 led the way.

At 5760x1200 (three 1920x1200 screens), the 6990 again won out, but the 6970 couldn't produce playable FPS.

At 7680x1600, we finally see a setup where drifting's wafflings about 1.5GB VRAM inadequacies actually show to be true, as the GTX590 collapses. Only took 5.3x the resolution to prove it. :rolleyes:

They also did a CPU test, and Dirt 2 really likes:

-Cores (Phenom II X6 did very well)
-L3 Cache

This actually led to the i7 920, i5 750, Phenom II X6 1100T and Phenom II X4 980 all beating the 2600K and 2500K, but they were all close. Any Athlon-based CPU (or Phenom II X2) fell way behind.
 
BaDBoY_uK said:
Who cares if the DX11 option crashes the games with tri-fire?
Click to expand...

People with a tri-fire setup who are experiencing annoying crashes I would have thought! My friend has this exact problem and when he worked out what the problem was (thanks to articles like this) he was able to run in dx9 for the moment to avoid crashes. Just because something doesn't appeal to you doesn't mean it is the case for everyone.
 
I get no crashes with my 6870s in CF?(Are you on the latest hotfix 11.5 mathwat?) Got no problems at all with the game which surprised me to be honest lol.
 
You read my post wrong. I meant

"Who cares [about this research] if the DX11..."

Get it? You should know that I crash too as I have posted it on this forum 50,000 times... ok, slight exaggeration
 
Steam just downloaded a patch for it so i changed back to dx11 loaded up the benchmark and it locked solid before the cars even moved had to control + alt + delete then reloaded it tried again and same thing.

Ive not been able to finish a single race in dx11.
 
Marvin said:
They also did a CPU test, and Dirt 2 really likes:

-Cores (Phenom II X6 did very well)
-L3 Cache

This actually led to the i7 920, i5 750, Phenom II X6 1100T and Phenom II X4 980 all beating the 2600K and 2500K, but they were all close. Any Athlon-based CPU (or Phenom II X2) fell way behind.
Click to expand...

I disagree. If L3 cache is important then there should be more of a different between the i5 2500k and the i7 2600k, yet there isn't? Cores play some part of a role but there aren't enough apples to apples CPUs in the chart to say for sure.

EDIT: Also, if you look at the numbers, a Core i7 920 @ 2.0GHz outperforms a Core i7 2600k @ 3.4GHz? I'd say the results show some flaws in the test bench rather than any useful information IMO. I do wonder if they took the 3 sticks of RAM and stuck them in the SB platform forcing it to run in single channel memory? Or just run it with less RAM? Impossible to say since they don't list the test bench for it.
 
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DarkBahamut said:
I disagree. If L3 cache is important then there should be more of a different between the i5 2500k and the i7 2600k, yet there isn't? Cores play some part of a role but there aren't enough apples to apples CPUs in the chart to say for sure.

EDIT: Also, if you look at the numbers, a Core i7 920 @ 2.0GHz outperforms a Core i7 2600k @ 3.4GHz? I'd say the results show some flaws in the test bench rather than any useful information IMO. I do wonder if they took the 3 sticks of RAM and stuck them in the SB platform forcing it to run in single channel memory? Or just run it with less RAM? Impossible to say since they don't list the test bench for it.
Click to expand...

So how do you explain Athlon II X4 vs Phenom II X4 performance? One gets 57fps, the other 96.

As with everything, the law of diminishing returns applies and past a certain point extra L3 cache is next to worthless with current designs. Not only that, but Intel and AMD's architectures differ, and so extra/less L3 cache could impact differently.

The other point about RAM, you think having dual channel vs single channel makes that much difference? In a game, there's pretty much no difference whatsoever, hence why any RAM guide that compares DDR3 at different speeds and latencies show very little difference in game between them, and that's at settings where the biggest differences would be noticeable, so in real world conditions, even less so.

I do agree that there are some odd results though.
 
since the patch i been able to race while tri-fire enabled.

last night i did 7 races without the game crashing, not sure if it was just a one off. i got about 147fps with everything on max + 8x aa,

also this game uses all 6 cores which is good.
 
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