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Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (known as Dirt 2 outside Europe and stylised, DiRT) is a racing game released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. This is the first game in the McRae series since McRae’s death in 2007. It was announced on 19 November 2008 and features Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Foust, and Dave Mirra. The game includes many new race-events, including stadium events. Along with the player, an RV travels from one event to another, and serves as ‘headquarters’ for the player. It features a roster of contemporary off-road events, taking players to diverse and challenging real-world environments. The game takes place across four continents: Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. The game includes five different event types. Rally, Rallycross, ‘Trailblazer,’ ‘Land Rush’ and ‘Raid.’ The World Tour mode sees players competing in multi-car and solo races at new locations, and also includes a new multiplayer mode.
This engine support DX11 and was one of the integral releases for ATI when they launched the 5xxx series cards a while ago. Hardware tessellation is used on the crowd, as well as water and cloth objects. DirectCompute 11 accelerated high definition ambient occulsion is also integrated with full floating point high dynamic range lighting.
We enabled maximum settings, including hardware tessellated animated crowds and dynamic water via ULTRA settings.
With a single card Dirt 2 is unplayable at these settings with juddering and hitching apparent on some of the more graphically intensive levels. Adding a second card means that the game performance enhances dramatically becoming playable with a much smoother frame rate throughout.
These are so sexy lookin’. XFX and Sapphire rocks !
Very capable and the noise levels and power consumption is excellent.
Very impressed with these little boards. the cooler looks quite crap on the pictures due to the t iny little blades but it seems to handle the cooling fine.
I want to see Sapphire passively cooling these though with an Ultimate Edition 🙂
Temperatures look a bit higher than normal, but its expected with such a cooler. Regardless im impressed with how good they are and the work XFX put into designing a custom cooler for the cards.
Well these rock, I wasnt expecting them to run so well, thought the fans might be spinning at 10k to keep the temps down. if it wasnt for XFX, powercolor and Sapphire ATI would be losing a lot of sales due to their average coolers.
Nice one XFX and usual quality review Zardon, very thorough.
Wait a minute did you say no Crossfire connector was bundled? what a miss. I hope thats not the case on the retail bundle. Otherwise a lot of people will be pissed off.
Wait a minute did you say no Crossfire connector was bundled? what a miss. I hope thats not the case on the retail bundle. Otherwise a lot of people will be pissed off.
These are really sexy little boards. I know powercolor have some out, any differences you know?
Great review KG, very efficient boards all round. good in CFx, even if scaling isnt always quite as good as it might be.
Shame they never seem to ship anything in those awesome X packages now. they used to do that, and I loved to use to see them in stores.
ohhh, wasnt expecting a review of this today. Read it and they seem really good. pricing is spot on, but its a shame they didnt hit the 250 inc vat price point.
XFX aer such a quality company, imagine the GTX460 boards they would be producing NOW if nvidia werent such tools.
HONEY I SHRUNK THE VIDEO CARDS !
Nothing much to fault with these, its the way all the lower end boards should be shipping anyway. ATI take note
XFX have overcharged a little with these, they should be £5 less than the reference boards, and aim for a £240 price point, not 265. I think its going to be hard for them to sell these as people wont understand what Crossfire is. not the mass punters anyway.
The news here yesterday pissed me off big time. Nvidia kicking XFX into touch.
Well I hope someone high up is reading this review, cause this is the quality product they release. Idiots.
Well these really appeal to me, i love small things, and things that dont make a racket when you game. Ideal configuration for a powerful gaming focused media center in a shuttle chassis.
XFX have been quiet quite lately. so this is welcomed.
HD5770 is ATis best card right now. thats my opinion. its open to such a huge market at this price. quality gaming without spending a fortune. CFx is lovely.
One of these is enough. I dont think XFX have created enough incentives to buy two in a bundle deal. same price and you still dont get a crossfire connector !
I would not buy this until I found out if XFX are bundling a crossfire connector. Neither single card box has one included, so why bundle two in a CFX bundle if people can’t use it. Very few motherboards that actually support Crossfire bundle them anymore either. so its useless until I know.
Hi all, my name is Dunc from dabs.com – just wanted to assure you that in the DABS exclusive XFX 5770 Single Slot Crossfire bundle that a CrossfireX Bridge is included in the box.
http://www.dabs.com/articles/promotions/products/s-9076.html
PS: First 10 to buy and leave a review on the item will also get a bonus free game download – either Stormrise or Stalker: COP.
Duncan thanks for letting us know, thats great. ill be on after work tonight ordering for myself. cheers.
No worries at all! Happy to help! Thanks for all the feedback to the offer so far, keep it coming!
No worries! Enjoy the card – anyone ordering this week gets a FREE copy of Bad Company 2 worth £35 too!
Thanks Dunc, im ordered it tomorrow evening when im paid.
Saw the link from XFX to this today in email, putting in my order this weekend when im paid.
Great review kitguru, bookmarked this site, all my friends are talking about it.
Is the battlefield offer still ok ?