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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.
The HD5870 has been well optimised for Dirt 2 on a driver level and it shows by the extremely small differential between average and minimum frame rates. Both cards make this a wonderful gaming experience and the Black Edition obviously pushes the performance a little higher.
It would be fair to say that playing Colin McRae Dirt 2 on the XFX Black Edition is about as good an experience at it can get. The game is buttery smooth throughout and thanks to the refined Catalyst Drivers the overall Image Quality is second to none.
The first comment is mine. Outstanding review and the first one I’ve read till now about this great card
damn Zardon – thats a mega review. Your old site really misses you. Thanks, first of this ive seen online. Bit out of my price range but good reading!
Damn damn damn, very sexy cooler. I want
Nice to see Far Cry 2 in the mix, missed that game, might play it again. nice review guys thanks
XFX are wicked – I like them and Sapphire, although eVGA are good too. Its always good to see coolers being used by these companies who make the effort. reference coolers tend to suck ass.
Bookmarked the site, I just follow you wereever you go Z man !
It is quite expensive but when you look at the price, only £40 more than the reference one, it makes sense. some people pay more for an arctic cooling one. Great review as always Zardon, nice to see you back in action, missed your quality reviews
Shit is this site only up a week? wtf, do you not sleep? What a wicked review, been waiting for this card as I dont like saphire and have had some issues with support
Hey Zardon, nice to see you over here !!! bookmarked the site, love the layout! always know your touch !
XFX make good cards but I had one fail on me recently which was annoying. They looked after me though so cant complain I guess.
this is probably my next card, once I sell my own. Any ideas on availabilty?
XFX have always released good products and their stylish approach is always a little ‘extra’ for me, as they seem to go the extra mile. This is a nice card and I always am particularly interested in products with high quality coolers like this. Color me impressed.
It is very like the Sapphire Toxic model, as far as I can see the cooler is identical. nice job though
Who hooooooo – thanks for the review, been waiting for this for a while. very impressed with the temperatures.
I do like XFX but I tend to prefer Sapphire as they release their products earlier. I hope XFX can step up the release date, this still isnt out yet so it looses points from me.
Well you can hardly hold that again XFX Derek. Sapphire are known to be AMD’s number 1 partner. and XFX produce nvidia cards so im positive that they get punished for that too.
Well I am not saying its their fault, but there is no point having such a cool designed card if you cant buy it and Sapphire release a similar one months before it?
Yes, I know, but the point im making is that Sapphire are firmly fighting in AMDs corner, they only sell AMD cards and XFX sell both ranges. The thing is if AMD have no good ranges out at a particular time then Sapphire cant fall back on nVidia cards to sell them. XFX play both fields and therfore some penalities will always happen.
Ok, but equally so wouldnt you think that if a problem occured that Sapphire would support it better? they only make one range of card and training a team on two complete ranges would cost more and probably lead to poorer support?
Maybe, but I dont often need support for a video card. unless it dies and im well within my rights as a consumer to get it replaced ASAP. This really wont affect many people unless they need live customer support on something they dont know or are stupid.
THe more I read this the more impressed I am with performance. those temps are great too.
Are the catalyst drivers any better now than they were a year or 2 ago? it made me always want to kill myself
Ho, Nice site, like it !
mmmm, the end result seems fair, but a question. WHEN CAN I BUY THE BASTARD CARD !
For all the people prasing Sapphire, they can kiss my ass, my last card died just outside warranty and they just said “tough shit”. I can understand it i guess, but I have owned 4 sapphire cards. they can go play with emselves.
Well if its outside warranty, its outside warranty. its a little like a car part failing outside warranty, you cant expect to drive into BMW and get a new one.
Well I think the point he was making was he felt that companies should really be seen to be more helpful to customers. if something just fails outside warranty and its major I don’t see why they can’t help him someway, even with a cheap deal to cover their own costs and keep the guy sweet.
This site is biased. I WANT EVGA REVIEWS they are the best
Its only just opened a week, its hardly being biased they haven;t had the chance yet man
Opened a week? rubbish, its been here ages.
Had to post a big THANK YOU. I found this review and went to read it on my iPad thinking it wouldnt work. what a smooth experience on Apple and no bloody flash crap in the way anywhere. sent you an email, can we make paypal donations to keep this up?
@ Jeremy: You are XFX’s target audience for this product. They want to sell to existing loyal customers first. Ping [email protected] and see what they say… REMEMBER to send them a link to this review – so they know the ‘source of the goodness’ 🙂
That’s a hell of a thorough review. Pretty much covered everything I would want to know. 🙂 Glad to see attention paid to cooling.
I sure wish this thing would release for everyone else, my GTX 260 fried a few weeks ago, and I need a new card. Would love to at least have an ETA.