| BASIC GAME INFORMATION |
Year of construction: 2012
Genre: Racing
developer: Codemasters
Publishing house: Codemasters
DiRT Showdown is an arcade spin-off of the DiRT series, in which you will find three game modes. You will be able to take part in regular races, extreme races with various stunts, and also try to survive against other racers in the arena.
DiRT Showdown also features multiplayer that supports up to eight people at a time, split-screen for two players, and a system similar to Autolog.
| THE GRAFICAL PART |
This subsection of our review highlights the main graphical aspects of this game. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphic settings and the quality of development of the main visual aspects.
| Supported OS and graphics API |
DiRT Showdown Demo is supported by the major Windows operating systems, which include Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Other operating systems are not currently supported by developers and are unlikely to receive support.
The priority and main graphics API are DirectX 10 and DirectX 11. Owners of the operating system Windows XP SP3, based DirectX 9, the development company decided to leave it out of…
| Game engine |
The EGO game engine is a product of Codemasters’ own development. EGO is a game engine, a modified version of the Neon engine used in the game Colin McRae: DiRT, developed by Codemasters and Sony Computer Entertainment using Sony’s cross-platform PhyreEngine graphics engine. The engine is targeted at the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 hardware and software platforms.
On July 6, 2009, Brian Marshall, Codemasters’ technical director, officially announced that the PC version of Colin McRae: DiRT 2, which would use the “EGO” engine, would add support for DirectX 11. Thus, the “EGO” engine became the first engine , for which support for DirectX 11 was announced.
At the end of July 2010, Codemasters Senior Vice President Jamie MacDonald, in an interview with Develop, announced new games from the company that were being developed using EGO 2.0, the second iteration of the engine. According to him, at this moment the company is actively developing the engine.
All games Codemasters, since 2011, have been using the second version of the engine EGO.
| Advanced Game Settings |
Like all games released Codemasters, DiRT Showdown has a wide range of graphics settings. Thanks to the rich functionality of all graphics settings, users will be able to easily configure their hardware for a smooth gaming experience.
Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between minimum, medium, high and maximum graphics quality settings.
| Low quality settings |
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| Medium quality settings |
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| High quality settings |
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| Very high settings |
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As we can see, there is a difference between different quality settings in DiRT Showdown, although in dynamics it is more pronounced.
| General visual design and game physics |
Graphically, the game has not undergone any visual changes compared to its predecessor, DiRT 3. So those who played the previous part of the series will not be surprised by anything they see on their monitor. Based on the demo version, it is very difficult to estimate the size of all the tracks, since in this case we were presented with only the most compressed of the game’s game locations.
Since the game has a completely new setting for its series in the spirit of “shatter and smash”, a separate issue was presented to the game physics. But, unfortunately, over the course of many repeated races, we did not see anything breathtaking in terms of destruction. We hope in the full version the physics of destruction will not be so mediocre…
Well, then we will move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware.
| TEST PART |
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Test configuration |
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test stands |
Test bench No. 1 based on the Intel Socket 2 platform011 Test bench No. 2 based on the Intel Socket 1155 platform Test bench No. 3 based on the Intel Socket 1366 platform Test bench No. 4 based on the Intel Socket 115 platform6 Test bench No. 5 based on the AMD Soket AM platform3 Test bench No. 6 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform Test bench No. 7 based on the AMD Soket AM platform2 Test bench No. 8 based on the Intel Socket 1155 platform Test bench No. 9 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform Test bench No. 10 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform+ |
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Multimedia equipment |
3D monitor LG W2363D Monitor LG E2750 Dell U3010 monitor product provided by the company AMD 3D Vision Kit product provided by the company Nvidia |
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Software configuration |
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Operating system |
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64 SP1 |
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Graphics driver |
Nvidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 301.24 AMD Catalyst 12.5 |
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Monitoring program |
MSI Afterburner v2.2 |
| GPU test |
All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The minimum and average FPS were taken as performance indicators.
Our video cards were tested at different screen sizes of 1680×1050, 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 at the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by the game. SLI does not work in this testing, but AMD technology does Cross Fire showed her best side.
Testing at maximum quality settings 1680×1050
At a resolution of 1680×1050 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 5770 or GeForce GTX 550 Ti level showed an acceptable minimum FPS. The optimal video cards will be Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTX 465.
Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080
At a resolution of 1920×1080 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 6790 or GeForce GTX 550 Ti level showed an acceptable minimum FPS. The optimal video cards will be Radeon HD 7770 or GeForce GTX 460.
Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600
At a resolution of 2560×1600 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 560 level showed an acceptable minimum FPS. The optimal video cards would be the Radeon HD 5870 or GeForce GTX 480.
| VRAM test |
Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1680×1050, 1920×1080 and 2560×1600.
Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings
The optimal amount of video memory for this game is about 1024 MB. A slightly larger size would be welcome…
| CPU test |
We tested processor dependence on 12 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of video cards for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1024×768 with maximum graphics quality settings. The only settings that were lowered to the minimum quality were anti-aliasing and shadow display level.
Testing at minimum quality settings 1024×768
As we can see, two cores may not be enough for a game in some cases. The minimum FPS in this case will be at the level of a not very comfortable 30 FPS. The most optimal is to use four nuclear models. A larger number of cores also gives an increase, but not as noticeable as when moving from two to four.
| RAM test |
Testing of the RAM consumed by the game was carried out by monitoring directly through the Windows task manager. The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 [email protected] GHz with 8GB DDR3 2400 MGz pre-installed video memory.
Testing at various quality settings
As we can see, with different quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in DiRT Showdown Demo is at the same level and is approximately one gigabyte.
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| Тeating 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 94% |
Graphics 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 66% |
Optimization 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 60% |