Colin McRae DIRT is crippling my PC

[mazeroth]

My computer is in my sig and while running DIRT at 1680x1050 with everything on low or off I'm lucky to maintain 15 fps while playing the 2nd board, the one with all the trees. The first all-dirt board played pretty well (guessing 30-40 fps) but this second board is unplayable. I wanted to wait a few more months to upgrade my graphics card but that may have to happen sooner than I wanted.

Is anyone else being brought to their knees by this game?

 

[thilanliyan]

Yes even my system does not get amazing frames but I'm playing with maxed settings at 1280x1024. The game looks good but like most Codemaster's racing games, the physics leaves a lot to be desired. If you want a good looking rally game with realistic physics, take a look at Richard Burns Rally....that is a really good game, and you can play it with your card at decent settings like I used to with my own X1800XL.

 

[MarcVenice]

I can play this game only at 800*600 with low settings, some low-medium like, on a 7600gs with 1gb of ram and a s939 x2 3800+ @ 2.6ghz. It's intensive, this is with shadows on btw, those eat up so much processing power from my gpu. Tomorrow things should be better though, adding 1gb of ram and a 8800gts 320mb.

 

[Noema]

I get very decent frame rates on my rig, which is very similar to Thillan's. I play at 1680x1050. This is with 2xAA though.

A 8800GTX should handle the game pretty well, but overall perfomance is not great with this game.

I suspect the fact the game was surely developed for Xbox 360 and then sloppily ported to PC has something to do with it.

My brother has the 360 version and it's amazing to see it run locked at 30fps without breaking a sweat on what is basically a X1800XT (I think?).

Optimization goes a long way I guess.

 

[Drayvn]

Your not gonna get much in terms of performance with this game.

As Noema has said, crappy port from a X360 to the PC. No optimisation has been done, just quickly ported over with practically no money spent to rack in a few more million for practically free.

The way of publishers and in house development.

 

[theprodigalrebel]

I saw the video-review on GameTrailers.com. It doesn't seem to run very smooth even on the XBOX. Watch the video and you can see frame rates drop drastically - particularly in cockpit view.

Get your LOLS on

 

[PeanutR]

Originally posted by: Drayvn
Your not gonna get much in terms of performance with this game.

As Noema has said, crappy port from a X360 to the PC. No optimisation has been done, just quickly ported over with practically no money spent to rack in a few more million for practically free.

The way of publishers and in house development.

Very true, I must say I was surprised at how little effort was put into the port. I own the game for my X360, and it runs in 1080 without any slowdown (that I've noticed atleast, haven't had time to play much yet) it looks so good that one of my friends went out and bought it for pc and we were both surprised at how crappy it ran on his rig. Shows where they plan to make their money, doesn't it?

 

[coolpurplefan]

I can set the demo on high (not ultra) with X1650 XT, 2GB RAM, AMD athlon 4000+ single core.

When I set it on ultra, it was just a slide show. Real funny to see that.

 

[MarcVenice]

Hmz I popped in a 8800gts 320mb and it works like a charm. Ports usually do suck though, but this one isn't to bad. Performance wise it does suck though.

 

[40sTheme]

On the rig in my sig, I get everything on max except shadows which are set to medium (still look awesome, though). Max includes 4xAA. This is at 1440x900. What I did is make sure that the sound renderer is set to software; my performance drastically increased after doing this and it sounds just as good.

 

[niggles]

check my rig in my sig, I just ran the demo no problems at 1680 x 1050, everything turned up. I'd hate to say upgrade at this point because the good stuff worth upgrading for doesn't come out until the end of the summer. I would suggest waiting and upgrading in early september to get a cheaper video card. The game is really beautiful with everything turned up.

 

[superbooga]

The game is 720p, not 1080 on the Xbox 360.

Anyways, stop blaming performance on ports. Very rarely are games programmed with only a single platform in mind. Also, the increased complexity of software and need for cross-platform development necessitates the need for APIs and makes platform-specific optimizations unfavorably.

Just look at Ur Quan Masters, the remake of Star Control II that's designed to run on multiple platforms. The original ran on a 386. The new version requires a 200 Mhz processor. The new version is multi-threaded, using ogg for music and png for graphics (I think).

So it's not the fact that it's a port that matters, it's the fact that most games are designed to be portable that affects performance. The Xenos has a very efficient unified architecture that is superior to any x1k or 7-series card. That's also why this game runs so much better on the 8800. Basically low settings is what "optimize for the typical, aka non-unified shader PC" is. Now if it still runs poorly at low settings, then you can argue that it's a bad port/optimization/whatever.

 

[swtethan]

Runs great on my machine.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: swtethan
Runs great on my machine.

What's great? And with what resolution and settings? I have a similar comp to yours but with everything maxed it doesn't perform that well for me at 1280x1024.

 

[MarcVenice]

Back down from ULTRA to HIGH, that should help.

 

[swtethan]

Originally posted by: thilan29
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: swtethan
Runs great on my machine.</end quote></div>


What's great? And with what resolution and settings? I have a similar comp to yours but with everything maxed it doesn't perform that well for me at 1280x1024.

I have everything maxed 1280x1024, runs smoothly, those HDR stuff is crazy, but the force feedback on my steering wheel feels weak.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: swtethan
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: thilan29
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: swtethan
Runs great on my machine.</end quote></div>


What's great? And with what resolution and settings? I have a similar comp to yours but with everything maxed it doesn't perform that well for me at 1280x1024.</end quote></div>

I have everything maxed 1280x1024, runs smoothly, those HDR stuff is crazy, but the force feedback on my steering wheel feels weak.

So we have the same settings too...but I don't always get over 30fps so it's not smooth for me.