DX11 Tested Against DX9 With Dirt 2 Demo

MojoKid writes "The PC demo for Codemasters' upcoming DirectX 11 racing title, Dirt 2, has just hit the web and is available for download. Dirt 2 is a highly-anticipated racing sim that also happens to feature leading-edge graphic effects. In addition to a DirectX 9 code path, Dirt 2 also utilizes a number of DirectX 11 features, like hardware-tessellated dynamic water, an animated crowd and dynamic cloth effects, in addition to DirectCompute 11-accelerated high-definition ambient occlusion (HADO), full floating-point high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and full-screen resolution post processing. Performance-wise, DX11 didn't take its toll as much as you'd expect this early on in its adoption cycle." Bit-tech also took a look at the graphical differences, arriving at this conclusion: "You'd need a seriously keen eye and brown paper envelope full of cash from one of the creators of Dirt 2 to notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX."

Comments

Re:ehh

[webheaded]

You know, for this being a nerd site, a lot of you guys sure seem to go into the future kicking and screaming don't you? There is no LIMIT to the amount of shit you'll complain about. It's a new version. They're not PUSHING it on anyone...it's just there. That's what new cards have. It isn't detrimental to your performance and you can still play in DX9 if the higher version gives you shit fits.

Some things are worth complaining about. Not EVERYTHING is a conspiracy by some rich bastard forcing some product down our throats. Maybe the benefits ARE incremental, but who the hell is buying a new card JUST for DirectX 11? Seriously, what kind of moron is doing that? If I buy a new card, it's for an overall performance game, not for some arbitrary new version of Direct X or whatever. That's just an added benefit.

What progress!

[FranTaylor]

Yes Microsoft hired away all of the greatest talent in 3-D graphics many years ago and sequestered them in Redmond, working on hardware-tesselated dynamic water.

Future people will ask how the US squandered all of its great intellectual talent, and the only answer we will have is that we spent it designing hardware tesselators so that video gamers could have photorealistic water.

It is hard to imagine a more horrifying waste of resources.

Microsoft Research has blown through billions of dollars and this is what we get for that?

Re:Power efficiency

[ascendant]

Oh, god, why?

Why would you care? Why does it even matter, compared to GPU load vs idle power consumption? Are you one of those terminally retarded morons that plays nex-gen games on a laptop with the graphics settings all the way up on battery?

And, for a desktop, why power usage of DX11 vs DX9 enter into your buying decisions at all? You already know the computer is going to suck tons of power while rendering. The only thing that matters is how much power it draws when it's not being used.