AMD Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition & HD 7750 Review - DiRT 3

Dirt 3 has replaced our previous benchmark of Dirt 2. The Dirt 2 benchmark was the "urban" London circuit, which had several nice examples of water tessellation for the gar to drive through. The Dirt 3 benchmark we use is the Aspen track, which is a long winding snow course.

Rather than water and cloth effects in Drt 2, the Dirt 3 course showcases snow covered trees that flank a snow-covered course with tessellation effects on the snow tracks gouged into the snow. Additionally, there are continuous snow particles kicked up from the cars, and a better chance to see cars flipping and skidding. Overall, a nice and "pretty" update to our Dirt 2 benchmark.

Dirt 3 is known to perform well on a wide range of cards. Both the HD 7770 and 7750 cross 30fps at 1600x900, and the HD 7770 pushes well past 30fps at 1080p. A few tweaks to the graphics settings, and either card could hit 60fps on a single screen. The game hits around 20fps in Eyefinity. 60fps would be out of reach without significant adjustments, but 30fps would be easily achievable while maintaining a high level of visual quality.

Looking at cards from the previous generation, the HD 7770 performs within a couple of frames of the Radeon HD 6850. It ends up being about 15% faster than the Radeon HD 6770 it "replaces", and about 10% faster than the Radeon HD 6790 that was the "top end" of the Radeon HD 6700 family.