Ever since the launch of DirectX 11 capable graphics boards, Codemasters' Colin McRae: DiRT 2 has been promoted as one of the first big-name titles to make use of the new API. The PC version of the game is now here, complete with tessellation and the use of DirectCompute 11 shaders, while also featuring a built-in benchmark. It's that timedemo that we use here, with all settings cranked up to "Ultra" levels to enable the title's full DirectX 11 feature set.
Again, DirectX 11 support is a fantastic marketing check-box for the Radeon HD 5670, but when it comes to actually using it at a commonly used resolution things become a bit trickier. We hit close to thirty frames per second on both 512MB and 1GB Radeon HD 5670 cards here, which may or may not be enough for you depending on your requirements - Personally, I'd probably recommend dropping down to DirectX 9 quality levels and enjoying the additional performance that will bring.
Enabling 4x multi-sampling only sees a small performance drop even on our 512MB HIS Radeon HD 5670 IceQ, which is good news in itself although it still means you'll want to drop back to a DirectX 9 rendering path to really be able to enjoy this great game.
H.A.W.X.
H.A.W.X. is the latest in the seemingly never-ending stream of title bearing Tom Clancy's name, an arcade flight "simulator" par excellence set in a near-future of private companies running huge military concerns. With its use of actual satellite imagery for its terrain it's a reasonably impressive title graphically, made all the more so by its use of both DirectX 10 and DirectX 10.1 functionality to both enhance and accelerate its rendering capabilities. We'll be making the most of this latter mode for our testing here, running our AMD boards using all in-game details at their highest levels with DirectX 10.1 enabled.
Both of our Radeon HD 5670 cards can offer up reasonably playable performance in this title at 1680x1050 - Frame rates are certainly acceptable for gamers working to this kind of price level, particularly in the case of our 512MB HIS board.
Making use of DirectX 10.1 reduces the impact of enabling anti-aliasing in this game to an impressive degree, and that allows both ASUS and HIS' take on the Radeon HD 5670 to continue to offer a pretty reasonable gaming experience at 1680x1050 with 4x anti-aliasing in use.
