AMD (NYSE: AMD) announced today that the Games for Windows Live Edition of DiRT 2 is now shipping and marks the first racing game developed from the ground up to take advantage of advanced graphics features available with Microsoft DirectX 11 and the incredible new ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology for the most engaging gaming experience yet. With a wealth of image quality and performance enhancements supported only on new Direct X 11-capable ATI Radeon graphics cards, DiRT 2, the thrilling sequel to the award-winning Codemasters off-road racer, offers players a more realistic, immersive and exhilarating experience than ever before, and is the latest example of the benefits of AMD’s close working relationship with today’s leading game developers.
Some of the DirectX 11-based improvements gamers can enjoy, as compared to the DirectX 9-based version, include:
- Improved water effects including more realistic ripples, accurate reflections, and life-like splashes and wakes, more detailed, animated crowd models to cheer on your race, and smoother, more realistically flowing flags and cloth as a result of hardware tessellation where more polygons are generating the scene without degrading game performance.
- More accurate simulation of light and shadows as a result of Compute Shader 5.0 found in DirectX 11, allowing for complex computations without major hits on frame rates.
- Truer depiction of high dynamic range lighting at twice the color depth of the DirectX 9 version, with special effects rendered at the full screen resolution, up to four times the resolution of the DirectX 9 version.
DirectX 11-compatible hardware is currently available only from AMD. Players can take advantage of the DirectX 11 features in DiRT 2 on the ATI Radeon HD 5970, ATI Radeon HD 5870, ATI Radeon HD 5850, ATI Radeon HD 5770 or ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics cards. Select ATI Radeon graphics cards include a bonus coupon to download DiRT 2 for no additional charge.2 DirectX 11 is available as part of the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system and as a downloadable update to Windows Vista.
Players can also experience DiRT 2 like never before, in an immersive, ultra-widescreen configuration with ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology. ATI Eyefinity allows players to arrange one to three monitors to create game environments of resolutions up to 7680 x 1600.3
“DirectX 11 brings incredible visual realism to the DiRT 2 experience, allowing gamers to enjoy the most realistic simulation of racing environments ever seen, including the most life-like water, cloth, crowds and lighting,” said Bryan Marshall, chief technical officer, Codemasters. “We worked closely with AMD to take advantage of the new graphical technologies of DirectX 11, and technologies such as ATI Eyefinity found in the latest ATI Radeon graphics cards, to make DiRT 2 an unparalleled racing game experience on the PC.”
“AMD has worked tirelessly with Codemasters to collectively transform realism in PC gaming through new DirectX 11 technologies only available today on the latest ATI Radeon graphics cards,” said Matt Skynner, vice president & general manager, GPU Division at AMD. “Players taking advantage of the incredibly detailed graphics of DiRT 2 on ATI Radeon graphics cards, or the phenomenal game experience an ATI Eyefinity technology setup affords, will agree that DirectX 11 allows for a faster, more thrilling, and more engaging racing simulation than ever before.”
