Frame Rating: GTX 660 vs HD 7870, plus HD 7790, HD 7850, GTX 650 Ti BOOST

DiRT 3 (DirectX 11)

A continuation of the Colin McRae series, but without his name, DiRT 3 is one of the top racing games in the world and offers stunning imagery along with support for features of DirectX 11. 

Our settings for DiRT 3

DiRT 3 indicates that at 1920×1080 the fastest card is indeed the Radeon HD 7850 followed by the GTX 650 Ti BOOST and the HD 7790.  Only the GTX 650 Ti falls well behind while still providing a great 1080p experience.

Three of our four tested cards in this data set have very similar frame time graphs and are all very tight and consistent.  The GTX 650 Ti is also showing consistent frame times but they are slower.

This presentation of data puts a bit more separation between the HD 7790 / GTX 650 Ti BOOST and the Radeon HD 7850 (60 FPS vs 65 FPS average) with the GTX 650 Ti running under 50 FPS.

These frame time variances look worse than they really are – just check the y-axis scale for proof that all four of these cards are presenting frames in a consistent manner. 

The HD 7850 again appears to have put a bit of separation between itself and the other cards in our testing but otherwise the 2560×1440 results look very similar to the 1920×1080 above.

All frame times look to be pretty solid once again with the only outlier being the GTX 650 Ti and its slower overall performance.

Even at this top end single monitor resolution, three of the four tested cards can easily keep up with DiRT 3 at maximum settings.

Not much frame variance on any of the four tested cards once again.