Legit Video Card Reviews

Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB Vapor-X Video Card Review

Manufacturer: Sapphire
Product: 100351VXSR
Date: Thu, Oct 18, 2012 - 11:00 PM
Written By: Nathan Kirsch -
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Dirt: Showdown

Image Description

Dirt: Showdown is a video game published and developed by Codemasters for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It was released in May 2012 in Europe and in June in North America. It is part of the Colin McRae Rally game series.

Dirt Showdown Settings
Dirt Showdown Settings

Dirt: Showdown removes several of the gameplay modes featured Dirt 3, and introduces new ones. Gameplay modes can be classified as Racing, Demolition, Hoonigan or Party. We ran the built in Benchmark at Ultra settings to get a true feel of what this engine has to offer!

It is very important to note that Global Illumination and Advanced Lighting have massive performance penalties when enabled, something not seen in other titles in the Dirt series. It seems to affect NVIDIA hardware more so than AMD. We ran with and without the settings enabled.


Dirt Benchmark Results

Benchmark Results: In Dirt Showdown we found the Sapphire HD 7970 Vapor-X was again at the top of the chart along with 114FPS at 1920x1080 with the image quality settings set fairly high. We didn't test with advanced lighting or global illumination enabled, but to be honest it makes the game look way too fake and we like it better disabled anyway. So far the Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 680 are tied at two wins each, so this is this getting interesting!

Next Page - Metro 2033


Review Index
Page 1 - The Sapphire HD 7970 Vapor-X GHz Edition
Page 2 - Retail Box & Bundle
Page 3 - Test System
Page 4 - Batman: Arkham City
Page 5 - Battlefield 3
Page 6 - Borderlands 2
Page 7 - Dirt: Showdown
Page 8 - Metro 2033
Page 9 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 10 - 3DMark 11
Page 11 - Power Consumption
Page 12 - Temperature & Noise Testing
Page 13 - Sapphire 7970 Vapor-X Overclocking
Page 14 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions