What are we looking for in gaming performance wise? First off, obviously Guru3D tends to think that all games should be played at the best image quality (IQ) possible. There's a dilemma though, IQ often interferes massively with the performance of a graphics card. We measure this performance with an outcome which is called FPS, the number of frames a graphics card can render per second. The higher it is the more fluently your game will display itself.

A game's frames per second (FPS) is a measured average of a series of tests. That test often is a timedemo, a recorded part of the game which is a 1:1 representation of the actual game and it's gameplay experience. After forcing the same image quality settings; this timedemo is then used for all graphics cards so that the actual measuring is as objective as can be.

• So if a graphics card barely manages less than 30 FPS then the game is not very playable, we want to avoid that at all cost.
• With 30 FPS up-to roughly 40 FPS you'll be very able to play the game with perhaps a tiny stutter at certain graphically intensive parts. Overall a very enjoyable experience. Match the best possible resolution to this result and you'll have the best possible rendering quality versus resolution, hey you want both of them to be as high as possible.
• When a graphics card is doing 60 FPS on average or higher then you can rest assured that the game will likely play extremely smoothly at every point in the game, turn on every possible in-game IQ setting.
• Over 100 FPS? You have either a MONSTER of graphics card or a very old game.

Gaming test: DiRT - Colin McRae

The Colin McRae games have been entertaining us for almost 10 years and recently Codemasters had taken a break. But now they’re back and what they’ve brought out is simply a stunner as far as I’m concerned. If you hate racers, then keep your suspicions but at least try the demo.

One of the things that really add to that fun is the way that the cars and the racing surface itself incur damage.  You'll start out with a pristine ride that looks like it rolled off the showroom floor moments ago and end with a car that is at the very least caked with dust and dirt. 

The graphics provided by the game's Neon engine are impressive as hell.  Not only do the cars look like their real-life counterparts, the environments look so much like the real world it's frightening.  Grass and shrubs wave in the breeze and react to your car's passing accordingly.  Dust and particles kicked up look just like the real thing - I half expected a ding in my TV screen from a wayward rock, just like you might get in your windshield when driving behind an eighteen wheeler on the freeway.

As amazing as the game looks, all that detail comes at a bit of a price. Performance is not always up to snuff, especially in races with multiple cars on the track. The frame rate is a little choppy during single-car rallies, but once you get a group of other cars racing with you, the game practically turns into stop-motion animation, especially if all the other cars happen to be bunched up with you.

For in-game IQ options we have selected high quality settings, not even Ultra. As you can see this game is seriously rough on a modern GPU. It's almost silly  to look at.

When you are purchasing something in the mid-range market you'll be forced to set and select medium image quality settings in order to be able to play this game. We do have 4xAA AA enabled. We play a Rally World, Single Race at Canberra Park in Australia in a FIAT Grande Punto. Have a look at performance, ouch !

For your information, we moved on and all our tests have been done on Windows Vista Business edition; as we are slowly seeing some DX10 titles.