Stunning Visuals! Tons of Cars! Crazy Fun Racing!
I have a 21.5-inch iMac, Late 2012, 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB, 1 TB Fusion Drive, running 10.10
This game looks incredible, sounds amazing, and plays like a dream. As with many steering games its best experienced with a wheel or controller/joystick for smooth turning. It has a campaign mode and online multiplayer. The narrators can even speak your name to you. Like previous versions, it comes with a built-in in-game benchmarking feature so I ran a few benchmarks for your comparison. While the game supports many resolutions and graphics options I tested a few standard fullscreen and widescreen resolutions using the included graphics presets. I ran each test twice and as you’d expect the results were usually similar but always different so use these numbers more as a general reference and not exact numbers to expect in every race. I’m showing the minimum and average frames per second (fps) for each test. V-Sync was off.
Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (Widescreen 16:9 Aspect Ratio)
Settings: Automatic: Min~30 Avg~36, Ultra: Min~16 Avg~19, High: Min~21 Avg~33, Medium: Min~32 Avg~41, Low: Min~51 Avg~80, Ultra Low: Min~67 Avg~92
Resolution: 1600 x 900 (Widescreen 16:9 Aspect Ratio)
Settings: Automatic: Min~40 Avg~48, Ultra: Min~35 Avg~42, High: Min~36 Avg~43, Medium: Min~40 Avg~49, Low: Min~49 Avg~88, Ultra Low: Min~69 Avg~103
Resolution: 1344 x 756 (Widescreen 16:9 Aspect Ratio)
Settings: Automatic: Min~42 Avg~51, Ultra: Min~38 Avg~44, High: Min~38 Avg~46, Medium: Min~42 Avg~51, Low: Min~71 Avg~100, Ultra Low: Min~72 Avg~104
Resolution: 1024 x 768 (Fullscreen 4:3 Aspect Ratio)
Settings: Automatic: Min~42 Avg~51, Ultra: Min~40 Avg~47, High: Min~40 Avg~48, Medium: Min~42 Avg~52, Low: Min~61 Avg~90, Ultra Low: Min~65 Avg~100
Resolution: 800 x 600 (Fullscreen 4:3 Aspect Ratio)
Settings: Automatic: Min~45 Avg~58, Ultra: Min~42 Avg~51, High: Min~43 Avg~51, Medium: Min~47 Avg~59, Low: Min~56 Avg~89, Ultra Low: Min~68 Avg~100
Resolution: 640 x 480 (Fullscreen 4:3 Aspect Ratio)
Settings: Automatic: Min~45 Avg~54, Ultra: Min~36 Avg~43, High: Min~37 Avg~45, Medium: Min~43 Avg~54, Low: Min~56 Avg~58, Ultra Low: Min~69 Avg~101
Note that this game has excellent handling of resolutions and aspect ratios meaning you can play at a resolution that is typically used for fullscreen in a widescreen aspect ratio without stretching the image. To clarify, you can fill a 16:9 screen with a 4:3 resolution without warping the image. This would only ever be done in very uncommon situations but it’s possible. It’s all about aspect ratio. You can choose it or let the game auto decide the best aspect ratio for you.
If you see extensive image/screen tearing while playing it might be that your video card is rendering frames faster than your monitor can display them. You can always enable vertical sync and that will lock your framerate to a multiple of your monitor’s refresh rate. This generally means that if your monitor has a refresh rate of 60 Hz (60 drawn frames per second) and your GPU cannot run the game solid at 60 fps it will automatically bump down your framerate to 30 fps or a lower multiple.
Hope this helps!
DaftPuzzler about DiRT 3 Complete Edition
