Benchmark Results: F1 2010
Now for our second game that has alternate DirectX code paths: F1 2010. Codemasters was kind enough to provide us with a copy of the new DiRT 3, but we had some problems getting the command line benchmark to work properly. F1 2010 remains a very attractive title with a DirectX 11 code path, so we’re happy to use it instead. Let’s begin with DX9:
Medium detail looks great in this game, and the A8-3500M can handle it all the way up to 1920x1080. The Core i5-2520M does surprisingly well also, probably because F1 2010 is known to be CPU-bottlenecked. Nevertheless, the A8-3500M APU wins again.
Overall, the discrete Radeon HD 6630M takes another win though, and Dual Graphics has no effect in this DirectX 9 mode.
Now we’ll try DirectX 11 mode to see if Dual Graphics can deliver increased performance:
Not so. In fact, performance dips below the A8-3500M APU. And what’s more, Dual Graphics causes overt flashing anomalies. Once again, it looks like the Dual Graphics driver needs work (Update: AMD supplied a new BIOS that eliminates the flashing anomalies and provides smooth performance in F1 2010 in Dual Graphics mode). Not that we’d consider Dual Graphics a necessity here. Even the A8-3500M achieves 31 FPS on average at 1920x1080 with nothing but it’s on-die GPU.
The Core i5-2520M has no DirectX 11 capability, so we can’t compare it in this scenario.
