AMD Radeon 6990 Review - F1 2010

F1 2010

F1 (Formula 1) is a new racing title from Codemasters. Like their previous title (DiRT 2), F1 makes extensive usage of DX11 technology with cloth, fluid dynamics and tessellation. The title is much more strenuous on both single screen and Eyefinity, compared to DiRT 2.

At max settings the title hits a CPU cap (with a stock Core i7-920) of ~70fps on a single widescreen, with any pair of 6800 or 6900 series cards in CFX. Single 6900 series cards max out at just under 70fps.

A 2GB card is required for Eyefinity at 3x1920x1080p. 2GB cards in CFX max out at ~45fps, at both 3x1600x900 and 3x1920x1080. 1GB cards are playable at 3x1600x900, with the 6870 crossing 30fps.

I encountered a driver bug during my 5x1-Portrait testing, when running with MSAA. There was a known bug reported by AMD and fixed during the review period, for 3x1-L Eyefinity. However, with any MSAA in 5x1 Eyefinity, the game stutters between single digit fps and 45-50 fps. This renders the game unplayable, and the issue disappears when you turn off MSAA.

Additionally, the HUD is completely broken in 5x1-Portrait. The game only places the HUD on the primary windows display (display ID #1). This means the entire HUD is squished into one display in portrait mode. And, considering that your primary display is probably on the far left, the HUD is completely out of view. This issue is odd, since the HUD works perfect in 5x1-P for DiRT2 and both games were made by Code Masters.

The game hits CPU walls in both widescreen and Eyefinity, and the 6990 is complete overkill. Until the driver issue and HUD issue are fixed, I will be dropping F1 2010 from future benchmarking.

Below is a table that outlines the performance difference between the Radeon HD 6990 and the comparable SKUs. For example, the Radeon HD 6990 provides a 3fps improvement over an Eyefinity6 CFX configuration in 3x1600x900, and that represents a 7% increase over that Eyefinity6 CFX configuration.

Due to the issues with testing 5x1-Portrait, there is no data for that configuration.