Race Driver: GRID

Publisher: Codemasters

Race Driver: GRID is one of the best racing games to grace the PC in some time, striking a fine balance between automotive simulation and arcade throttle-fest which has resulted in an enormously entertaining game. Players can choose from racing tuned saloons through city streets, through to driving Lamborghinis around Le Mans, with all cars displaying a highly detailed damage model.

GRID runs on a modified version of Codemasters' own in house Neon engine, rechristened Ego for GRID. This will also be the engine used in the highly anticipated Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising, so hopefully GRID will give us a good indication of how hardware will perform in this future title too. Despite only supporting DirectX 9.0c, GRID features a lot of high level graphical features, including motion blur, fantastic smoke effects, dynamic track side details and thousands of fully 3D spectators.

To test performance in GRID, we raced a lap of the "Circuito Di Milano B" track in the RADT Nissan Skyline Z-tune, starting from the back of the grid to ensure as many cars on screen for as long as possible. We chose the Milan circuit due to the large amount of dynamic track side details like flags and spectators visible from the track, and for the close proximity of track side objects.

However, GRID does not support anisotropic filtering in game, so we had to force this to 16x using the Forceware and Catalyst drivers. We captured the average and minimum frame rates during the lap, and the results you see below are indicative of around one minute and forty seconds of gameplay (average lap time) per setting.

AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB Race Driver: GRID

Race Driver: GRID

1680x1050 4xAA 16xAF, DX9, Maximum Detail

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 TurboX
  • Powercolor Radeon HD 4850 PCS+
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
  • ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2
  • BFG Tech GeForce GTX 260 OCX Maxcore
  • Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMP!
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+
  • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
    • 84.3
    • 66.0
    • 83.0
    • 66.0
    • 80.9
    • 63.0
    • 79.0
    • 66.0
    • 78.8
    • 63.0
    • 75.0
    • 57.0
    • 74.0
    • 54.0
    • 73.8
    • 63.0
    • 72.0
    • 55.0
    • 71.1
    • 55.0
    • 69.5
    • 54.0
    • 66.1
    • 51.0
    • 58.0
    • 47.0
    • 50.8
    • 38.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Race Driver: GRID

1920x1200 4xAA 16xAF, DX9, Maximum Detail

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 TurboX
  • Powercolor Radeon HD 4850 PCS+
  • ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850
  • BFG Tech GeForce GTX 260 OCX Maxcore
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
  • Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMP!
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+
  • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
    • 78.5
    • 63.0
    • 78.4
    • 62.0
    • 77.9
    • 65.0
    • 76.7
    • 57.0
    • 71.6
    • 54.0
    • 70.7
    • 55.0
    • 68.7
    • 53.0
    • 65.9
    • 52.0
    • 65.7
    • 52.0
    • 62.0
    • 47.0
    • 59.6
    • 46.0
    • 58.6
    • 46.0
    • 49.9
    • 39.0
    • 38.9
    • 31.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Race Driver: GRID

2560x1600 0xAA 16xAF, DX9, Maximum Detail

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2
  • HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 TurboX
  • Powercolor Radeon HD 4850 PCS+
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
  • BFG Tech GeForce GTX 260 OCX Maxcore
  • Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMP!
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+
  • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
    • 80.8
    • 50.0
    • 67.9
    • 52.0
    • 64.0
    • 51.0
    • 57.3
    • 30.0
    • 57.2
    • 43.0
    • 53.9
    • 42.0
    • 53.7
    • 39.0
    • 52.6
    • 43.0
    • 51.1
    • 39.0
    • 51.0
    • 40.0
    • 49.3
    • 38.0
    • 45.0
    • 36.0
    • 44.7
    • 34.0
    • 36.0
    • 28.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Race Driver: GRID

2560x1600 2xAA 16xAF, DX9, Maximum Detail

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
  • HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 TurboX
  • BFG Tech GeForce GTX 260 OCX Maxcore
  • Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMP!
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+
  • ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2
  • Powercolor Radeon HD 4850 PCS+
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+
  • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
    • 73.8
    • 47.0
    • 66.1
    • 48.0
    • 60.6
    • 46.0
    • 51.5
    • 39.0
    • 50.0
    • 38.0
    • 49.6
    • 37.0
    • 44.0
    • 35.0
    • 43.4
    • 34.0
    • 42.9
    • 12.0
    • 42.2
    • 36.0
    • 41.2
    • 32.0
    • 40.2
    • 29.0
    • 27.1
    • 20.0
    • 9.2
    • 5.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

It's not until we get to 2,560 x 1,600 that we see some performance differences between the Radeon HD 4870 512MB and 1GB models in GRID and when we do, the differences are reasonable and increase as anti-aliasing is turned on. Without AA enabled, the performance difference equates to about six percent and then with 2xAA the improvement increases to approximately nine percent.
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