Performance Analysis
At this time, I'd like to turn it over to the one and only, you know him, you love him, Mr. Jarred Walton. He's the hardware guru, I'm the game guru. He's the DJ, I'm the . . ok, ok!
<Enter Jarred>
We'll wrap things up with a short discussion of performance followed by our conclusions. Considering how nice the game looks, performance is really quite good. Naturally, if you have a PC that's capable of running Crysis, you should experience no problems whatsoever in maxing out all of the detail settings. Even last year's high-end hardware (which is now available for less than $200) is fully capable of providing a good gaming experience at 1920x1200 with 4xAA. Frame rates might periodically dip down into the mid-20s, but average frame rates should have no difficulty staying above 40 FPS.
For those that prefer concrete numbers, Eddie used FRAPS to test performance over the first 20 seconds into one of the races. The section used for the benchmark is at the beginning of the race, so there are lots of vehicles on screen which may cause frame rates to be be slightly lower than what you will see in other areas of the game. The test system is Eddie's rig which consists of an overclocked Core 2 Duo E6300 (2.80GHz, 14x200), 4GB Corsair XMS2 PC6400 RAM, an ASUS P5B motherboard, and an EVGA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB video card. For those of you who read his recent blog post, the 7900 GTO is no more. He does still have the Rosewill PSU though! While his rig specs are by no means earth shattering, his has achieved some pretty nice results on maximum settings. Check em out.
Performance with ATI Radeon HD 3870 was generally similar, with lower performance once anti-aliasing was enabled. We also looked at performance with GRID using multiple graphics chips in our Radeon HD 4870X2 preview. Everything performs about where you would expect for cutting-edge hardware, except that we experienced drastic performance drops at 2560x1600 on most of the GPUs (the 4870X2 being one exception). Updated drivers have addressed most of our performance concerns, and you will definitely want to run the latest drivers if you are using any dual-GPU setup.
As usual, users with lower end hardware (i.e. GeForce 8600/9500 GT or Radeon HD 2600/3650 or lower) will definitely need to step down the resolution and/or detail settings in order to achieve acceptable frame rates. Ultra quality settings are viable for higher end hardware, but you will need to drop to medium detail or even low detail for lesser graphics chips. Needless to say, the game doesn't impress nearly as much at medium or low detail, so you might be better off putting some money towards an upgraded GPU first if you fall into this category of users. Lucky for us, you can now get some serious graphics hardware like the Radeon HD 4850 for only $175, or you can pick up an 8800 GT like Eddie did for a measley $110 after mail in rebate.
<Enter Eddie>
Thank you, Jared! I'm still waiting on that rebate, by the way.
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honolululu - Friday, August 8, 2008 - link
Gotcha. I don't have any problems with the steering range of action, but damned if I don't have to hold myself back with that throttle.I have noticed that it seems floored when the throttle is only about 70% applied, and if you increase deadzone that just decreases the range of action.
Next patch maybe. The saturation levels for steering and gas should not default to 100% me thinks. It says "Decrese saturation if you feel the steering is not sensitive enough."
Well where do we go if it's too sensitive!
I can't get enough though. Love that Demolition Derby.
flobo - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
Good game, they only forgot the driving part. Not the car is steering, but the landscape is turning before your eyes, suggesting speed.Physics? Still pivot after all this years.I wonder if the critic ever played a serious driving game. Next time better give space to Iracing, not this childish stuff.JarredWalton - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
Lots of people enjoy games for gaming's sake, not because they are a perfect reconstruction of real life. I will readily agree that the physics and driving model of GRID are not realistic in terms of the hardcore sim crowd, and we said as much. Of course, they're also not as unrealistic as most arcade racers. But the bottom line is: do we think the game is fun? Yes, we do.I don't think I personally would enjoy the "serious" racing games as much as this "childish stuff". Then again, I've spent a lot more time - and got a lot more enjoyment - out of Mass Effect than from GRID, which is why I confined most of my comments to the benchmarking and performance section. (Yeah, Eddie didn't write that page, though he did run the tests for the two graphs.)
dare2savefreedom - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
recommended racing wheel:logitech g25
FTW
HDBanger - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
I race alot of sims on pc, and Ive raced most arcade racers also, GRID is 100% arcade, and it has so many bugs, I had to wear misquito repellent when I raced! I finished the single player game in 3 days, and the multiplayer is atrocious! Huge lag, all kinds of cheats, just pure BS online. Hot lapping was the only thing to do after single player, I had about 52 world record laps at one point, then I went back to real racing (gtr2, rfactor). Codemasters should be renamed CodeDisasters, they have alienated their whole sim base.schwinn8 - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
... but it's "brake" not "break". I don't know why so many people make that mistake?MrBlastman - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
It is a shame the demo doesn't support Track IR.I hear the full game does now via a patch. Has anyone tried it? Racing games (or any type of sim for that matter) are impossible to play properly without Track IR.
n00bxqb - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
I got this free w/ my Radeon HD 4870 and I must say I'm thoroughly impressed with the game itself; it's fun, immersive, and the graphics are quite impressive (though I wish it supported 24x CFAA). Physics are more realistic than DiRT, but it still feels geared more towards arcade-style handling than realism. More car choices would've been nice as well, but now I'm just starting to nitpick :PMy only real complaint is the DRM. Half the time the game doesn't even launch (original disc), it gives some random SecuROM error code (with a link that only takes you to SecuROM's homepage; not a page that explains what the error code means). I always try to rip a disc image to my hard drive with any game I own so I can play w/o having to fish out the disc, but that's a no-go, even w/ YASU and other anti-SecuROM utilities. It's not a huge deal as the game doesn't seem to load anything off the disc during the actual game, but it's a pain to have to track it down and find it when I want to play it. On the plus side, it's offered through Steam, meaning no DVD.
HDBanger - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
The Reloaded EXE works with any version of Grid, and it works better than Codemasters EXE with less crashes and graphical glitches. Also, it works online just fine, Codemasters didnt do anything to thwart pirates whatsoever. One of the reasons the online is so atrocious.Omega215D - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
I was debating whether to get this game for the PS3($60) or PC ($40) but I heard there were many bugs for the PC version so I wasn't sure if I should pick this one up. The cool thing about this game is that it is more action packed than Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.Now I have something to keep me occupied till GTA IV for PC in November (hopefully).