GRID: Autosport

No graphics tests are complete without some input from Codemasters and the EGO engine, which means for this round of testing we point towards GRID: Autosport, the next iteration in the GRID and racing genre. As with our previous racing testing, each update to the engine aims to add in effects, reflections, detail and realism, with Codemasters making ‘authenticity’ a main focal point for this version.

GRID’s benchmark mode is very flexible, and as a result we created a test race using a shortened version of the Red Bull Ring with twelve cars doing two laps. The car is focus starts last and is quite fast, but usually finishes second or third. Both the average and minimum frame rates are recorded.

For this test we used the following settings with our graphics cards:

GRID: Autosport Settings
  Resolution Quality
Low GPU Integrated Graphics 1920x1080 Medium
ASUS R7 240 1GB DDR3
Medium GPU MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB 1920x1080 Maximum
MSI R9 285 Gaming 2G
High GPU ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB 1920x1080 Maximum
MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G

Integrated Graphics

GRID: Autosport on Integrated Graphics GRID: Autosport on Integrated Graphics [Minimum FPS]

The difference between the APUs and Intel CPUs again shows up to a 33-50% difference in frame rates, to the point where at 1080p medium the integrated graphics do not break the minimum 30 FPS barrier. The GPU frequency and L3 cache again shows up the i3-6100 compared to the i3-6300.

Discrete Graphics

GRID: Autosport on ASUS R7 240 DDR3 2GB ($70) GRID: Autosport on ASUS R7 240 DDR3 2GB ($70) [Minimum FPS]

GRID: Autosport on MSI R9 285 Gaming 2GB ($240) GRID: Autosport on MSI R9 285 Gaming 2GB ($240) [Minimum FPS]

GRID: Autosport on MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB ($245) GRID: Autosport on MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB ($245) [Minimum FPS]

GRID: Autosport on MSI R9 290X Gaming LE 4GB ($380) GRID: Autosport on MSI R9 290X Gaming LE 4GB ($380) [Minimum FPS]

GRID: Autosport on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560) GRID: Autosport on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560) [Minimum FPS]

With the discrete GPUs, there are multiple avenues to take with this analysis.

On the low-end cards, the choice of CPU makes little difference in our tests.

On the mid-range and high-end cards, the power of the CPU makes more of an effect with AMD discrete cards than NVIDIA discrete cards, except with the AMD Athlon X4 845 in play. When using an AMD discrete card with a mid-range GPU, the X4 845 plays well enough with the i3 parts for its price, but falls away a bit more on the high-end AMD discrete GPU. With NVIDIA GPUs, the Athlon X4 845 sits at the bottom and the main challengers are the FX parts.

So for EGO engine rules, it would seem to be:

AMD Carrizo CPU + AMD discrete GPU is OK, the lower powered the GPU the better.
AMD FX CPU + NVIDIA discrete GPU is OK
Intel CPU + any discrete GPU works well.

One could attest the differences between the discrete GPU choices to driver implementation, IPC, or how each GPU company focuses in optimizing for each game at hand (frequency vs threads vs caches).

Gaming Comparison: Grand Theft Auto Gaming Comparison: Shadow of Mordor
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  • Ratman6161 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link

    I don't understand your point. Did you note how many of the tests where the i3's (sometimes just the 6320 and sometimes all of them) beat the i5? Also look at certain gaming tests where an i3 with a better graphics card beats an i5 with a lesser graphics card...i.e. if you save $100 on the CPU and put that towords the graphics instead, you sometimes come out ahead overall.

    Finally, I know plenty of people who are just using their PC for web surfing, email, MS Office, etc where they would not notice any difference between an i3-6100 and an i5-6600K other than the fact that it cost almost $100 more. Sometimes good enough is good enough and thats where the i3 comes in.
  • extide - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link

    Yeah, the i3's sometimes beat the i5's because when moving from the top end i3 to the bottom end i5 you lose quite a bit of frequency, but you gain two physical cores. So, if something is very lightly threaded then it may perform better on the i3.
  • beginner99 - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link

    True but for the mentioned usage you can step down to a Pentium or even Celeron and save even more and not notice much of a difference.
  • BillBear - Sunday, August 14, 2016 - link

    I agree. If Android can manage to leverage many small ARM cores for common tasks like web browsing, there is no excuse for Microsoft not being able to manage the same feat on Windows.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/9518/the-mobile-cpu-...
  • xenol - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link

    Please, do more lower-end CPU reviews! This data helps me understand how software and hardware play together more and more.

    To those thinking that it's sad that performance hasn't really increased in the past few years, maybe this is more of a sign that games are becoming efficient. If anything, this means your hardware will go a lot longer than before. Think about it, if the i5-2500K is still a viable CPU, think about how long an i5-6600K will last.
  • Philotech - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link

    I'd love to see the same comparison for the mobile variants of the i3/i5 chips, in particular the 15W variants suitable for ultrabooks and MacBook Pros.
    Looks like for desktops, as a mainstream user there is no need to look beyond the i3. How about mobile? Looking at Intel's ARK database, there aren't that many 15w i3s (one, actually, 6100U), but a few i5s (four).
  • dave_the_nerd - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link

    That seems tough - since they're soldering into the chassis, and different cooling can result in throttling and very different performance numbers even from the same chips. It'd be really hard to make a fair CPU-to-CPU comparison.
  • Philotech - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link

    Hm, you're right probably. Seeing how small the differences between the desktop i3s and i5 is, I'm wondering if it makes any sense at all to judge a laptop or ultrabook by its CPU, in particular taking into account your point, i.e. that probably cooling (and selecting a higher or lower TDP by the manufacturer) makes much more of a difference than the CPU model.
  • extide - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link

    Well, in the mobile chips the segmentation is different. In the desktop world going from i3 to i5 you gain two cores, lose hyper threading, and gain turbo boost.

    In the mobile chips everything has hyper threading. Going from i3 to i5 gains you turbo boost on a mobile chip and that can be pretty significant, because on those really low TDP chips they tend to have a pretty low base speed but the ones that can boost can usually boost up quite a bit. Going to an i7 in the 15w chips add's a bit more clockspeed and you will typically move from 3MB of L3 to 4MB of L3. The best value are the i5's in the mobile world because turbo boost helps a lot, but moving to an i7 with 4MB of L3 doesnt really gain that much performance, and can be pretty costly.

    So, you can't really use these results to judge the differences between mobile i3's and i5's because they are quite different.
  • slickr - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link

    I'm waiting for AMD's Zen CPU's before I upgrade my CPU. I'm running an older I5 3330, but so far nothing is really significantly faster for the same price I bought it at the time(180 euros). Especially in games the difference seems negligible and mostly comes down to GPU.

    So I'm waiting on Zen as my next likely upgrade.

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