GRID 2

The final game in our benchmark suite is also our racing entry, Codemasters’ GRID 2. Codemasters continues to set the bar for graphical fidelity in racing games, and with GRID 2 they’ve gone back to racing on the pavement, bringing to life cities and highways alike. Based on their in-house EGO engine, GRID 2 includes a DirectCompute based advanced lighting system in its highest quality settings, which incurs a significant performance penalty but does a good job of emulating more realistic lighting within the game world.

When it comes to GRID even cranking up the game’s quality settings to maximum hardly does anything to slow down our cards. At 90fps the GTX 780 Ti once again takes the top spot while delivering an extremely high framerate. This ultimately puts the GTX 780 Ti ahead of the 290X by 13%, while also beating the other GK110 cards by a bit more than average at 11% for GTX Titan and 23% for GTX 780.

Otherwise, moving on to 4K and multi-GPU setups, NVIDIA’s limited scaling once more becomes an issue. At 50fps for a single GTX 780 Ti NVIDIA starts off well enough, but we still need a second GPU to get above 60fps. And though GTX 780 Ti SLI will get us there, 290X CF and AMD’s superior scaling will get AMD there with room to spare.

Hitman: Absolution Synthetics
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  • Wreckage - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    The 290X = Bulldozer. Hot, loud, power hungry and unable to compete with an older architecture.

    Kepler is still king even after being out for over a year.
  • trolledboat - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    Hey look, it's a comment from a permanently banned user at this website for trolling, done before someone could of even read the first page.

    Back in reality, very nice card, but sorely overpriced for such a meagre gain over 780. It also is slower than the cheaper 290x in some cases.

    Nvidia needs more price cuts right now. 780 and 780ti are both badly overpriced in the face of 290 and 290x
  • neils58 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    I think Nvidia probably have the right strategy, G-Sync is around the corner and it's a game changer that justifies the premium for their brand - AMD's only answer to it at this time is going crossfire to try and ensure >60FPS at all times for V-Sync. Nvidia are basically offering a single card solution that even with the brand premium and G-sync monitors comes out less expensive than crossfire. 780Ti for 1440p gamers, 780 for for 1920p gamers.
  • Kamus - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    I agree that G-Sync is a gamechanger, but just what do you mean AMD's only answer is crossfire? Mantle is right up there with g-sync in terms of importance. And from the looks of it, a good deal of AAA developers will be supporting Mantle.

    As a user, it kind of sucks, because I'd love to take advantage of both.
    That said, we still don't know just how much performance we'll get by using mantle, and it's only limited to games that support it, as opposed to G-Sync, which will work with every game right out of the box.

    But on the flip side, you need a new monitor for G-Sync, and at least at first, we know it will only be implemented on 120hz TN panels. And not everybody is willing to trade their beautiful looking IPS monitor for a TN monitor, specially since they will retail at $400+ for 23" 1080p.
  • Wreckage - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    Gsync will work with every game past ad present. So far Mantle is only confirmed in one game. That's a huge difference.
  • Basstrip - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    TLDR: When considering Gsync as a competitive advantage, add the cost of a new monitor. When considering Matnle support, think multiplatform and think next-gen consoles having AMD GPUs. Another plus side for NVidia is shadowplay and SHIELD though (but again, added costs if you consider SHIELD).

    Gsync is not such a game changer as you have yet to see both a monitor with Gsync AND its pricing. The fact that I would have to upgrade my monitor and that that Gsync branding will add another few $$$ on the price tag is something you guys have to consider.

    So to consider Gsync as a competitive advantage when considering a card, add the cost of a monitor to that. Perfect for those that are going to upgrade soon but for those that won't, Gsync is moot.

    Mantle on its plus side will be used on consoles and pc (as both PS4 and Xbox One have AMD processors, developpers of games will most probably be using it). You might not care about consoles but they are part of the gaming ecosystem and sadly, we pc users tend to get the shafted by developpers because of consoles. I remember Frankieonpc mentioning he used to play tons of COD back in the COD4 days and said that development tends to have shifted towards consoles so the tuning was a bit more off for pc (paraphrasing slightly).

    I'm in the market for both a new monitor and maybe a new card so I'm a bit on the fence...
  • Wreckage - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    Mantle will not be used on consoles. AMD already confirmed this.
  • althaz - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    Mantle is not used on consoles...because the consoles already have something very similar.
  • Kamus - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    You are right, consoles use their own API for GCN, guess what mantle is used for?
    *spoiler alert* GCN
  • EJS1980 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link

    Mantle is irrefutably NOT coming to consoles, so do your due diligence before trying to make a point. :)

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