Grid 2 can give Kepler the first real slap

Forward + lighting technology and Global Illumination are two solutions that require brutal computing power in addition to dazzling graphics. During the Dirt Shutdown, it was the first to prove that NVIDIA’s Kepler architecture doesn’t handle complex calculations very well. Since the Grid 2 is built on the same engine, it shouldn’t come as a surprise accordingly if the GeForce 600 family isn’t brilliant.

It so happened that the German PC Games Hardware received a preliminary version of Grid 2, which it immediately tested with a couple of graphics cards. We’re not disappointed much with the fact that the GeForce GTX 680 is on average close to the speed of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, on the other hand, it now even gets out of the HD 7870. Therefore, the green knight certainly does not deserve praise, as we could buy up to two such Radeon cards for the price.

In the introduction, we have already pointed out what we think lies in Kepler’s stomach. For the GeForce GTX 680, forward + lighting and Global Illumination reduce speed by 39 percent, while for the Raden HD 7870, that number is barely 22%. The solution is therefore obvious, these two image enhancement procedures must be banned, and the green warrior will immediately rise. The only problem is that the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition offers a similar pace as the green cannon even when these two effects are activated, meaning the GeForce GTX 680 can only produce similar speeds with poorer picture quality. 

Of course, the final version of Grid 2 with a Gaming Evolved background may still show improvement, and NVIDIA's drivers section should not be forgotten, however, we don't see much chance that the overall picture would change significantly.

What do we base the former statement on? It’s worth noting the GeForce GTX 570 and Radeon HD 6950, because it shows well that the Ego Engine is mostly at war with Kepler. Because Global Illumination differs from the classic ray-tracing implementation only in that it also takes bouncing light rays into account, LuxMark (perhaps the most popular program for testing ray-tracing) may be a credible foundation in this regard. In the aforementioned application, Kepler plays music so poorly that even Fermi can cause a headache, while GCN-based Radeons are really in their element. After that, it’s pretty much understandable why the Grid 2 has become so machine-intensive, and why it doesn’t have a better friendship with the GeForce GTX 680.