Gigabyte GeForce GTX 260 Super Overclock

If you primarily play games on a console, your choices for quality racing games are plenty. On the PC, that’s not so much the case. While there are a good number, there aren’t enough for a given type of racing game, from sim, to arcade. So when Race Driver: GRID first saw its release, many gamers were excited, and for good reason. It’s not a sim in the truest sense of the word, but it’s certainly not arcade, either. It’s somewhere in between.

The game happens to be great fun, though, and similar to console games like Project Gotham Racing, you need a lot of skill to succeed at the game’s default difficulty level. And like most great racing games, GRID happens to look absolutely stellar, and each of the game’s locations look very similar to their real-world counterparts. All in all, no racing fan should ignore this one.

Manual Run-through: For our testing here, we choose the city where both Snoop Dogg and Sublime hit their fame, the LBC, also known as Long Beach City. We choose this level because it’s not overly difficult, and also because it’s simply nice to look at. Our run consists of an entire 2-lap race, with the cars behind us for almost the entire race.

GRID is the first game in our line-up where the GTX 275 managed to pull ahead in performance – except at 2560×1600, where the Super Overclock regained its crown. ATI’s HD 4890, costing roughly the same as the Super Overclock, put both cards to shame, however.

If the GTX 275 could talk, it would no doubt whine that the GTX 260 Super Overclock managed to beat it out by a meager 0.28 FPS at 2560×1600, but it is what it is. As long as you have a decent GPU, max detail settings are fine in this game, and the Super Overclock is no exception… it runs flawlessly at 2560×1600.