GRID Legends has been out for a few weeks now and we already have a review and gameplay video available for the PlayStation 5 version of the game, but I wanted to take a quick look at the PC version to see if a powerful rig could push this game to new levels of excellence. For the most part, this will be a technical review and comparison to the PS5. If you want to know more about actual gameplay and content specifics, then I encourage you to read Travis’ comprehensive coverage of the PS5 game. As you are about to find out, there isn’t much difference.
For this review I was playing on an i9-9900 with 16mb RAM, an EVGA RTX3080 card, and a Samsung 860 Pro 1TB drive; a system that cost $3200 when bought back in early 2019 and later upgraded with the $800 video card in November of 2020. I only mention price because we’re comparing to a console that costs $400-500 assuming you can find one. Considering the pros and cons of both formats it is impressive what Sony can do for a sixth of the price. Obviously, you can play GRID Legends on lesser, more affordable PC’s, but your experience will scale accordingly.
Sadly, GRID Legends is not a current gen exclusive on console; good news for those still stuck with their PS4 and Xbox One consoles, but bad news for those looking for a generational leap in quality. Even stacking up against other racing games like Forza Horizon 5, Gran Turismo 7, and even Codemasters own DIRT 5, this game does seem a bit stuck in time. You’ll likely figure that out if you look at the Steam recommended specs which suggest a GTX1080 or RX590 card. Any dreams of fancy ray-traced reflections or shadows are dashed.
Occupying 50+ GB of space on the PC, GRID Legends does tip the scales in its favor in some areas while faltering in others and the first noticeable difference is in load times. Everything on the PC takes much longer to load from the opening splash screens to the individual race events once you are finally in the game. My SSD in the PC is fast but no comparison for the M.2 NVMe drive on the PS5. Nothing on the PS5 takes longer than five second to load while the PC can take 10-20 seconds or more. An early example is the epilepsy warning that appears when the game is doing its initial load; 24 seconds on PC and 3 seconds on PS5. Playing on the PS5 is a fast and unencumbered experience, while the PC will have you tapping your gas pedal during lengthy loads.
Speaking of gas pedals, the PC version supports the same variety of racing wheel setups; likely more since the PS5 is kind of picky, but my aging G27 wheel worked just fine. Using my Xbox Elite II controller offered up a more similar experience to playing on the PS5, and I did enjoy being able to customize my four paddles to act as paddle shifters and issuing teammate orders. GRID Legends does offer up some rumble effects; not to be confused with actual force feedback. This gives you a limited feeling of connection to the track, but the PS5 seemed to do a better job with more subtle effects in both the controller and the triggers.
Moving on to graphics, the PS5 is as basic as it gets with three options for HDR toggle, Brightness adjust, and a 120 Hz toggle. Meanwhile, on the PC, we get two pages of options; the Basic page which looks a lot like the PS5, and the Advanced page that lets you tweak a dozen plus variables to get this game running smoothly on a variety of PC’s. My 3080 card was able to run the game fully maxed out at 4K with no issues, but there is one additional setting (just off the bottom of the screenshot) for Dynamic Resolution where you can choose between OFF/30/60 and the game will change resolution on the fly to maintain your desired framerate. Interestingly enough I could not see any real visual difference between the PS5 and the PC running fully maxed out. You will need to make sure you have HDR enabled in Windows prior to launching the game for that option to be available on PC.
The PS5 version of the game does have momentary framerate dips in certain situations such as shiny rain-soaked pavement with lots of cars in view, while the PC is rock-solid at 60fps in over seven hours of testing. Subtleties such as trackside details, crowds, shadows and reflections are nearly identical between systems. Global illumination is outstanding with some blinding sunlight at certain times of day, while reflections are handled with standard cube maps for the cars and screen space reflections (SSR) for wet pavement. It was interesting that you do get dynamic water droplets on any of the camera views while racing but the water droplets on the hood of the car are baked into the texture and don’t change.
The PC version of GRID Legends does offer support for DTS:X as well as Dolby Atmos if you have the hardware and software driver to support it. Overall, the sound design and presentation on the PC was nearly identical to the PS5 and Atmos height effect were only audible when driving under an overpass with cars above you. The PC version does have the same issue Travis mentioned on the PS5 where there is a lot of commentary that is being subtitled during the race but that you can never hear.
If you already have a quality PC build then the PC version might seem the obvious choice for brute-forcing your way to maximum quality at 4K resolution, but if you happen to be in the position to choose between PS5 and PC you might want to take into consideration the added loading times on the PC, and then you have the more nuanced controls on the DualSense, assuming you won’t be using a racing wheel.
Bottom line: you really have to pick the game apart to find any substantial differences, and the fact that GRID Legends looks and runs on a $500 console just as good as a $4000 PC is a testament to Sony’s hardware and Codemasters ability to make a last-gen game look nearly as good as anything else competing for your racing dollar. With a great mix of Story mode and Career mode challenges, GRID Legends is one of my favorite racing games of the year, and I encourage any and all race fans to check it out, and don’t forget to read our full game review for more content coverage and check out our PS5 gameplay video to see the game in action.
MORE SCREENS
