With all do respect, I think this is boiling down to you not fully understanding how the grid properties work in the Front, Side, and Top, view panels. Now I could very well be wrong about it, but I tried to do it on my desktop PC and I could not get the grid in front of my image plain. The best I could do was reduce the opacity of the plain to see the grid.

About the ATI video card theory. You can use a 128-250 mb ATI card, and still make some really good CG animation. I cant say they are the best and I cant say they are the worst, But I do believe ( and I could be wrong ) that your ATI video card has nothing to with your grid properties not working the way you want.

Again, I mean no dissrespect to you.