We found out that there were 2 different drivers from june 12 that popped out on the web. The first ones we tested were the Catalyst 12.x Unofficial Beta labeled 9.000.0 on now comes the Catalyst 12.7 Beta version 8.981.2. We were a bit disappointed by the 9.000.0 even if there had the best performance ratio a glitch in performance was present under Dragon Age II. Are the 12.7 Beta better ? Will there be the same performance glitch or even more ? Let's see which is da best driver for the Radeon HD 7970!Introduction
Find all the benchmarks/games results on the following pages.
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Test Setup
Hardware
| Mainboard |
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| CPUs |
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| Memory |
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| Graphic Cards (Driver) |
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| Drivers |
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| HDD |
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| PSU |
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Benchmarks and Games Settings
Futuremark
- 3DMark 11
(1.0.3)
- GPU Test - Performance Preset
- 3DMark Vantage (1.1.0)
- GPU Test - Performance Preset
Unigine Heaven DX11 Benchmark
| Version | 3.0 |
| API | DirectX 11 |
| Tessellation | Extreme |
| Shaders | High |
| Anisotropy | 16x |
| Stereo 3D | Disabled |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
Geeks3D TessMark
| Version | 0.3.0 |
| Map Set | Set 4 (2048 x 204 |
| Tesselation | Insane (x64) |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x |
| Tessellation | High |
| Duration | 60000 (ms) |
Geeks3D FurMark (Burn-in test)
| Version | 1.10.0 |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x MSAA |
Alien vs Predator DX11 Benchmark
| Texture Quality | Very High |
| Shadow Quality | High |
| Hardware Tesselation | Yes |
| Advance Shadow Sampling | Yes |
| Full Srceen Anti-Aliasing Samples | 4x |
| Anisotropic Filtering | 16x |
| SSAO | On |
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
Batman: Arkham City Integrated Benchmark
| FullScreen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| V Sync | No |
| Anti-Aliasing | 8x MSAA |
| Stereoscopic 3D Status | No |
| DirectX 11 Features | MVSS And HBAO |
| DirectX 11 Tesselation | High |
| Detail Level | Extreme |
| Dynamic Shadow | Yes |
| Motion Blur | Yes |
| Distortion | Yes |
| Lens Flares | Yes |
| Light Shafts | Yes |
| Reflections | Yes |
| Ambient Occlusion | Yes |
| Hardware Accelerated PhysX | Off |
Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| FullScreen | On |
| Vertical Sync | Off |
| Field of view | 70 |
| Motion Blur Amount | Max |
| Graphics Quality | Ultra |
BattleField 3 (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Aspect Ratio | Wide 16:9 |
| Anti-Aliasing | 4x |
| Screen Refresh Rate | 60 Hz |
| Sync Every Frame | No |
| Shadows | Yes |
| Specular Map | Yes |
| Depth Of Field | Yes |
| Screen Space Ambient Occlusion | High Quality |
| Soften Smoke Edges | Yes |
| Bullet Impacts | Yes |
| Image Quality | Ultra |
Crysis 2 DX11 + HiRes Texture Pack Benchmark
| Quality | Ultra |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-Aliasing | 4x |
| Map | Central Park/Adrenaline |
| Runs | 1 |
| API | DirectX 11 |
| Edge AA | Edge AA |
| Hi-Res Textures | On |
DIRT 2 Integrated Benchmark
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Refresh Rate | 60 |
| MultiSampling | 8x MSAA |
| VSync | Off |
| Aspect Ration | 16:9 |
| Details | Ultra Preset |
Dragon Age II (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Full Screen Mode | Yes |
| Renderer | DirectX 11 |
| Vertical Sync | no |
| Graphics Detail | Very High |
| Anti-Aliasing | 8x |
| Anisotropic Filtering | 16x |
| Screen Space Ambient Occlusion | Yes |
| Diffusion Depth of Field | Yes |
| High Quality Blur | Yes |
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Aspect Ratio | Wide 16:9 |
| Anti-Aliasing | 8x |
| Anisotropic-Filtering | 16x |
| Details | Ultra |
| Vertical Sync | Disabled |
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat Benchmark
| Preset | Ultra |
| Renderer | Enhan. full dyn. lighting (DX11) |
| Video Mode | 1920 x 1080 |
| MSAA | 4x |
| MSAA for A-tested objects | DX10.0 Style [Standard] |
| SSAO Mode | HDAO |
| SSAO Quality | High |
| Use DX10.1 | No |
| Enable Tesselation | Yes |
| Contact Hardening Shadows | Yes |
StarCraft II (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Display Mode | Fullscreen |
| Refresh Rate | Default |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Vertical Sync | No |
| Texture Quality | Ultra |
| Graphics Quality | Ultra |
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3DMark 11
3DMark Vantage
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Unigine Heaven
TessMark
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Alien vs Predator
Batman: Arkham City
DIRT 2
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Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
BattleField 3
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Crysis 2
Dragon Age 2
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
StarCarft 2
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Power Consumption
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Benchmark Summary
Synthetic Benchmarks
Games
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Performance Index
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Conclusion
A direct comparison between driver version 11.12 and 12.7 Beta (8.981.2) shows some really drastic improvements. Installing the latest drivers results in quite a lot more performance especially regarding modern DirectX 11 games. But if you look at the latest WHQL 12.4 driver versus the latest 12.7 Beta there is a smaller improvement in games on average. A closer look at the synthetic benchmarks shows that there is a noticeable performance increase in 3DMark 11 where the score is 1.5 % higher. Otherwise there is almost no difference at all. But still it's good to know for overclockers, that the latest drivers can help increase benchmarking performance by a small margin. Concerning TessMark we saw a 2.5 times increase when we compare driver version 12.2 and newer to version 11.12, which also explains why our performance ratio regarding the synthetic 3D benchmarks shows an increase of 46 percent with the latest drivers. AMD has made major improvements concerning tessellation compared to the first drivers that supported the Radeon HD 7970 and also fixed the bug occuring when benchmarking TessMark using Insane mode.
Shifting the focus to games there is also a noticeable increase in performance. In our performance rating we see an average increase of almost 23 percent compared to the first retail drivers and 8.2 percent compared to the Catalyst 12.4. Going from Catalyst 12.4 to 12.7 Beta (8.981.2) you will see an improvement especially in Alien vs Predator, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City, DIRT 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and finally Crysis 2. For DIRT 2 and BattleField 3 we saw a 3 % improvement in performance which is not much but good to have anyway. For Alien vs Predator it's a bit more with 4.6 %. Now comes the "big" numbers with a gain of 7.6 % under Batman: Arkham City and 9 % for Crysis 2. Regarding Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim there is no less than respectively 25 and 38 percent gain in performance which tell us that there were some bugs under those games that were holding the performance back and now are fixed. The looser here is Dragon Age II which unfortunately loses 3 % but anyway seen the gain you have on other games we see no way to not use this driver just because it is performing worse by 3 % under one game.
There were two drivers released on june 12 which are the one we tested here labeled 8.981.2 and the one we tested previously named 9.00.0. This 9.00.0 beta disapointed us because they killed the performance under Dragon Age II by 34 % coming from 51 fps (Catalyst 12.4) to 37 fps. Luckily this 8.981.2 doesn't have this problem and are also fixing a performance problem under Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 as we saw an improvement of 20 % we only noticed once using the Catalyst 12.3.
Keeping your drivers up-to-date
is really important if you're a gamer because you benefit not only from better
performance but also from increased energy efficiency. This Catalyst driver 12.7 Beta from June 12
(8.981.2) is the best AMD driver because it fixes a lot of performance glitches
and also have the best performance ratio.
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