Last week AMD released two interesting drivers for their graphics cards. First of all the Catalyst 12.6 WHQL, remember the last WHQL they released were the Catalyst 12.4 from April. Then you have the Catalyst 12.7 Beta, official this time (the ones we tested last were unofficial ones). Therefore we are curious to see how these latest drivers will peform under our game/benchmark parcours using 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
When looking at the performance offered by the Catalyst 12.6
WHQL one can see that it is much like the performance of the Catalyst 12.6
Unofficial Beta from june 4. Only regarding the game Call of Duty: Modern
Warfare 3 and the power consumption we noticed what we can actually call a
difference. That said under Call of Duty the performance of the WHQL driver was
23 % higher than the Beta driver. Under DIRT 2, Dragon Age II and Starcraft 2
there was a little increase of 2 % in performance otherwise you see obsolutely
nothing with a variation of less than 0.6 % in all other games/benchmarks. About
the power consumption, the 12.6 Beta driver managed to keep the system 5 Watts
under what does the 12.6 WHQL, under load it is about 5 Watts too.
Now a
direct comparison between the two lastest WHQL drivers - Catalyst 12.4 and
Catalyst 12.6 - shows some more interesting stuff. A closer look at the synthetic benchmarks shows that
there is a noticeable performance increase in 3DMark 11 and 3DMark Vantage where
the score are respectively 1.32 and 1.17 % higher.
Otherwise there
is almost no difference at all with 1 more point in Unigine Heaven's score and
12 more under TessMark. Shifting the focus to games there you see that the 12.6
WHQL are worth the upgrade where two games benefits from a more than 20 %
improvement. Therefore you will see a 21 % performance improvement under Call of
Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and almost 28 % under The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Looking at other games the 12.6 WHQL are a bit better than the 12.4 WHQL with a
range of 0.7 up to 5 % improvement.
Comparing now the 12.7 Beta (june 25) to the 12.7 Unofficial Beta from june 12 we see the same tendency as with the Catalyst 12.6s but no Call of Duty effect this time. Which means that the performance between the two drivers are almost the same close to three games where the gap was "significant". Indeed, we lost 4 fps in Call of Duty going from 167 fps to 163. Then performance under StarCraft II and Dragon Age II raised by 4 % over the 12.7 Beta from june 12. That said there is nothing more to add as under all other games/benchmarks the variation is lower than 0.5 %. Meanwhile thanks to those few percent more it brings the Catalyst 12.7 Beta from june 25 to the top of our AMD driver charts with a performance index of 130.25.
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 25
(8.981.2.1) is the best AMD driver because it fixes a lot of performance
glitches and also has the best performance ratio. But if you are afraid of the
word "Beta" then go for the Catalyst 12.6 WHQL that is the best WHQL driver from
AMD so far.
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