Date:
Thursday , July 01, 2010
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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AMD ATI Catalyst Driver Performance Comparison

Ever wonder just how much performance has improved with drivers since launch date with AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5800 series? We did after NVIDIA's recent driver launch, so we aimed to find out just how much AMD's drivers have improved. We compare the launch driver, the first WHQL driver, and the current WHQL driver.

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DiRT 2

Dirt 2 may seem a bit odd being mixed in here, but we always saw this title as the HD 5800's flagship application out of the gate so we thought that it might have gotten some special attention along the way. Remember all the special water being rendered and tessellated along with the flag along the crowds, not to mention it made for a great demo in the belly of an aircraft carrier on a 75 foot wide screen!

And from what we see below, we might not be too far from wrong.

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We whipped out this older game to see if improvements exist as well. Keep in mind that this game has also received a patch that has improved game performance since the game launch, so performance is higher than it was by default anyway.

There is clearly a significant performance improvement using the latest drivers versus the older ones. It is consistently faster with Catalyst 10.6.

Splinter Cell Conviction

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Here we really aren’t seeing any improvements at all through the drivers. There isn’t anything else to say here, it seems to perform the same now as it would have nine months ago.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

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Bad Company 2 though shows a consistent performance improvement with the latest drivers compared to launch drivers. It isn’t large here, but we noticed that on our first spawn point in "Zero Dark Thirty" map we used for testing, Catalyst 10.6 was 5 FPS faster than Catalyst 9.10 just standing there. So in-game, having the framerate, for the most part, be up to 5 FPS faster might be noticeable in some cases, certainly when it comes to minimum framerates.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - Adaptive Super Sampling AA

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Here we have enabled AMD’s 4X Adaptive SSAA in the game to see if performance has improved with this antialiasing method. We do see consistently faster performance with Catalyst 10.6 compared to the older drivers. It isn’t anything like what we experienced with the latest NV drivers and Transparency AA performance though, but an improvement is an improvement.

The Bottom Line

We learned a few things while testing the original launch drivers versus the latest drivers on the Radeon HD 5870. Firstly, because 8.66 RC6 and Catalyst 9.10 WHQL are older drivers there are some compatibility problems with some games like Metro 2033. Using the latest drivers will help with bugs and problems like this.

We also learned that the launch driver AMD provided to us, Catalyst 8.66 RC6 to use when the video card was launched was not handicapping the video cards in performance to any major degree. It is also good that the launch driver matches the performance of the first official driver released supporting the HD 5800 series. This means that the driver we tested with on launch told us the true performance of the hardware then, matching the performance of Catalyst 9.10 WHQL that would be the public driver.

One of the concerns about any card launch is that drivers are immature and may not be allowing the full potential of performance with the video card. We always hear this common phrase: "give it some time, and newer drivers will improve performance." Well, here we are nine months later and while performance has generally improved, it isn’t as earth shattering as one would hope though. This is good news in one way, as the driver and performance we showed at launch is still relevant today in some games and it seems AMD came out of the gate swinging with a really solid driver to begin with. On the other hand, it is also kind of disappointing not to see some drastic improvements by now. Of course, there are some improvements, but none allow us to change our gameplay settings or experience compared to the launch drivers. I think game patches, such as those in Aliens vs. Predator and DiRT 2 have done more for performance than drivers alone.

AMD has certainly been busy this year adding features though, and this is one area they can well be commended on. When it comes down to it, performance has not declined since the HD 5800 series, it has only improved, so overall, it is good news.

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