Catalyst 13.11 Beta1 vs. 13.11 Beta6 mini-Performance Analysis

AMD released their latest beta yesterday, Catalyst 13.11 Beta6. We are going to check five games that AMD claims improves performance over the last 13.11 Beta1: Battlefield 3, GRID 2, DiRT Showdown, DiRT 3, and Sleeping Dogs.

The 13.11 Beta6 Catalyst adds performance boosts and support for the Radeon R9 290X and R9 290. The driver also works with the rest of the R9 Series, including the R9 280X pictured above; the R7 models, and the Radeon HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 cards.  Feature highlights are here:

Always start here to download the latest AMD drivers.  And make sure to go here for the latest betas.  Games that we test are in bold.

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta6 Driver for Windows

• Includes all Feature Highlights of AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta
• Includes support for the new products: AMD Radeon R9 290X &
• AMD Radeon R9 290
• Performance improvements
• Batman: Arkham Origins – improves performance up to 35% with MSAA 8x enabled
• Total War: Rome 2 – improves performance up to 10%
• Battlefield 3 – improves performance up to 10%
• GRID 2 – improves performance up to 8.5%
• DiRT Showdown – improves performance up to 10%
• Formula 1 2013 – improves performance up to 8%
• DiRT 3 – improves performance up to 7%
• Sleeping Dogs – improves performance up to 5%
• Automatic AMD Eyefinity Configuration
• Automatic “plug and play” configuration of supported Ultra HD/4K tiled displays

New Gaming Evolved App

As a new feature, AMD is offering a new AMD Evolved app powered by Raptr which optimizes game settings much like the GeForce Experience does for Nvidia users.  If you do not wish to experience this new feature, you must check “custom” or it will be installed by default with the “Express” installation.You must deselect AMD Gaming Evolved App to opt out of the program under a Custom installation.  However, give it a try especially if you don’t like to change and tweak game settings for every game.

Catalyst 13.11 Beta1 versus Beta6 – Summary Chart

Here are the five games plus 3 synthetics that we benchmarked with our new VisionTek R9 280X using Catalyst 13.11 Beta1 versus Beta6.

AMD has made good on the promised improvements in Beta6 even over Beta1, nevermind over the last WHQL, Catalyst 13.9 which we evaluated for you on Friday.  We would recommend upgrading to the very latest beta if you are looking for performance increases.  Unfortunately, PowerTune cannot be set in Beta6, so our evaluation of the VisionTek 280X will be tested with Beta1.  Look for that evaluation on Monday, after we publish an evaluation of a $40 Genius gaming keyboard, KB-G265.

In the meantime, stay connected with everything new in tech on ABT forum.  Happy gaming!