Catalyst 10.5 and GeForce 197.75 performance analysis
As part of an ongoing feature for AlienBabelTech, this editor will be comparing the performance of 21 benchmarks with the current monthly Catalyst driver release versus the one from the previous month. Catalyst 10-5 was released at the end of last month and we naturally ask ourselves if there any performance improvements for the new Radeon 5000 series in games.
As part of something new, since we are also benching GTX 480 for an unrelated review, we will give separate performance charts showing the performance changes in the latest WHQL GeForce drivers, 197.75 versus 197.41. We will not directly compare the Radeon to the GeForce performance as difference sets of criteria was used for the benching of each card. Since we are testing performance of Catalyst 10-5 for other articles and reviews, the HD 5870 was mostly benched with 4xAA and the GTX 480 was benched at 8xAA. However, you can see the relative performance change of each driver by looking at the charts.
We are going to test Catalyst 10.4 against Catalyst 10.5 using our current benchmark suite of 20 games plus one synthetic benchmark, Heaven 1.0. We also added Alien versus Predator benchmark and we are now using the full retail version of DIRT2’s DX11 path instead of our earlier DX9c path from the demo version in previous reviews. Our testing platform is Windows 7 64-bit using Core i7 920 at 3.80 GHz, 6 GB DD3, and our video cards are HD 5870 and GTX 480. All of our games are tested at 2560×1600, 1920×1200 and 1680×1050 resolutions and with maxed-out in-game settings plus 4xAA or 8xAA/16xAF and we use DX11/10/10.1 whenever possible.
Let’s get right to the test configuration and the tests.
Doesn’t look like the site gets much love. Anyway, just wanted to know I appreciated these type of articles. Rarely do you get up to date driver performance reviews with so many games on other mainstream sites.
Thanks, Edwin
I am not sure what you mean about ABT not getting much love. We are also going to try and keep this kind of driver analysis up to date and perhaps make it a regular feature here at ABT as I am always benching.
When the new WHQL GeForce drivers come out, I intend to put GTX 480 against HD 5870 and Catalyst 10-6 to see what changes may have taken place since the GTX 480 was first released. In the meantime, I am working on a PowerColor HD 5870 PCS+ review where it is overclocked as far as it can go and we will try to find diminishing returns and the performance limits of its architecture. Stay tuned. There are a lot of good articles and reviews coming from us very soon!
Edwin, we always strive to put up stuff that’s different to the standard fare.
Thanks for the detailed tests!
Could you ad some source engine based game like team fortress 2 or left 4 dead(2) please?
You’re welcome, Thad.
We do feature Source Engine’s original Left4Dead. Perhaps later on we can add L4D 2.
Thanks for the detailed results, very easy and straightforward to understand without having to go through endless pages of graphs. added site to my favourites