ATi Catalyst 9.1 Performance Review
Introduction
Catalyst 9.1 is the first driver to be released by ATi in 2009. Aside from adding OpenGL 3.0 support, it also contains the usual plethora of fixes. The last ATi driver I extensively tested was 8.10 and since I’ll use it as a comparison to 9.1, any performance improvements in 8.12 and 8.11 will be relevant.
ATi claims the following performance gains with 8.12:
- 3DMark Vantage DX10 – performance gains of up to 5% for Single and Crossfire mode. Performance gains were noticed on HD46xx, HD4550 and HD4350.
- Call of Duty: World at War DX9 – performance gains of up to 21% for Single and Crossfire mode. Performance gains were noticed on all Radeon HD48xx.
- Crysis DX10 – performance gains of up to 25% for Single and Crossfire mode. Performance gains were noticed on all Radeon HD4xxx.
- Crysis Warhead DX10 – performance gains of up to 13% for Single card mode and up to 16% for Crossfire mode. Performance gains were noticed on all Radeon HD4xxx.
- Devil May Cry 4 DX10– performance gains of up to 6% for Single and Crossfire mode. Performance gains were noticed on all Radeon HD4xxx and HD38xx.
- Fallout 3 – performance gains of up to 15% for Single card mode.
- Far Cry 2 DX10 – performance gains of up to 10% for Single card mode and up to 57% in Crossfire mode. Performance gains were noticed on all Radeon HD4xxx and HD38xx.
- FEAR DX9 – performance gains of up to 6% for Single and Crossfire mode. Performance gains were noticed on Radeon HD4870X2 and HD4870.
- Hellgate: London DX10 – performance gains of up to 6% for Single card mode and up to 10% for Crossfire mode. Performance gains were noticed on all Radeon HD4xxx.
- Left 4 Dead DX9– performance gains of up to 10% for Single card mode and up to 5% for Crossfire mode. Performance gains were noticed on all Radeon HD4870 series.
- Lost Planet Colonies DX10 – performance gains of up to 10% for Single and Crossfire mode. Performance gains were noticed on all Radeon HD4xxx and HD38xx.
- Prey OGL – performance gains of up to 15% for Crossfire mode. Performance gains were noticed on Radeon HD4870 1GB products, HD46xx, HD45xx.
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky – performance gains of up to 10% for Crossfire mode. Performance gains were noticed on all Radeon HD4xxx and HD38xx.
- Unreal Tournament 3 DX9 – performance gains of up to 18% for Single card mode and up to 15% in Crossfire mode, especially in cases where AA is enabled. Performance gains were noticed on all Radeon HD4xxx and HD38xx.
With 8.11, they claim the following:
- FarCry 2 – performance gains of 3 to 10% for Single card mode and 8 to 14% in Crossfire mode, with some specific configurations showing even greater improvements. Performance gains were noticed on all Radeon HD4xxx and Radeon HD3xxx products.
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky – performance gains of 6 to 18% in single card settings and 10 to 30% in CrossfireX mode. Performance gains were noticed on all Radeon HD4xxx and Radeon HD3xxx products.
I’m about to add several new titles to my benchmarking suite, but for now I’ll stick to the same tests I ran with nVidia’s Big Bang driver. The 8.10 results will be recycled from my GTX260+ vs 4850 comparison, and the system setup and configuration will be identical. I’ll benchmark my single Radeon 4850 with Catalyst 9.1 and compare the results to those garnered from 8.10.
I’m particularly looking forward to testing Fear and Prey because I like it when hardware vendors optimize drivers for older games, as it shows they care about legacy gaming.
The color-coding in the text charts is as follows: orange means 8.10 wins while yellow means Catalyst 9.1 wins.
Really appreciate the driver comparisons you do. It makes me wonder where the vendors get their evidence concerning the % increases they claim under various titles.
Hey man, glad to see you join us.
The vendors probably get their figures from very specific scenarios (e.g. 1680×1050 with 4xAA), but it’s sometimes still possible to see lesser performance gains in other situations.