Catalyst 10.7 Performance Analysis
Test Configuration & Driver Release Notes
- Intel Core i7 920 reference 2.66 GHz and overclocked to 3.8 GHz); Turbo is off.
- Gigabyte EX58-UD3R (Intel X58 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 16x+16x).
- 6 GB DDR3 PC 1800 Kingston RAM (3×2 GB, tri-channel at PC 1600 speeds; 2×2 GB supplied by Kingston)
- ATi Radeon HD 5870 PCS+ by PowerColor underclocked to reference clocks, 850/1200 MHz; supplied by AMD
- ATi Radeon HD 5870 by Diamond at reference clocks, 850/1200 MHz
- Onboard Realtek Audio
- 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drive
- Thermaltake ToughPowerXT 775 watt power supply and Element G case supplied by Thermaltake
- HP LP 3065 2560×1600 30 inch LCD
Test Configuration – Software
- ATi Catalyst 10-6 and 10-7 (WHQL); highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver, Catalyst AI set to “Standard”
- Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium; very latest updates
- DirectX June 2010.
- All games are patched to their latest versions.
- vsync is off in the control panel and is never set in-game.
- 4xAA enabled in all games (unless specified as 8xAA) and “forced” in Catalyst Control Center for UT3; all in-game settings at “maximum” or “ultra” with 16xAF always applied
- All results show average, minimum and maximum frame rates except as noted.
- Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
- Windows 7, all DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths; DX11 titles under DX11 render paths and DX9c, etc.
The Benchmarks
- Far Cry 2
- Crysis
- F.E.A.R.
- Unreal Tournament 3
- Just Cause 2
- World in Conflict
- Call of Juarez
- Batman: Arkham Asylum
- Left4Dead
- Lost Planet
- Call of Duty 4
- X3:Terran Conflict
- Enemy Territories: Quake Wars
- Serious Sam Second Encounter HD (2010)
- H.A.W.X.
- Battleforge
- Dirt 2
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat
- Resident Evil 5
- Alien versus Predator
- Heaven (Unigine) 2.0
Lets look at some of the release notes from AMD’s .pdf regarding Catalyst 10-7.
Release Notes for Catalyst 10-7
New Features
This section provides information on new features found in this release of the ATI
Radeon™ Display Driver. These include the following:
- ATI Eyefinity – HydraVision enhancements
- Enhanced Pull-down detection
- ATI CrossFireX™ technology – support for rotated displays
- ATI Radeon GPU acceleration of VLC 1.1.1 Media Player
ATI Eyefinity – HydraVision enhancements - Maximizing a window across displays will now take user defined bezel compensation
into account - Automatically adjusts window position when dragging and dropping windows to
ensure title bar visibility - Proper dialog box placement – dialogs do not cross displays, are not hidden behind
bezels, and can be designated to be shown on the users “preferred” display
Enhanced Pull-down detection - The Pull-down detection algorithm has been enhanced for higher visual quality on
certain types of video content - Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series
ATI CrossFireX™ technology – support for rotated displays
This release of ATI Catalyst™ enables end users running supported ATI CrossFireX™ configurations to rotate their displays (single or ATI Eyefinity display configurations) and still enjoy the performance benefits of ATI CrossFireX™ technology
ATI Radeon GPU acceleration of VLC 1.1.1 Media Player
- Enables GPU acceleration of h.264 video content when using the VLC 1.1.1 Media Player – delivering a better user experience by consuming less system resources
- Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 and ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 Series of products
- Requires VLC version 1.1.1 and later
The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst™ 10.7. Start here to download the drivers or to read more about them:
Performance Improvements
The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst™ 10.7:
Borderlands
- Performance increases 3-5% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 and ATI Radeon™ HD5700 series single card and CrossFire™ configurations when anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering is enabled
- Performance increases 3-8% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 single card and CrossFire™ configurations when anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering is enabled
- Performance increases 2-6% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5600 and ATI Radeon™ HD5500 series single card configurations when anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering is enabled
- Performance increases 2-10% on ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 series single card and CrossFire™ configurations when anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering is enabled
Resolved Issues for All Windows Operating Systems
This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst™
Software Suite for Windows. These include:
- “Current Setting” indicator will now appear when “Windows desktop” option is selected in “Catalyst™ Control Center – Basic” for specific CV resolutions
Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System
- This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst™
- Software Suite for Windows 7. These include:
- “Desktop Window Manager has stopped working” error no longer appears after
- driver installation on specific cards
- ATI Stream (CAL) test no longer exits with exception error under CrossFire™ configurations
- Screen no longer turns blank when flashlight is turned on in “The Chronicles of Riddick 2” with Screen Space Ambient Occlusion enabled
- Running Unigine Heaven 2.1 (OpenGL) with “Tessellation” enabled no longer causes
- system to fail
- Player no longer exits abruptly while changing basic quality settings in Catalyst™ Control Center
- Browser no longer fails after repeated system suspend/resume and video playback pauses while viewing YouTube content
We see a new feature with ATI Radeon GPU acceleration of VLC 1.1.1 Media Player and some nicely resolved issues. But we don’t see a lot of performance improvement mentioned except in Borderlands which already plays great on a single HD 5870 with settings maxed out and with even forced AA in CCC. However, we so see that CrossFire should get some nice performance gains from Catalyst 10-7. So let’s head right for the results of our performance testing of Catalyst 10-7 versus 10-6.
Thx yet again
You are welcome. I just updated this Performance analysis with a warning:
Beware of Catalyst 10.7 if you play Borderlands! It appears to develop a severe memory leak that can happen after a few minutes of play. However, you might be able to resume playing with Ctrl+Alt+Del
Also watch out if you are playing Bad Company 2. 10.6 and 10.7 both have had horrible issues with performance (frame rates, screen going black, etc.) On my 2×5970@2560×1600 my framerates were worse on 10.7 than 10.6, although the game did look better. Looks like I am back to 10.5. I have been a loyal ATi user for a LONG time and this is the worst bunch of drivers(the 10 series) that have been released in a LONG time. C’mon AMD I want my BC2 to be pretty again!
v[27]v
Don’t blame the drivers for all your issues. Your case is not the majority of gamers. I have not had any issues playing BC2 at all nor any games. The 10.7 drivers have brought some great performance gains in fact for the majority of people. My system two 5850s CF with a GTS250 dedicated PhysX @ 6048×1080 Eyefinity.
@xDee xDee
What do you chalk it up to be then? There are a ton of people out there that have documented these exact issues. The entire rig I am running off of isn’t exactly on the cheap end of hardware. If 10.5 works (although I don’t have the performance increase) and 10.6 and 10.7 have issues with the screen going black I would have to say its the driver.
http://www.google.com/search?q=10.7+catalyst+bad+company+black+screen&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
clean install of 10.7 had my compy restart in just cause 2 after 30 minutes of play… temps were fine, used drivercleaner in safe mode to wipe out 10.5…
…uuggghhh, going back to 10.5
looking forward to buying nvidia next time around.