Catalyst 11.11 Performance Analysis – HD 6000, 5000 & 4000 series

Benchmarks & Conclusion

The HD 6970/CrossFire are tested at higher settings and resolutions generally than the midrange HD 6770 and older generation HD 4870, as noted on the charts. All of our games are tested at two of these three resolutions: 2560×1600, 1920×1080, 1680×1050, with 16xAF, and we use DX11/10/10.1 whenever possible with an emphasis on DX11 games.

We are also going to evaluate our DX10.1 HD 4870-1GB at the same settings we test HD 6770/5770.  However, since the HD 4000 series cannot run DX11, we will drop down to DX10.1 or 10 when possible, noting that some tests are DX11-only.  Here are the results of our twenty-five benchmarks – twenty-two games and three synthetics – compared between Catalyst 11.11 and 11.10

Results are measured in frames per second (fps) for games and “wins”marked in bold between 11.10 and 11.11; if there is a tie, both results will be in bold type.  Vantage and 3DMark 11 are measured by “points” (and the HD 4870’s Vantage score is 11163 – there is no decimal point).

We note very little performance improvement over Catalyst 11.10 with Catalyst 11.11 in most games. Much of what we see, appear to be fixes and refinements.  We we unable to complete benching for Crysis 2 as we reached our activation limit and will have to contact EA.  Next month, we will add Battlefield 3 and replace Left 4 Dead with Left 4 Dead 2 in our benchmark suite.

Do not forget to download and install the Catalyst Application Profiles for multi-GPU if applicable to your PC; they are downloaded in addition to Catalyst 11.11 from the same AMD support page.

To sum it up, we would recommend upgrading to Catalyst 11.1 because there are are a few advantages, and the pluses that we found nearly equal the few negatives. We also feel that it makes reasonable sense to generally use the latest WHQL drivers.

We will be back later this month to compare performance of Catalyst 11.12 versus 11.11. Perhaps we can also cover the new GeForce WHQLs when they are also released.  In the meantime, we have a Thermaltake MEKA compact gaming keyboard due this weekend.   Happy gaming!

Please join us in our Forums

Become a Fan on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

For the latest updates from ABT, please join our RSS News Feed

Join our Distributed Computing teams

• Folding@Home – Team AlienBabelTech – 164304
• SETI@Home – Team AlienBabelTech – 138705
• World Community Grid – Team AlienBabelTech

Please join us in our Forums

Become a Fan on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

For the latest updates from ABT, please join our RSS News Feed

Join our Distributed Computing teams

• Folding@Home – Team AlienBabelTech – 164304
• SETI@Home – Team AlienBabelTech – 138705
• World Community Grid – Team AlienBabelTech