Catalyst 13.11 Beta Performance Analysis versus GeForce 331.58
Benchmarks and Conclusion
Here are the results of thirty-four benchmarks – thirty games and four synthetics – compared between Catalyst 13.11 beta versus the previous 13.9 WHQL, and also against the latest GeForce WHQL 331.58 drivers. The HD 7970 at GHz Edition speeds results are only shown with Catalyst 13.11 Beta; the last time we tested was with Catalyst 13.8 Beta 2 in the VisionTek HD 7970 evaluation. Catalyst 13.8 Beta 2 is a newer release than the 13.9 WHQLs and appears to have most of the performance improvements of the latest 13.11 Beta.
“Wins” between the two Catalyst driver sets are in bold; if there is a tie, both results will be in bold type. The GeForce results are not bolded. Column one is the HD 7970 tested with the older Catalyst 13.9 WHQL versus Column Two with the Catalyst 13.11 Beta drivers. Column 3 shows the HD 7970 at GHz Edition speeds for reference with the latest Catalyst 13.11 betas, but it was not benched with the last 13.9 WHQL drivers. Columns 4 and 5 show the reference GTX 770 results of the last WHQL drivers while Columns 6 and 7 show the reference GTX 780 performance.
We note performance improvements with Catalyst 13.11 beta in more than a few games although we did not see quite the 7% improvement in Splinter Cell: Blacklist that AMD noted. We also note steady increases overall in the past few driver releases from both AMD and Nvidia. We also find that the newest GeForce driver also brought good performance gains and recommend that you download and upgrade to the very latest drivers no matter which video card you may have!
The only caveat would be if you regularly play Battleforge with a HD 7970 It has been unplayable for several sets of drivers and although it has improved, there are still issues. At any rate, the Battleforge server is being closed down by EA and we will discontinue benching it. Hitman: Absolution had issues with running the benchmark at any speed with a HD 7970, and sometimes no results were generated.
Also, do not forget to download and install the Catalyst Application Profiles (CAP) if applicable to your PC.
Conclusion
To sum it up, we would recommend upgrading to either of these latest drivers because there are real advantages, and the pluses that we found outweigh the rare few negatives. AMD’s driver team has made some decent improvements for single-GPU performance with their now former AMD flagship HD 7970 just as Nvidia has for the GTX 780 and GTX 770.
We also give our recommendation to the latest GeForce 331.58 WHQL drivers. In most cases they provide performance increases with no real negatives that we have encountered. We’ll be back to expand this testing to multi-GPU and as newer drivers are released.
In the meantime, check ABT’s forum for the best tech discussions anywhere. You can expect an evaluation of Genius KB-G265 – a $40 gaming keyboard! – by tomorrow night. Immediately afterward, we will begin evaluating the new VisionTek R9 280X and will have a reference EVGA GTX 780 evaluation for you next week which will also cover GTX 780 SLI scaling. And we are still building our Haswell box and will be able to shortly showcase Core i7-4770K versus i7-3770K in gaming.
Happy gaming!
