Catalyst 10.9 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 10-9 was released last week and we naturally ask ourselves if there are any performance improvements for the Radeon 5000 series in games. Beside testing with a single HD 5870, we are also going to compare HD 5750 performance with the latest Catalyst drivers.
Our last performance analysis of Catalyst 10.8 was published here and we used a stock-clocked AMD Phenom II X4. Now we are using our overclocked Core i7-920 at 3.2 GHz and we used the same settings that we used for our Galaxy GTS 450 SOC review. This time we are not testing with CrossFire but will return to testing with it next month. The percentage of change from upgrading the Catalyst drivers should remain about the same for any capable CPU platform.
We are going to test Catalyst 10.9 against Catalyst 10.8 using our current benchmark suite of 20 games plus one synthetic benchmarks, Heaven 2.0. We also added Metro 2033 official benchmark as it was just released last month. Our testing platform is Windows 7 64-bit using Intel Core i7-920 at 3.20 GHz, 6 GB DD3, and our video cards are a single HD 5870 and a HD 5750. All of our games are tested at 1920×1080, 1680×1050 and 1440×900 resolutions, with 16xAF, and we use DX11/10/10.1 whenever possible.
Let’s get right to the test configuration and the tests.
Test Configuration & Driver Release Notes
Test Configuration
Test Configuration – Hardware
- Intel Core i7 920 (reference 2.66 GHz and overclocked to 3.2 GHz); Turbo is off.
- Gigabyte EX58-UD3R (Intel X58 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 16x+16x).
- 6 GB OCZ DDR3 PC 18000 Kingston RAM (3×2 GB, tri-channel at PC 1600 speeds; 2×2 GB supplied by Kingston)
- ATI Radeon HD 5750 (1GB, reference clocks) by XFX
- ATi Radeon HD 5870 (1GB, reference clocks) by Diamond
- Onboard Realtek Audio
- Two identical 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drives configured and set up identically from drive image; one partition for Nvidia GeForce drivers and one for ATI Catalyst drivers
- Thermaltake ToughPower 775 W power supply unit supplied by Thermaltake
- Thermaltake Element G Case supplied by Thermaltake
- Noctua UD CPU cooler, supplied by Noctua
- Philips DVD SATA writer
- HP LP3065 2560×1600 thirty inch LCD/SOYO 1920×1200 twenty-four inch LCD
Test Configuration – Software
- AMD Catalyst 10-9 and Catalyst 10-8 (10.8b hotfix used for H.A.W.X); highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver, Catalyst AI set to “Standard”
- Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
- DirectX July 2010
- All games are patched to their latest versions.
- vsync is off in the control panel and is never set in-game.
- Varying AA enabled as noted in games and “forced” in Catalyst Control Center for UT3 and Batman: Arkham Asylum; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied; 16xAF forced in control panel for Crysis.
- All results show average frame rates.
- Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
- Windows 7 64, all DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths; DX11 titles under DX 11 render paths.
The Benchmarks
Please note that we are using the exact same settings that we used for our Galaxy GTS 450 SOC review. HD 5770 was tested at 1440×900 and 1680×1050 resolutions at lesser settings than the HD 5870 that was tested at 1920×1080 resolution. The performance changes result solely from upgrading the Radeon driver from Catalyst 10.8 to 10.9.
- Call of Juarez
- Crysis
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat
- Far Cry 2
- X3:Terran Conflict
- Dirt 2
- Lost Planet
- Unreal Tournament 3
- Resident Evil 5
- Call of Pripyat
- Batman: Arkham Asylum
- H.A.W.X.
- BattleForge
- Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
- Just Cause 2
- F.E.A.R.
- Call of Duty 4
- Alien versus Predator
- Serious Sam HD
- Metro 2033
- Heaven 2
Lets look at some of the release notes from AMD’s .pdf regarding Catalyst 10-9.
Release Notes for Catalyst 10-9
Catalyst™ Application Profiles
The following application profiles are available with this release of Catalyst™ 10.9:
- Aliens Vs. Predator – Profile update
- Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – Profile update
- F1 2010 – Profile update
- Kane & Lynch 2 – New profile
Performance Improvements
The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst™ 10.9:
- STALKER: Call of Pripyat Benchmark Performance increases up to 20% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations with Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX11) and anti-aliasing enabled
- Performance increases up to 12% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations with Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX11) and anti-aliasing enabled
- The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
- Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations
- Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations
- Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations
ATI Catalyst™ Release Note Version 10.9 5
- Performance increases up to 6% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations
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:
- UVD clocks will now return to normal speeds after switching from HD to SD content
- Flickering no longer visible while running 3D games on HDMI displays with Quad CrossFire™ enabled
- Mesh corruption is no longer visible in “The Chronicles of Riddick 2: Assault on Dark Athena” when SSAO in-game setting is set to high CrossFire™ now functions properly and in-game Anti-Aliasing can now be enabled in “StarCraft II”
- Adobe Flash Player will no longer display green screen after resume from sleep
- Negative CrossFire™ scaling on “Final Fantasy-XIV” no longer occurs
- Intermittent perfomance drops no longer observed with harware cursor enabled in “World of Warcraft” game in extended mode
Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System
This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst™
Software Suite for Windows Vista. These include:
- AVI video no longer lags during playback within Microsoft PowerPoint slide deck
- Desktop corruption no longer occurs during PowerDVD SD/Blu-ray content playback on 120Hz displays
- Choppy HD playback no longer occurs while changing color vibrance and fleshtone correction in Catalyst™ Control Center – Advanced Color
Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System
This section provides information on resolved issues in this release of the ATI Catalyst™
Software Suite for Windows XP. These include:
- Copy protection message will no longer appear when viewing a DVD with Windows Media Player on a Windows XP system with PowerDVD 9 installed
Known Issues Under All Windows Operating Systems
The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under the Windows operating system in the latest version of Catalyst™. These include:
- Catalyst™ Control Center: Enable dialog reposition does not show on proper monitor when system is configured with 4 displays
We see great new features with video and some nicely resolved issues. Up until now, we haven’t noted a lot of performance improvement for a few months and we are still rather disappointed with CrossFire scaling. If you run CrossFire, make absolutely certain that you download the latest application profiles as it can make a real performance difference. Let’s head right for the results of our performance testing of Catalyst 10-9 versus 10-8.
Benchmarks & Conclusion
Here are our results of twenty-two benchmarks – twenty-one games and one synthetic – compared between Catalyst 10-8 and 10-9.
“Wins” are in bold; if there is a tie, both results will be in bold type.
We note some real performance improvement over Catalyst 10-8 with Catalyst 10-9 in many games. This is the first set of significant improvements involving many games that we have noticed since Catalyst 10.3a. We are sorry that we did not have time to do the benches for CrossFire but will return to it next month. Do not forget to download and install the Catalyst Application Profiles if applicable to your PC (they are downloaded in addition to Catalyst 10.9 from the same AMD support page).
To sum it up, we would recommend upgrading to Catalyst 10-9 because there are real advantages, and the many pluses that we found outweigh that any slight and very few negatives. We also feel that it makes reasonable sense to use the latest WHQL drivers. Of course, if you have a HD 5000 series Radeon, it would be wise to upgrade just for the new features of Catalyst 10-9, never mind the good performance increases that we found.
We will be back next month to compare performance of Catalyst 10-10 versus 10-9 and perhaps we can also cover the new GeForce WHQLs when they are (probably) released late on this month as the release candidate GeForce 260s brought many new features to the Nvidia table. Happy gaming!
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