Conclusion

With the Catalyst 13.1 we have added another driver to our graphics where we list the performance and power consumption of almost all AMD drivers for the HD 7970. Basically the Catalyst 13.1 is fighting with the Catalyst 12.11 Beta 8 for the performance crown.

A closer look at the benchmark results shows that performance wise there isn't much going on compared to the Catalyst 12.11 Beta 8 but for three games. Overall AMD's latest driver is a tiny bit slower than the previous driver, -0.5% to be precise. If you start searching "bigger" differences, there you will find DIRT 2, Dragon Age 2 and COD MW. In case of DIRT 2 the WHQL driver is about 3 percent faster than the Beta 8. For Dragon Age 2 we measured the WHQL 6 % slower than the Beta 8 driver. Under COD MW3 the WHQL driver was slower too with 5 % loss in performance. Otherwise the performance difference between the two drivers was within the percent.

So really, the performance differences but for two games is no big deal. Interesting too our setup seems to draw less power with the 13.1 WHQL driver installed under both idle and load conditions. Respectively 5 and 4 Watts.

Author: Christian Ney c.ney@ocaholic.ch