Conclusion
|
|
|
| AMD Radeon R9 280X
13.12 WHQL |
100.82 % |
| AMD Radeon R9 280X 13.11 Beta1 |
100.00 % |
| |
|
| AMD Radeon R9 270X
13.12 WHQL |
100.77 % |
| AMD Radeon R9 270X 13.11 Beta1 |
100.00 % |
| |
|
| AMD Radeon R9 270
13.12 WHQL |
100.55 % |
| AMD Radeon R9 270 13.11 Beta1 |
100.00 % |
|
|
|
|
|
| AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
13.12 WHQL |
101.06 % |
| AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 13.11 Beta1 |
100.00 % |
| |
|
| AMD Radeon HD 7970
13.12 WHQL |
101.21 % |
| AMD Radeon HD 7970 13.11 Beta1 |
100.00 % |
| |
|
| AMD Radeon HD 7870
13.12 WHQL |
100.91 % |
| AMD Radeon HD 7870 13.11 Beta1 |
100.00 % |
| |
|
| AMD Radeon HD 7850
13.12 WHQL |
100.76 % |
| AMD Radeon HD 7850 13.11 Beta1 |
100.00 % |
| |
|
| AMD Radeon HD 7790
13.12 WHQL |
104.36 % |
| AMD Radeon HD 7790 13.11 Beta1 |
100.00 % |
|
|
|
|
|
| AMD Radeon HD 6990 13.11 Beta1 |
100.00 % |
| AMD Radeon HD 6990
13.12 WHQL |
99.44 % |
| |
|
| AMD Radeon HD 6970 13.11 Beta1 |
100.00 % |
| AMD Radeon HD 6970
13.12 WHQL |
99.48 % |
|
|
With AMDs latest driver update it is rather interesting to see that
theoretical benchmarks benefit by far more from the changes made. To be precise,
Catalyst 13.12 WHQL brings an advantage of 4 percent over Catalyst 13.11 Beta1
in the latest 3DMark. In case of games, the performance advantage is roughly 1
percent on average, in case of the cards we've tested.
Performance benefits mainly address AMD Radeon R9 200 as well as HD 7000 Series
graphics cards. In case of the HD 6000/5000 cards, performance is going down on
average by a tiny little bit. Taking a closer look reveals that there are
especially DIRT Showdown and Sleeping Dogs that profit the most from the latest
driver. Regarding DIRT the performance goes up by 5 percent and when running
Sleeping Dogs we see framerates, that are 2.5 percent higher than with the
previous driver, when looking at GCN based cards.
On another note, we were also looking for changes regarding power consumption.
With most of the cards the values stayed basically the same and only the HD 6990
as well as the HD 7970 GHz showed significant changes. When looking at the
values produced by the HD 6990, power consumption went up 8 Watt in idle and 19
Watts under load conditions. Last but not least things get even more
interesting, when we look at the Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition. With 13.11 driver
power consumption was at 360 Watts under load. Once we had 13.12 installed this
number dropped to 325 Watts. We find this to be rather strange, since there were
no changes regarding power consumption at all since quite a long time and now
there is a 35 Watts drop and the card still performs like before. This almost
seems too good to be true.
AMD Driver Charts - 13.10 Beta Tested