HD 7970 Gaming Performance: AMD Catalyst Retail Drivers vs 12.4
Category : ATI/AMD
Published by Christian Ney on 30.05.12
For our first "Driver Performance" article we are going to show you the difference in performance from the first released drivers to the latest ones available now using AMD's latest high-end graphics card the Radeon HD 7970. You will notice that between the retail drivers and the latest one there is quite a noticeable performance gap.Introduction
Find all the benchmarks/games results on the following pages.
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Test Setup
Hardware
| Mainboard |
|
| CPUs |
|
| Memory |
|
| Graphic Cards (Driver) |
|
| Drivers |
|
| HDD |
|
| PSU |
|
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Benchmarks and Games Settings
Futuremark
- 3DMark 11
(1.0.3)
- GPU Test - Performance Preset
- 3DMark Vantage (1.1.0)
- GPU Test - Performance Preset
Unigine Heaven DX11 Benchmark
| Version | 3.0 |
| API | DirectX 11 |
| Tessellation | Extreme |
| Shaders | High |
| Anisotropy | 16x |
| Stereo 3D | Disabled |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
Geeks3D TessMark
| Version | 0.3.0 |
| Map Set | Set 4 (2048 x 204 |
| Tesselation | Insane (x64) |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x |
| Tessellation | High |
| Duration | 60000 (ms) |
Geeks3D FurMark (Burn-in test)
| Version | 1.10.0 |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x MSAA |
Alien vs Predator DX11 Benchmark
| Texture Quality | Very High |
| Shadow Quality | High |
| Hardware Tesselation | Yes |
| Advance Shadow Sampling | Yes |
| Full Srceen Anti-Aliasing Samples | 4x |
| Anisotropic Filtering | 16x |
| SSAO | On |
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
Batman: Arkham City Integrated Benchmark
| FullScreen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| V Sync | No |
| Anti-Aliasing | 8x MSAA |
| Stereoscopic 3D Status | No |
| DirectX 11 Features | MVSS And HBAO |
| DirectX 11 Tesselation | High |
| Detail Level | Extreme |
| Dynamic Shadow | Yes |
| Motion Blur | Yes |
| Distortion | Yes |
| Lens Flares | Yes |
| Light Shafts | Yes |
| Reflections | Yes |
| Ambient Occlusion | Yes |
| Hardware Accelerated PhysX | Off |
Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| FullScreen | On |
| Vertical Sync | Off |
| Field of view | 70 |
| Motion Blur Amount | Max |
| Graphics Quality | Ultra |
BattleField 3 (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Aspect Ratio | Wide 16:9 |
| Anti-Aliasing | 4x |
| Screen Refresh Rate | 60 Hz |
| Sync Every Frame | No |
| Shadows | Yes |
| Specular Map | Yes |
| Depth Of Field | Yes |
| Screen Space Ambient Occlusion | High Quality |
| Soften Smoke Edges | Yes |
| Bullet Impacts | Yes |
| Image Quality | Ultra |
Crysis 2 DX11 + HiRes Texture Pack Benchmark
| Quality | Ultra |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-Aliasing | 4x |
| Map | Central Park/Adrenaline |
| Runs | 1 |
| API | DirectX 11 |
| Edge AA | Edge AA |
| Hi-Res Textures | On |
DIRT 2 Integrated Benchmark
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Refresh Rate | 60 |
| MultiSampling | 8x MSAA |
| VSync | Off |
| Aspect Ration | 16:9 |
| Details | Ultra Preset |
Dragon Age II (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Full Screen Mode | Yes |
| Renderer | DirectX 11 |
| Vertical Sync | no |
| Graphics Detail | Very High |
| Anti-Aliasing | 8x |
| Anisotropic Filtering | 16x |
| Screen Space Ambient Occlusion | Yes |
| Diffusion Depth of Field | Yes |
| High Quality Blur | Yes |
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Aspect Ratio | Wide 16:9 |
| Anti-Aliasing | 8x |
| Anisotropic-Filtering | 16x |
| Details | Ultra |
| Vertical Sync | Disabled |
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat Benchmark
| Preset | Ultra |
| Renderer | Enhan. full dyn. lighting (DX11) |
| Video Mode | 1920 x 1080 |
| MSAA | 4x |
| MSAA for A-tested objects | DX10.0 Style [Standard] |
| SSAO Mode | HDAO |
| SSAO Quality | High |
| Use DX10.1 | No |
| Enable Tesselation | Yes |
| Contact Hardening Shadows | Yes |
StarCraft II (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Display Mode | Fullscreen |
| Refresh Rate | Default |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Vertical Sync | No |
| Texture Quality | Ultra |
| Graphics Quality | Ultra |
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
3DMark 11
3DMark Vantage
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Unigine Heaven
TessMark
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Alien vs Predator
Batman: Arkham City
DIRT 2
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
BattleField 3
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Crysis 2
Dragon Age 2
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
StarCarft 2
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Power Consumption
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Benchmark Summary
Synthetic Benchmarks
Games
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Performance Index
Higher is better
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Conclusion
It looks like AMD/ATI's driver department is not sleeping at all. Indeed they managed to improve the performance by quite a margin. Mostly regarding DirectX 11 games. Keeping drivers up to date really makes sense as we saw a 15 percent improvement on average in games. And all the people who bought this card at launch had those drivers. It will be interesting to show the performance for the drivers inbetween in a further article.
Discuss this article in the forums