Following we present to you our driver performance analysis on AMD's latest Radeon HD 7970 in dual card CrossFire configuration. This time we tested our benchmarking/gaming setup with four different Catalyst drivers. Featuring the Catalyst 11.12, 11.12 RC11, 12.4 and the latest beta available the Catalyst 12.6 Beta from June 4th. Let's see how they do perform.Introduction
Find all the benchmarks/games results on the following pages.
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Test Setup
Hardware
| Mainboard |
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| CPUs |
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| Memory |
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| Graphic Cards (Driver) |
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| Drivers |
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| HDD |
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| PSU |
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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 |
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3DMark 11
3DMark Vantage
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Unigine Heaven
TessMark
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Alien vs Predator
Batman: Arkham City
DIRT 2
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Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
BattleField 3
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Crysis 2
Dragon Age 2
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
StarCarft 2
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Power Consumption
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Benchmark Summary
Synthetic Benchmarks
Games
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Performance Index
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Conclusion
A direct comparison between driver version 12.6 from june 6 and the WHQL driver version 12.4 shows only a little improvement in performance. Under some games more than others as we found -3.2 % in performance in the wrose case and +14.05 % in the best. A closer look at the synthetic benchmarks shows that there is a noticeable performance increase in 3DMark 11 where the score is 1.09 % higher. Otherwise there is almost no difference at all. But still it's good to know for overclockers, that the latest drivers can help increase benchmarking performance by a small margin. Concerning TessMark we saw a 2.5 times increase when we compare driver version 11.12 and 12.6 to version 11.12, which also explains why our performance ratio regarding the synthetic 3D benchmarks shows an increase of 45 percent with the latest drivers. AMD has made major improvements concerning tessellation compared to the first drivers that supported the Radeon HD 7970.
Shifting the focus to games there is also a noticeable increase in performance. In our performance rating we see an average increase of 15 percent compared to the first retail drivers and 1.5 percent compared to the Catalyst 12.4. Going from Catalyst 12.4 to 12.6 Beta you will see an improvement especially and only in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. There is no less than 14 percent gain in performance but the performance still aren't good for a CrossFire setup as it's performing way lower than with a single graphics card.
Interesting is also the power consumption. We measured our testsystems power consumption under idle and load conditions. When there was no load the system needed 77 Watt when the 12.4 driver were installed. With the 12.6 Beta driver the system needed only 66 Watts to run. Therefore power efficiency increased by a whopping 14.3 percent under idle conditions. But we didn't see any improvement this time under load conditions.
Keeping your dirvers up-to-date
is really important if you're a gamer because you benefit not only from better
performance but also from increased energy efficiency. And we have to say, those
Catalyst drivers 12.6 Unofficial Beta from June 4 are the best AMD drivers so
far.
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