HD 7970 CrossFire Gaming Performance: AMD Catalyst 12.x Unofficial Beta (June 12)
Category : ATI/AMD
Published by Christian Ney on 18.06.12
Straight after the single graphics card driver comparison comes another driver comparison. Like before we did use 5 different AMD Catalyst drivers including the latest Unofficial Beta from June 12 to see what has been improved and what hasn't been but this time using a CrossFire setup. We saw quite some improvement using a single Radeon HD 7970, will it be the same with two of them ? Let's find out!
Introduction
Find all the benchmarks/games results on the following pages.
Discuss this article in the forums
[pagebreak]
Test Setup
Hardware
Mainboard |
- ASUS P8P67 Pro (BIOS 2303)
|
CPUs |
- Intel Core i7-2600K @ 3.4 GHz (Turbo Off / HT On)
|
Memory |
- G.Skill RipjawsZ Dual Channel 4x4GB CL9-9-9-24-DDR3-1600 MHz
|
Graphic Cards (Driver) |
- AMD Radeon HD 7970
CrossFire
- XFX Radeon HD 7970 (XFX Double Dissipation)
|
Drivers |
- Catalyst 8.921.0.0 (Catalyst 11.12) (December 3 2011) (First Retail Drivers) (Found in the HD 7970
Retail Box)
- Catalyst 8.921.2 (Catalyst 11.12 RC11) (December 20 2012) (Found
in the HD 7970 Retail Box)
- Catalyst 12.4 (April 6 2012) (8.961.0)
- Catalyst 12.6 (Unofficial Beta June 4 2012) (8.980.0)
- Catalyst 12.x (Unofficial Beta June 12 2012 (9.000.0)
|
HDD |
- Samsung SSD 830 Series 128 GB
|
PSU
|
- Seasonic Platinum SS-1000XP / 1000 Watts
|
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
A
direct comparison between driver version 11.12 and 12.x Beta (June 12) shows some really
drastic improvements. Installing the latest drivers results in quite a lot more
performance especially regarding modern DirectX 11 games. But if you look at the
latest WHQL 12.4 driver versus the latest Beta there is only a small improvement
in games. A closer look at the synthetic benchmarks shows that
there is a noticeable performance increase in 3DMark 11 where the score is 1.5 % 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
12.4 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 a more noticeable increase in performance.
In our performance rating we see an average increase of almost 14 percent compared to
the first retail drivers and 0.7 percent compared to the Catalyst 12.4. Going from
Catalyst 12.4 to 12.x Beta (June 12) you will see an improvement especially in Alien vs
Predator, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City, DIRT 2, Call of Duty
Modern Warfare 3 and finally Crysis 2. For Alien vs Predator and Crysis 2 we saw a 4 %
improvement in performance. For DIRT 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
we noticed a 2 % improvement and s tiny bit more in Call of Duty Modern Warface
3 with a gain of 3 %. Regarding The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim there is no
less than 18 percent gain in performance. Last time when testing the Catalyst
12.6 Beta from june 4 we already saw an improvement of 14 % but here the
Catalyst
from june 12 brings even more. However despite all those good news there is a
sad one, really sad one. It is named Dragon Age II whose performance dropped from
100 fps to 72.5 fps. So if you are a Dragon Age II played don't use those Beta drivers from
june 12 otherwise you will have a 37 % drop in performance in both CrossFire and
single graphis card setups.
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 90 Watt when the 11.12 driver were installed. With the Catalyst 12.4 it
was better as the
system needed only 77 Watts to run. And now it is even better as we reach the
power consumption of only one graphics card when idle while there are indeed in
two in our system. So we measured 66 Watts under idle conditions for our
CrossFire system. There is also a little measurable
improvement when the card is under load. In this case the system needed 450
Watt with 12.4 driver and 433 Watt with the unofficial Beta driver we tested.
Keeping your drivers 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. An average those
Catalyst drivers 12.x Unofficial Beta from June 12 are the best AMD drivers so
far even if the performance under Dragon Age II is very bad.
Discuss this article in the forums