HD 7970 Gaming Performance: AMD Catalyst 12.2 and 11.12 WHQL added
Category : ATI/AMD
Published by Christian Ney on 21.06.12
No new drivers this week coming from AMD. But as readers asked us if we could add some more drivers to the graphs, so we did! We added two drivers to this HD 7970 drivers performance article, the Catalyst 11.12 WHQL and the Catalyst 12.2. Therefore you are now able to find the results of seven different Catalyst drivers in our benchmarking panel.
Introduction
Find all the benchmarks/games results on the following pages.
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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 11.12 (8.921.0.0) (02/12/2011) (First Retail Drivers) (Found in the HD 7970
Retail Box)
- Catalyst 11.12 RC11 (8.921.2) (19/12/2011) (Found
in the HD 7970 Retail Box)
- Catalyst 11.12 WHQL (8.921.5) (29/12/2011)
- Catalyst 12.2 (8.950.0) (14/02/2012)
- Catalyst 12.4 (8.961.0) (05/04/2012)
- Catalyst 12.6 (8.980.0) (Unofficial Beta 04/06/2012)
- Catalyst 12.x (9.000.0) (Unofficial Beta 12/06/2012)
|
HDD |
- Samsung SSD 830 Series 128 GB
|
PSU
|
- Seasonic Platinum SS-1000XP / 1000 Watts
|
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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
Higher is better
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Conclusion
It is funny
to see that the Catalyst 11.12 WHQL from december 29th was performing as bad as
the 11.12 from december 2nd while the one inbetween the so called Catalyst
8.921.2 RC11 from december 19th was as good as the Catalyst 12.x. So let's see
what we noticed when testing the system after updating from the Catalyst 11.12 WHQL to the Catalyst 12.2:
AMD fixed the performance under TessMark with the Catalyst 12.2 where you see a major improvements from the 11.12 with a 2.6x higher score.
The Catalyst 12.2 did bring an increase of 6.8 % under 3DMark 11 and 8.4 % reguarding Unigine Heaven.
Alien vs. Predator had a boost of almost 8 %.
Under Batman: Arkham City we went from 53 fps to 55.
DIRT 2 saw his performance raised by 13 %.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 had also a little improvement of 5.5 %.
BattleField 3 is the one that benefits more of those drivers with an increase of 23.29 %.
Crysis 2 and Dragon Age II had both a boost of 7 %
A boost for 17 % was noticed on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
So in the end the Catalyst 12.2 did well better than the 11.12 WHQL with an
average of 10 % won in gaming performance.
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