AMD Catalyst 12.9 Beta - HD 7970 CrossFire Gaming Performance
Category : ATI/AMD
Published by Christian Ney on 15.10.12
It's been a while since we last benched AMD Catalyst drivers in CrossFire which is our fault and not AMD's, lack of time... Anyway AMD repleased the Catalyst 12.9 Beta three weeks ago and we tested the performance of this driver package last week using one single card. Here we are going to check what's about a dual graphics card CrossFire setup and compare it with some previous Catalyst drivers.
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 WHQL (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)
- Catalyst 12.7 (8.981.2) (Unofficial Beta 12/06/2012)
- Catalyst 12.8 WHQL (8.982.0.0) (27/07/2012)
- Catalyst 12.9 Beta (9.1.0.0) (13/09/2012)
|
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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forums
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Unigine Heaven
TessMark
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forums
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Alien vs Predator
Batman: Arkham City
DIRT 2
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forums
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Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
BattleField 3
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forums
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Crysis 2
Dragon Age 2
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forums
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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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forums
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Benchmark Summary
Synthetic Benchmarks
Games
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Performance Index
Higher is better
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Conclusion
Three weeks ago AMD released their latest driver for their graphics card, the Catalyst 12.9 Beta. Yes we know we are late, but better late than never right? Anyway results are in and here is what we see compared to the previous driver that was the Catalyst 12.8 WHQL:
The Catalyst 12.9 Beta is performing better under 3DMark Vantage by 5.6 % which is a lot considering that is a very old synthetic benchmark.
Other synthetic benchmarks we used didn't have any significative performance changes.
Performance under Alien vs. Predator and Batman: Arkham City was exactly the same.
DIRT 2 sees a performance increase by 1.0 %.
Our CrossFire setup was 10 % faster under Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.
Performance under Battlefield 3 decreased by 9 %.
AMD fixed the bug under Dragon Age 2 which brings now no less than 45 % in performance.
Performance bug fixed under TES Skyrim as well which results of an increase of 16 %.
We were finally able to run the unofficial Crysis 2 Benchmark, it always worked unsing a single graphics card or nVidia SLI but that's the first time we had it working with AMD Crossfire.
Power consumption under idle went back to normal (65 Watts).
So in the end the Catalyst
12.9 Beta were better by 6.67 % in average under games than the 12.8 WHQL that
came out the month before. Performance was almost the same everywhere (<1%
diffrerence) but under
Dragon Age, Skyrim and Battelfield where the difference in performance was
higher than 10 %. Looking at the power consumption the 12.9 Beta is a good
driver, power consumption value under idle is back to normal. The WHQL driver
was bad as AMD's Power Zero feature wasn't working with this driver. We would
say go for the Catalyst 12.9 Beta whithout hesitating if you are still using
older drivers.
Author: Christian Ney
c.ney@ocaholic.ch
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