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5800 Series getting faster with new drivers

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don't feed the trolls.

anyway, I've been reading the ATI Driver reviews over at TweakTown, and i remember constantly seeing very small DROPS in performance from one version to the next, like 0.5% or so.
which I find very weird since every driver release has in its release notes how much they've improved this or that.

it could also be that Tweaktown don't know what the heck they're doing 😛
 
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I must be missing something... how does the title of this thread correlate at all with the chart pictures shown? In the three pictures posted in the topic post i see nothing related to new ATI drivers vs old ATI drivers. I see charts showing ATI vs NVidia and Quad/SLI vs single GPU, but where's the straightforward comparison shot of current drivers vs new drivers to relate to the topic title?
 
I must be missing something...

First page of the thread, first post, second image. Check it out. 9.10 is the Ati whql driver from October, 8.663.1 is the first release candidate for 9.12. 9.12 will be the Ati whql driver for December.
 
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First page of the thread, first post, second image. Check it out. 9.10 is the Ati whql driver from September, 8.663.1 is the first release candidate for 9.12. 9.12 will be the Ati whql driver for December.

Thanks for clarification as I was thoroughly confused... I thought someone made a mistake. Any reason for this convoluted driver versions? Again, I thought 8.6XXX~ was the cat drivers from a long time ago and were outperforming the new drivers as they had a higher number of 9.1. Very confusing... I'd rather see 9.12b or something like that instead of 8.6XXX~
 
Any reason for this convoluted driver versions? Again, I thought 8.6XXX~ was the cat drivers from a long time ago and were outperforming the new drivers as they had a higher number of 9.1. Very confusing... I'd rather see 9.12b or something like that instead of 8.6XXX~

8.6XXX refers only to the driver itself, while 9.XX is the whole Catalyst suite.
 
Any reason for this convoluted driver versions? Again, I thought 8.6XXX~ was the cat drivers from a long time ago and were outperforming the new drivers as they had a higher number of 9.1. Very confusing... I'd rather see 9.12b or something like that instead of 8.6XXX~

8.6XXX refers only to the driver itself, while 9.XX is the whole Catalyst suite.
 
Thanks for clarification as I was thoroughly confused... I thought someone made a mistake. Any reason for this convoluted driver versions? Again, I thought 8.6XXX~ was the cat drivers from a long time ago and were outperforming the new drivers as they had a higher number of 9.1. Very confusing... I'd rather see 9.12b or something like that instead of 8.6XXX~

911.jpg


Actually I made a typo on the month. 9.10 is from the month of October, not September.

9.10 = October, 9.11 = November, 9.12 = December, etc. 9.xx where xx = month. January CCC WHQL driver suite will be called Catalyst 10.1

Inside the driver package you have the display driver, wdm driver, and other software along with the Catalyst control center software.

8.67-091008a-090120E-ATI = the complete 2d,3d,dx,opengl driver package
8.67 = package version. -091008 = released on october 8th 2009
You also see vendor ID, could be ASUS, MSI, ATI etc.
9.11 = Catalyst driver package. 2009 (9) series, month of October (10)
8.14.10.0708 = direct 3d driver version (this is what 99% of most non-opengl 3d applications use to render on the card - this is reported in GPU-z window)
also see 2d version and opengl version.
 
hey Kyle, maybe you wont check back but the review you did on the Eyefinity was top notch work

Thank you sir. We missed you at the Eyefinity Challenge this weekend! 🙂

Does anyone give a crap about that PoS NFS: Shift?

One of the best racing games I have ever played. Still not a simulation, but a lot closer to it. AND with Eyefinity in landscape, it rocks.
 
I have been checking out how the forum upgrade was going. Beating on the search server some. 🙂 Anand has done a much better job at getting rolling with vBulletin than we ever did. <knock on wood>No outages or errors for a couple months now though.</knock on wood> I think HardForum finally turned the corner. 🙂

You spoke too soon. 🙂 AT forum was down with some DB errors over the weekend.
 
You spoke too soon. 🙂 AT forum was down with some DB errors over the weekend.

dude, there's like a big'ole super-sticky for the entire site sitting right there staring at you...

Notices
This Friday, Saturday and Sunday (November 13th - 15th), beginning at 12:01am Eastern time each day, we will be taking the forums down for several hours. This is in order to run checks and service on our new vBulletin databases. We will be back up by noon each day, though we might be able to open up sometime during the morning if things go smoothly.
 
dude, there's like a big'ole super-sticky for the entire site sitting right there staring at you...

Well, a nice message came up when the forum was down for maintenance.
I got some DB error messages prior to that though. I guess that explains the reason for maintenance.

Edit: By the way, the sticky is not visible to users/visitors that are not logged in.
 
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911.jpg


Actually I made a typo on the month. 9.10 is from the month of October, not September.

9.10 = October, 9.11 = November, 9.12 = December, etc. 9.xx where xx = month. January CCC WHQL driver suite will be called Catalyst 10.1

Inside the driver package you have the display driver, wdm driver, and other software along with the Catalyst control center software.

8.67-091008a-090120E-ATI = the complete 2d,3d,dx,opengl driver package
8.67 = package version. -091008 = released on october 8th 2009
You also see vendor ID, could be ASUS, MSI, ATI etc.
9.11 = Catalyst driver package. 2009 (9) series, month of October (10)
8.14.10.0708 = direct 3d driver version (this is what 99% of most non-opengl 3d applications use to render on the card - this is reported in GPU-z window)
also see 2d version and opengl version.

Ahh... Thankyou kindly. Now that DOES make sense. I suppose it has been a very long time since I have ran an ATI card... I am not proud to admit that though. The 5870 is mighty tempting... Maybe two of them.
 
HD5770 with E8400 at 3.6 GHz.

Driver Packaging Version 8.663.1-091105a-091227E
Catalyst™ Version 09.11
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 8.01.01.961
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0001
Direct3D Version 8.14.10.0700
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.9030
Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2009.1105.1527.27696


My 3DMark06 score went from 9720 to 15641 with this driver.

Cool
 
It is only a matter of time until the 5870 starts to beat the gtx 295 across the board. Over the lifetime of any given card its performance always goes up. The gtx295 is at the end of its life and the hd5xxx cards are just starting.
 
Until a fresh review (or is it a "re-review") of the 5xxx with new drivers show performance increases across the board (or at least, mostly across the board) in a test suite such as AnandTech's, then one game showing increased FPS really isn't that big of a deal, as it might just be the game made a little more optimized for the card, instead of the card just making everything faster.

I second the question of a poster before me: does the speed increases also include the 57xx series, or was the 58xx the only series tested?

well, when you consider that games have had 18 mos to optimize for 4xxx and gt 200, it seems reasonable to conclude that many games will optimize for 5xxx now. Between ati driver optimizations and dev optimizations, plus the posted specs of the cards, it is reasonable to assume that quite a bit more performance will come out of 5xxx before gt300 launches.
 
Do the 4xxx series suffer with NFS Shift too?

I tried to play it with my 4670 and boy howdy, even GTA4 does better in this humble rig and I tried all kinds of settings. Easily the worst performance out of any game I've ever tried in my PC, by a mile. Of course I don't expect AA or anything fancy, just smooth framerates.
 
What about the 5770, easily the most disappointing card released recently? I hope that thing improves with driver updates, because I can't for the life of me think of any good reason someone would buy it from the benches I've seen.
 
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