AMD "Never Settle" 12.11 Driver - benchmarks are in!

[thilanliyan]

I'm guessing later this month or early November, we'll start seeing the bundles pop up.

Thanks!

That is a very tempting bundle btw.

 

[MrK6]

Sweetness, thanks for posting! Looking over the benchmarks, it seems like performance was improved more at lower resolutions. That said, awesome, I'll take another 5% @ 2560x1600. The gaming bundle is extremely nice as well.

 

[RussianSensation]

Sweetness, thanks for posting! Looking over the benchmarks, it seems like performance was improved more at lower resolutions. That said, awesome, I'll take another 5% @ 2560x1600. The gaming bundle is extremely nice as well.

Based on some comments from AT's article, it seems AMD figured out a way to extract more shader performance from GCN.

1920x1200 = 7970 GE is 60% faster than 6970

HD7970 GE = 1.05ghz x 2048 SP (+59% more shader performance)
HD6970 = 880mhz x 1536 SP

That's basically a linear performance increase with more shading power. WOW went up 16% at 1600P, which is more than the average.

BF3

 

[twjr]

Are these bundles likely to be available outside the US? I would be pretty tempted to sidegrade to a 7950 if I could pick up those games, especially as new release games have a significant mark up in Australia.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

These new numbers from a single 7970 have ended what i can consider to have been the most difficult choice as far as which card to get,the gtx680 or the 7970...

Wonder if i picked up a simple $400 7970 and clocked it to ge specs,would it perform nearly identical if not the same as the review numbers suggest for the ge with 12.11?

If you buy the right 7970 why stop at 1ghz? 1125-1200 is easily possible. Net yourself around another 10% more performance on top of the GE edition benchmarks.

Did I mention I'm glad I bought a 7970 on release?

 

[Powermoloch]

hebee jebus where can i download the drivers ?

 

[skipsneeky2]

If you buy the right 7970 why stop at 1ghz? 1125-1200 is easily possible. Net yourself around another 10% more performance on top of the GE edition benchmarks.

Did I mention I'm glad I bought a 7970 on release?

Been lusting over the new matrix model and i am hearing some very good things about the msi lighting version,it appears the matrix is out of stock for the moment.

Good thing i won't be buying for another week or so,perhaps by the time i am ready to buy,those game coupons will be in effect and the matrix will be available again.

I had a 7970 when they first came out and i picked a reference model and it sucked badly for thermals and noise,i ended up trading it for a core i5 notebook.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

hebee jebus where can i download the drivers ?

They should be out sometime today.

 

[blastingcap]

Based on some comments from AT's article, it seems AMD figured out a way to extract more shader performance from GCN.

1920x1200 = 7970 GE is 60% faster than 6970

HD7970 GE = 1.05ghz x 2048 SP (+59% more shader performance)
HD6970 = 880mhz x 1536 SP

That's basically a linear performance increase with more shading power. WOW went up 16% at 1600P, which is more than the average.

BF3

Don't get too excited. I'm gonna quote myself here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6393/amds-holiday-plans-cat1211-new-bundle

But it’s Battlefield 3 that really takes the cake: the performance improvement from Catalyst 12.11 ranges from 13% for the 7770 at 1680 to a whopping 29% for the 7970 at 1920. This makes Catalyst 12.11 a very special driver for AMD – not only are performance improvements over 20% particularly rare, but Battlefield 3 has long been a thorn in AMD’s side. NVIDIA’s hardware has until now always outperformed AMD’s equivalent hardware here, and as BF3 has remained an extremely popular MP game it’s been one of the most important games for high-end video card buyers. In other words it has always been the game AMD could least afford to lose at.

With the 12.11 drivers AMD has completely eradicated their performance defecit in BF3, with the 7970, 7870, and 7770 being made performance competitive with (if not a hair faster than) their respective NVIDIA GTX 600 counterparts in our BF3 benchmark. AMD has told us that the specific performance benefits are map-dependent with our results appearing at the high-end of their guidance, so while not every map will see the same 20%+ performance gains, some of them will while others will be in the 10% range. Much like our overall performance averages, the largest gains are at 1920 with FXAA, while 2560 with FXAA and 1920 with MSAA will see smaller gains, once again hinting that AMD’s optimizations are on the shader/texture side rather than ROP/memory.

Note that TechPowerUp found more like a 10% improvement in BF3. Still good, just not mind-boggling.

hebee jebus where can i download the drivers ?

They should be out sometime today.

One review site said 3PM, but not sure if they meant EST or Pacific. They are BETA drivers so they might not be in the usual location.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Don't get too excited. I'm gonna quote myself here:



Note that TechPowerUp found more like a 10% improvement in BF3. Still good, just not mind-boggling.





One review site said 3PM, but not sure if they meant EST or Pacific. They are BETA drivers so they might not be in the usual location.

I think the larger improvement in bf3 was without MSAA and the 10% improvement was with 4xMSAA. Fine with me because I don't use MSAA trying to maintain 120fps.

 

[Final8ty]

Edit: already posted.

 

[hyrule4927]

This is fantastic. The new driver strategy is definitely paying off. Well done, AMD.

 

[SPBHM]

great gains, and 12.7b/12.8 had already pretty good gains (http://blogs.amd.com/play/2012/06/28/the-new-catalyst/) compared to 12.6...
tests with old drivers for AMD GCN cards are quite useless now.


edit: can anyone test tribes ascend with this? there was a topic in here in which the only available data was with cat 12.3.

 

[Infraction Jack]

Anyone have benchmarks for this driver with 5000 and 6000 series cards?

 

[SPBHM]

Anyone have benchmarks for this driver with 5000 and 6000 series cards?

TPU said there is no gain for HD6k.
"Our testing also confirms that these performance benefits are only for Radeon HD 7000 cards since the HD 6970 in our test group saw no improvements."

which is expected,

 

[Final8ty]

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_catalyst_12_11_driver_performance.html

 

[Gikaseixas]

They're finally mastering the GCN architeture. Good news for AMD (for a change). This release makes the Radeon line-up the faster one IMO.

 

[balane]

UPS is dropping off my mechanical keyboard today. (First one for me, I've never even felt one before.)

And I get to download this great new driver. Thank you AMD.

I will not have a case of the Mondays this week!

 

[Red Hawk]

Awesomesauce. :awe: As an AMD user and AMD graphics supporter I'm always happy to see them improve performance in their drivers. Though I don't particularly care for the game I am glad to see that they have all but eliminated the performance gap in Battlefield 3; BF3 is a very high-profile game and Nvidia's lead with it probably influenced many purchasing decisions. So much for that, Team Green!

Of particular note to me is this:

This driver also fixes a bug that caused low performance in Dragon Age 2. I didn't expect the low performance in Dragon Age 2 to be fixed at all given that it is a relatively old title. It shows that AMD did take a real close look at game performance.

I play DAII a lot and there is one pesky problem that has cropped up on my new 7870. It's almost like a memory leak -- gameplay starts out smooth but after a half hour or so of playing there are tremendous slowdowns and it plays even slower than my old 5770 did. I have to restart the game to get rid of it only for it to return consistently. I was worried that it was an issue with my 7870 itself, but now I sincerely hope this is the same bug TPU is talking about here and it's resolved with 12.11.

 

[Silverforce11]

So 8970 will be 15% + 15% (drivers) faster... as AIBs claimed. ;0

 

[Final8ty]

Awesomesauce. :awe: As an AMD user and AMD graphics supporter I'm always happy to see them improve performance in their drivers. Though I don't particularly care for the game I am glad to see that they have all but eliminated the performance gap in Battlefield 3; BF3 is a very high-profile game and Nvidia's lead with it probably influenced many purchasing decisions. So much for that, Team Green!

Of particular note to me is this:

I play DAII a lot and there is one pesky problem that has cropped up on my new 7870. It's almost like a memory leak -- gameplay starts out smooth but after a half hour or so of playing there are tremendous slowdowns and it plays even slower than my old 5770 did. I have to restart the game to get rid of it only for it to return consistently. I was worried that it was an issue with my 7870 itself, but now I sincerely hope this is the same bug TPU is talking about here and it's resolved with 12.11.

If your using AB see that the clocks are not throttled down due to heat.

 

[sontin]

Now it makes sense that they given no margin guidance for Q4. That game bundle must hurt their margin...

What i not understand: Why they need 10 months to optimise BF3/Frostbite 2 engine. Looks like they run though all shaders and looked under every stone...

But in the end: Nice bundle, it will kick off the price war.

 

[Silverforce11]

What i not understand: Why they need 10 months to optimise BF3/Frostbite 2 engine. Looks like they run though all shaders and looked under every stone...

But in the end: Nice bundle, it will kick off the price war.

Armored Kill is already optimized, Ghz is equal to 680. Now its just simply faster in vanilla and probably heaps faster in AK.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Performance for free? Any power consumption numbers? Any CF/MS fixes?

Isn't it a bit late to be getting excited over what will soon become, a last gen product? Isn't that why the prices have dropped, and large game bundles are offered? Inventory needs to be cleared.

 

[Shmee]

very cool! Looking forward to this. Any improvements for 6900 series cards?