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

[raghu78]

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.

But the fact is the reviews which previously showed the biggest leads in BF3 for GTX 680 like guru3d, anandtech, hardwarecanucks , hexus are also showing the biggest gains for HD 7970 Ghz.

Guru3d - 21%. HD 7970 Ghz was getting 51 fps before the new driver. applying a 20% scaling takes its clearly ahead of GTX 680 which gets 57 fps.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_catalyst_12_11_driver_performance,7.html

BF3 Ultra 4x MSAA 1920 x 1200

HD 7950 Boost - 43
HD 7950 Boost (12.11 beta) - 52

anandtech showed a 29% increase. HD 7970 on par with GTX 680 which means HD 7970 Ghz is atleast 10% faster than GTX 680.

hexus showed a 33.9% increase at 1080p. HD 7970 Ghz is 22% faster than GTX 680 at 1080p and 1600p.

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graph...chmarked-surprising-performance-gains/?page=3

hardwarecanucks showed 16.5% at 1080p with Ultra 4x MSAA and 22% at 1080p with Ultra FXAA putting HD 7970 Ghz just ahead of the GTX 680. though in this case it can be considered on par

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...-12-11-never-settle-driver-performance-5.html

This driver clearly establishes HD 7970 Ghz as the fastest single GPU at 1080p and 1600p (by an average of 10 - 15%).

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Catalyst_12.11_Performance/23.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...12-11-never-settle-driver-performance-17.html

"As you read this conclusion, be certain there’s someone at NVIDIA’s headquarters pressing a red panic button. Where AMD was once trailing, they are now leading in several performance disciplines and are doing so with lower prices as well. This situation isn’t only due a driver team's ability to increase the HD 7000-series’ overall performance. NVIDIA’s suddenly unenviable position largely stems from a combination of AMD’s earlier price cuts, the newly realized framerate increases and a very aggressive promotion bundle that can include over $100 of free games. For anyone that hasn’t taken the plunge into this generation of graphics cards, AMD’s offerings are once again extremely enticing."

The 12.11 drivers represent a new beginning for the HD 7970 GHz Edition and while we haven’t tested the rest of AMD’s lineup, we’re sure the situation above will repeat itself throughout their product stack. This is not a selective performance bump in a few AMD-friendly titles either. Rather, the 12.11s offer an across-the-board performance increase that pushes the HD 7970 GHz Edition right past the GTX 680. From a price / performance standpoint, there are actually very few reasons to recommend the GTX 680 at this point and at higher detail settings there’s just no competition "

 

[Spjut]

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

Nope, techpowerup tested the HD 6970 and found no improvements

 

[Red Hawk]

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

If the card is throttling itself, then it's a problem with the card itself. The problem still happens at stock clocks, and it's not heat related as long as 64 degrees Celsius should be fine. The fans seem to be working fine. I've been getting graphical artifacts in some other games, like Arkham City and Skyrim. I've talked about certain problems like wonky performance in 3DMark 11 at the factory clock setting (1010 core, 1210 memory). Both the 12.8 WHQL drivers and the 12.9 betas have these problems for me. I'm at the point where I'm considering RMAing the card, but I'll reserve judgement until the 12.11s come out.

 

[Final8ty]

If the card is throttling itself, then it's a problem with the card itself. The problem still happens at stock clocks, and it's not heat related as long as 64 degrees Celsius should be fine. The fans seem to be working fine. I've been getting graphical artifacts in some other games, like Arkham City and Skyrim. I've talked about certain problems like wonky performance in 3DMark 11 at the factory clock setting (1010 core, 1210 memory). Both the 12.8 WHQL drivers and the 12.9 betas have these problems for me. I'm at the point where I'm considering RMAing the card, but I'll reserve judgement until the 12.11s come out.

Well it happened to me in BF3, all playing fine then fps dropped and would need to restart the game to get the fps back and only realized that my cards where getting to hot and that my fan profile needed adjusting.

 

[Red Hawk]

Again, it doesn't seem to just be heat. I get artifacts in Skyrim and AB shows the card to be barely hitting 45 degrees. But this is a little off topic, so I'll just make another thread.

 

[Final8ty]

Again, it doesn't seem to just be heat. I get artifacts in Skyrim and AB shows the card to be barely hitting 45 degrees. But this is a little off topic, so I'll just make another thread.

Well that rules the heat aspect out at least.

 

[BD231]

"Still sacrifice"? Do you have proof of this, that AMD uses a practice of sacrificing image quality regularly? What are you saying that HD5800 and 6900 series had worse image quality than GTX400/500 series and that somehow HD7000 series has worse image quality than NV's 600 series? Both companies have differences in anti-aliasing methods they use (FXAA vs. MLAA, Edge Detect CFAA vs. TRSAA for NV) but that has been the case for a long time now. I think there was a texture issue with 1 driver release earlier in the year that affected only HD7000 series when Tom's hardware tested it but they later acknowledged it was fixed with the next version. Your comment not only made it general as if AMD purposely cripples image quality but you referred to sacrificing image quality in popular titles, I am guessing you know something the rest of the gaming community does not? And which popular titles showed a major difference in image quality in 2012?

The last AMD card I had was a 4850 and at the time yes it was ongoing issue, I'm sure you could track down the info. In any case the jump in image quality I got going from a 4850 to a 460 blew my mind and I've since lost interest in AMD gpu's. Just wanted to know if AMD was still taking shortcuts as of late, those $300 7970's deals here and there are getting pretty tempting.

 

[HurleyBird]

Isn't it a bit late to be getting excited over what will soon become, a last gen product?

These driver improvements will be largely, if not entirely, carried over to 8xxx GCN GPUs, not to mention future APUs. Current owners get a sizable boost. What's not to like?

Isn't that why the prices have dropped, and large game bundles are offered? Inventory needs to be cleared.

Here's hoping! That being said, latest rumors are that 8970/780 aren't landing until May-ish

 

[SPBHM]

The last AMD card I had was a 4850 and at the time yes it was ongoing issue, I'm sure you could track down the info. In any case the jump in image quality I got going from a 4850 to a 460 blew my mind and I've since lost interest in AMD gpu's. Just wanted to know if AMD was still taking shortcuts as of late, those $300 7970's deals here and there are getting pretty tempting.

what? really?
I went from a RV670 to G9x card and didn't notice anything, the same as when I went from the G9X to the HD5700... any difference is pretty small, and it's simply hard to call one or the other "better" in terms of image quality.

maybe you had something strange going on... but if there was any difference that would "blow away minds" reviewers would always comment something,

 

[DarkKnightDude]

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

Not really, I'm betting they only paid a fraction of what it would cost retail to normal consumers. They probably bought a boatload of keys then spread them among the cards.

Performance for free? Any power consumption numbers?

 

[boxleitnerb]

How about some numbers from BF3 where the performance increase is largest? I'm just interested if they can utilize the units better, leading to higher consumption or if there was another bottleneck that has no influence on power usage.

 

[badb0y]

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.

Free performance is good however you slice it whether the product is current gen, last gen, next gen, is irrelevant.

 

[sontin]

Not really, I'm betting they only paid a fraction of what it would cost retail to normal consumers. They probably bought a boatload of keys then spread them among the cards.

Sure, but i don't think that they got the keys for free. We talking about Sleeping Dogs (2 months old), two not released titles and a 20% off coupon.

For the 7900 bundle i guess it costs them around $50.

 

[SPBHM]

How about some numbers from BF3 where the performance increase is largest? I'm just interested if they can utilize the units better, leading to higher consumption or if there was another bottleneck that has no influence on power usage.

I think they use BF3 for their power usage tests,

 

[Olikan]

shading improvement huh?

i would like to see this benchmark redone:

 

[Ryan Smith]

shading improvement huh?

i would like to see this benchmark redone:

Video card: OLD/NEW

7970: 115.5/122.1
7870: 109.1/113.8
7770: 75.6/79.9

 

[Final8ty]

http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/amd_catalyst_12_11_beta_download.html

 

[Olikan]

Video card: OLD/NEW

7970: 115.5/122.1
7870: 109.1/113.8
7770: 75.6/79.9

thx for the unbeliable fast benchmark

hehe...GE edition will still be abit behind of a 680
(it should be around 137 points)

 

[raghu78]

If anybody who owns a HD 7900 or HD 7800 series card can test the 12.11 drivers in BF3 and comment on any problems they face it would be useful. pcper commented on missing geometry which AMD said will be patched in the driver released to the public.

 

[MrK6]

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

It certainly seems like it. In fact, it seems like that has been AMD's problem with many of its designs over the last few years - feeding and extracting all the performance from its shaders. Still though, amazing improvement in that graph.

Video card: OLD/NEW

7970: 115.5/122.1
7870: 109.1/113.8
7770: 75.6/79.9

Holy crap that's and incredible response, thanks Ryan! Looks like ~5% improvement generally figured.

http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/amd_catalyst_12_11_beta_download.html

Not working I'll test BF3 at least as soon as I can install.

 

[Final8ty]

Its been pulled.

UPDATE - At the request of AMD the driver has been taken offline. They discovered some bugs and a new build is due to be released later today. Please keep checking this post, once we have the new build we'll update the file-mirror and thus the download.

 

[MustangSVT]

where can I get the drivers?

when are they being released?

 

[flopper]

Its been pulled.

did download and tried BF3 quick, and for me there was an obvious improvement.
then now to download the updated driver darn

 

[Lonyo]

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.

Some of us own current gen products, so performance improvements for those products are welcome.

If you got a 10% boost to your ancient 470s, would you complain?

 

[Skurge]

Anyone think the large improvements in bf3 are from AMD getting more access to the code in frostbite 2 while working with dice on medal of honour? AMD have really stepped up this year Read is putting them in shape.