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

[Silverforce11]

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 Reid is putting them in shape.

Medal of Honor is a GE title?

Hmm didn't even knew.. thought FC3 and a few others were..

 

[SirPauly]

Nice! Always nice to see more value and improved performance with drivers. The potential improvements in BF 3 is certainly nice to see.

 

[raghu78]

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.

thats what developer relations is all about. close co-ordination with the developers to extract the best possible performance. Given that GCN was a grounds up built architecture its quite fair to say the learning has taken some time to get MSAA with deferred rendering working well. :thumbsup:

Though I can appreciate AMD's GPU division the management I am mostly critical of . The poor handling of GF's 32nm manfacturing ramp with yield issues which affected Llano's initial production ramp and volume, the problem with Lllano supply for the channel late last year, killing the 28nm wichita and krishna APUs and the delays for desktop trinity are all just pathetic. atleast Kabini is looking to launch in H1 2013. No mention of Kaveri launch time frame. If it launches as late as Q4 2013 its useless. Haswell would be halfway into its first year and Broadwell on 14nm would be ramping up for launch in early Q2 2014.

 

[blastingcap]

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

Already mentioned earlier in this thread. Which you've been active on since page 1, so it's not like you just showed up on page 4 of the thread.

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graph...chmarked-surprising-performance-gains/?page=5

We wanted to see if the extra performance increased system-wide power-draw. The answer seems to be no, going by our near-on identical figures derived from Batman: Arkham City.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2059/10/ and http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2059/11/

Power Consumption Results: The system with the Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 Vapor-X used the same power at idle reguardless of the driver, but at load there was a clear difference. We were seeing about 14 Watts higher power use on average in game titles. We asked AMD about this power increase and they said it was because the new driver more effectively uses the GPU cores, which means they could possibly mean more power being used. AMD wasn't 100% sure and we won't begin to speculate, but there is a power increase that can be observed.

and

The Catalyst 12.11 Never Settle driver didn't impact the cards overclockability, which is great news. We found that taking a Radeon HD 7970 and using the 12.11 driver along with a little overclocking created one heck of a gaming graphics card!

Video card: OLD/NEW

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

Was that a new record for fastest response to a VC&G request or what?

 

[lavaheadache]

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.

How do you manage to only find negative about this topic when everything about it is oh-so good?

It is beyond me why you are allowed to come back after each time you do this crap.

 

[Endymion FRS]

Man, this driver is really making me hope Sapphire sends me a 7850 for my RMA'd 6950 now. I can dream...

 

[Rvenger]

This is good to see that AMD is getting some positive news. Last week was not looking so good. They need every break they can get right now.

 

[p_monks33]

Anyone know if this is gonna fix crossfire performance with 7970's in sleeping dogs.? I get some terrible choppy game play. I see that the performance went up. I get good performance like 70+ FPS I just want optimization and stability.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Very cool, nice job AMD.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

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.

judging from how other DX9 titles (SC2/Portal2/COD/Diablo3/AlanWake) saw some of the least improvement (and in some cases, negative results) from this driver, I don't have much hope for T:A seeing improvement

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

How do you manage to only find negative about this topic when everything about it is oh-so good?

It is beyond me why you are allowed to come back after each time you do this crap.

It baffles me also.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Already mentioned earlier in this thread. Which you've been active on since page 1, so it's not like you just showed up on page 4 of the thread.

I tend to ignore your posts, is that ok or are you going to scold me for that as well?

How do you manage to only find negative about this topic when everything about it is oh-so good?

It is beyond me why you are allowed to come back after each time you do this crap.

Why don't you relax and stop taking everything AMD related as a personal matter?

My post was clearly not meant for the people with current cards since a bundle isn't retroactive, yet you and seemingly many other owners took it personally and to heart.

If we can't discuss all aspects of hardware this place would just turn into an AD campaign, or is that what you want it to be?



I think this is great for AMD, and Nvidia, and of course us and the market.

 

[SPBHM]

judging from how other DX9 titles (SC2/Portal2/COD/Diablo3/AlanWake) saw some of the least improvement (and in some cases, negative results) from this driver, I don't have much hope for T:A seeing improvement

I'm asking about 12.3 to 12.11, not 12.8 to 12.11, 12.7b already brought good gains in many games compared to older versions,
and even from 12.8 to 12.11 I can see gains in some DX9 titles (Hard Reset, Skyrim...)

also tribes ascend was mentioned as having received some extra work on cat 12.9b (or on the CAP1), so... I'm curious to see.

 

[blastingcap]

You threadcrap on AMD threads all the time and your post history speaks for itself (and shows how little value you add to threads most of the time). That is an understatement about your behavior, but saying more would violate the terms of service of these forums, so I will simply say: "Welcome to my ignore list."

I tend to ignore your posts, is that ok

 

[spinejam]

Certainly nice to see this performance release driver -- been waiting patiently for some time.

 

[Meghan54]

How do you manage to only find negative about this topic when everything about it is oh-so good?

It is beyond me why you are allowed to come back after each time you do this crap.

Just stick him on ignore. It's not like you'll miss anything of any value at all.

 

[tviceman]

It looks to me like AMD is making a more serious push with PC gamers than Nvidia's TWIMTBP program has made in YEARS. 3 Bundling two, yet-to-be-released and likely to be very popular games with their high end cards is pretty phenomenal. And squeezing ~5-7% more performance out of their cards across the board at this point is pretty amazing too. One of the biggest reasons I like Nvidia was for their timely updates and very PC-centric focus. Lately, AMD has been doing a better job with both of these aspects. Kudos to AMD for creating way more value - I hope this continues even as they "move away" from being a PC-centric company.

 

[raghu78]

You threadcrap on AMD threads all the time and your post history speaks for itself. That is an understatement about your behavior, but saying more would violate the terms of service of these forums, so I will simply say: "Welcome to my ignore list."

very well said.

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.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...er-performance-comment-thread.html#post664855

these are driver optimizations geared towards efficient use of resources without wastage. Who cares which gen product. Many people like to keep a high end card which they purchased for 550 bucks at launch for 2 -3 years. They expect good performance improvements through driver enhancements. Improving performance with MSAA in Frostbite 2 engine is important. BF3, one of the most popular multiplayer games benefits hugely.

MOH Warfighter using the Frostbite 2 engine releases tomorrow. that title is incredibly important as its a AAA title and a GAMING EVOLVED title. For current users the driver update reaches just in time for MOH Warfighter. For prospective buyers the driver update and game bundle improves AMD's competitive positioning and provides an amazing value for gamers.

If Nvidia improves its game bundling and cuts prices you will have to thank AMD for that. so stop trolling.

 

[Termie]

Anyone find it interesting that the 7870 improves much more than the 7850? I've been saying for a while that the 7850 is an underperformer relative to older AMD cards and probably just needed better drivers. Seeing these results makes me think it just isn't well balanced. Lots of memory bandwidth but simply not enough shaders.

Taking measurements today to see if the $210 XFX HD7870 will fit in my HTPC. Also considering 660.

 

[sontin]

It looks to me like AMD is making a more serious push with PC gamers than Nvidia's TWIMTBP program has made in YEARS. 3 Bundling two, yet-to-be-released and likely to be very popular games with their high end cards is pretty phenomenal. And squeezing ~5-7% more performance out of their cards across the board at this point is pretty amazing too. One of the biggest reasons I like Nvidia was for their timely updates and very PC-centric focus. Lately, AMD has been doing a better job with both of these aspects. Kudos to AMD for creating way more value - I hope this continues even as they "move away" from being a PC-centric company.

There is no difference to nVidia. They pushed Secret Worlds and Borderlands 2. And there is HAWKEN, AC3, Mechwarrior Online, Black Ops 2 and more games coming.

The reason AMD giving 3 games and a coupon for free away is because they lost the whole OEM market to nVidia in this round. Desktop is the only place they are really selling chips right now. And instead of cutting the prices again they increase the value of the cards.

 

[tweakboy]

Get rid of CCC ,, that is when ATI/AMD will be going in the right direction.

never say die drivers lol

BTW Are interns still programming the drivers or did the real team take over after coma for 15 years. hehe

 

[tviceman]

There is no difference to nVidia. They pushed Secret Worlds and Borderlands 2. And there is HAWKEN, AC3, Mechwarrior Online, Black Ops 2 and more games coming.

The reason AMD giving 3 games and a coupon for free away is because they lost the whole OEM market to nVidia in this round. Desktop is the only place they are really selling chips right now. And instead of cutting the prices again they increase the value of the cards.

Nvidia's performance has essentially topped out since May, whereas AMD as made incremental (yet noticeable) improvements in two major driver updates since then. AMD has also had bigger game bundles in the past year than Nvidia. Not saying Nvida isn't doing stuff to promote their products, but with AMD's seemingly nonstop price cuts and bigger game bundles, on top of getting more games into their gaming evolved program than TWIMTBP lately, they are noticeably making a bigger effort to promote their products than Nvidia. And Nvidia better take notice - they cannot ride the wave of their brand name forever. People ultimately will steer towards the better deal.

 

[Thenox]

Most likely one reason it was pulled:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT2nnvvRK-I

Less houses to render = more fps, gg AMD

Just kidding, PCGH did say on their website that even when the bug doesn't happen, frames per second are identical (higher than with older drivers) - so they don't think it's deliberate.
Happened on more than one of their systems about every 5th save games loaded and restarting fixed it.

Source: http://www.pcgameshardware.de/AMD-R...der-Wundertreiber-Catalyst-1211-Beta-1031436/

 

[BallaTheFeared]

very well said.




http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...er-performance-comment-thread.html#post664855

these are driver optimizations geared towards efficient use of resources without wastage. Who cares which gen product. Many people like to keep a high end card which they purchased for 550 bucks at launch for 2 -3 years. They expect good performance improvements through driver enhancements. Improving performance with MSAA in Frostbite 2 engine is important. BF3, one of the most popular multiplayer games benefits hugely.

MOH Warfighter using the Frostbite 2 engine releases tomorrow. that title is incredibly important as its a AAA title and a GAMING EVOLVED title. For current users the driver update reaches just in time for MOH Warfighter. For prospective buyers the driver update and game bundle improves AMD's competitive positioning and provides an amazing value for gamers.

If Nvidia improves its game bundling and cuts prices you will have to thank AMD for that. so stop trolling.

So because I asked the question it's because I'm anti AMD and seek to destroy them anywhere I can, but when countless reviewers ask the question themselves, then test it, it's just good practice - something that needed to be tested?

I understand all of that, however this thread is a discussion of not only a performance increase, but the marketing pamphlet sent out by AMD. My comment was directed at that, not at the people who currently own the card. There is a huge difference there, because what I said has no relation to those people.

My comment was directed at that aspect of this conversation, the people who are considering purchasing a product at the end of it's product cycle prior to the obligatory large price reductions.

I know a lot of people are down about how AMD is currently doing, but I think it's a disservice not to discuss the other aspect of this situation, which is the 10 months into a typical 12 month product cycle "amazing deal" and the obvious other side of it.


A little bit of perspective goes a long ways.

 

[SirPauly]

. And Nvidia better take notice.

Indeed!