AMD Rolls Out New Radeon HD 7900 Graphics Driver

[hclarkjr]

Sunnyvale-based heterogeneous computing promoter AMD has today made available an updated driver for its recently-released Radeon HD 7970 graphics card. Dubbed 8.921.2 RC11, this fresh driver brings the following:

Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing and Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Preview support for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications

- AMD Radeon HD 7900 users can now enable Super Sample Anti-Aliasing and Adaptive Anti-Aliasing through the AMD Catalyst Control Center for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications.
- Applications must support in game Anti-Aliasing for the feature to work (Forced on Anti-Aliasing through the Catalyst Control Center is not supported for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications).


Performance highlights of the 8.921.2 RC11 AMD Radeon HD 7900 driver

- 8% (up to) performance improvement in Aliens vs. Predator
- 15% (up to) performance improvement in Battleforge with Anti-Aliasing enabled
- 3% (up to) performance improvement in Battlefield 3
- 3% (up to) performance improvement in Crysis 2
- 6% (up to) performance improvement in Crysis Warhead
- 10% (up to) performance improvement in F1 2010
- 5% (up to) performance improvement in Unigine with Anti-Aliasing enabled
- 250% (up to) performance improvement in TessMark (OpenGL) when set to "insane" levels

Resolved issues: highlights of the 8.921.2 RC11 AMD Radeon HD 7900 driver

- Folding@Home: intermittent stability issues have been resolved for the OpenCL version of Folding@Home
- Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 no longer experiences minor flickering with Tri CrossFireX configurations
- Dragon Age 2 no longer experiences minor flickering with Tri CrossFireX configurations
- StarCraft 2 no longer encounters issues when quitting campaign with Tri and Quad CrossFireX configurations
- BattleForge stability has been improved with Tri CrossFireX configurations
- Improved stability when enabling / disabling CrossFireX and installing the AMD graphics driver on AMD CrossfireX configurations

The 8.921.2 RC11 driver is available here for Windows 7 and Windows Vista


http://www.techpowerup.com/159065/AMD-Rolls-Out-New-Radeon-HD-7900-Graphics-Driver.html

 

[RavenSEAL]

Do people really play AvP that ****ing much? Every time there is an AMD update, AvP performance increases

 

[lavaheadache]

Do people really play AvP that ****ing much? Every time there is an AMD update, AvP performance increases

lol,I just benched AVP with this driver.

test was done using the DX11 Bench @ 2560x1600

7970 @1125/1575

Previous driver was 60fps

This driver is 65 fps.

Clear and definate improvement

 

[GaiaHunter]

Do people really play AvP that ****ing much? Every time there is an AMD update, AvP performance increases

No, but it is on most benchmarks.

Same could be said about lost planet 2

 

[Caerid]

I'm actually quite interested in the super sampling implementation.

Anyone with a 7970 care to test it out and let us know if there's a noticeable improvement in IQ or better yet post some screenshots of games using super sampling AA? And maybe show how much of a performance hit enabling super sampling AA. This may actually tip me over into buying one if it's done well.

 

[Despoiler]

These drivers are good stuff so far.

 

[ddarko]

These drivers are good stuff so far.

Yep, very early going but it seems much more solid. So far, no screen flickering in Windows or any games. Fingers crossed...

Spoke too soon. Star Wars The Old Republic flickers like crazy.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Yep, very early going but it seems much more solid. So far, no screen flickering in Windows or any games. Fingers crossed...

Spoke too soon. Star Wars The Old Republic flickers like crazy.

You're using Mutli GPU I assume so that people don't come in here thinking single cards have issues.

 

[blackened23]

Yep, very early going but it seems much more solid. So far, no screen flickering in Windows or any games. Fingers crossed...

Spoke too soon. Star Wars The Old Republic flickers like crazy.

Catalyst creator posted about this. The new swtor patch broke both sli and xfire, it will be fixed in the next day or so.

It will be in a CAP. Not the driver.

edit: these drivers are working well for me so far. No issues, slight performance boost

 

[ddarko]

You're using Mutli GPU I assume so that people don't come in here thinking single cards have issues.

Nope, a single card attached by dual DVI to a 30" monitor. It's very odd and I haven't tried yet to isolate what could be causing it. I do know I never had this issue with the 5850. Nothing has changed except for the video card and drivers.

With Star Wars, I can actually get it to stop flickering by rebooting. But once it starts flickering, quitting and restarting the game doesn't fix it, only rebooting does.

 

[x3sphere]

I'm actually quite interested in the super sampling implementation.

Anyone with a 7970 care to test it out and let us know if there's a noticeable improvement in IQ or better yet post some screenshots of games using super sampling AA? And maybe show how much of a performance hit enabling super sampling AA. This may actually tip me over into buying one if it's done well.

Here's Crysis with 4xSSAA

http://i.picpar.com/6d88489b80d7b1d412e7251ee9b807428e541a8e.jpg

2x gives me around 25-30 FPS, 4x is around 15 FPS. That's at 2560x1600 though

Makes the foliage look A LOT better.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Anyone getting horrendous stuttering with Crysis 2 on their 7970? Game is unplayable, but the framerate counter on Afterburner never drops below 45fps.

2500k at 4.5ghz
8gb ram
7970 at 1125/1575

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Anyone getting horrendous stuttering with Crysis 2 on their 7970? Game is unplayable, but the framerate counter on Afterburner never drops below 45fps.

2500k at 4.5ghz
8gb ram
7970 at 1125/1575

Crossfired 7970s here. Don't have that issue.

I actually got a boost in perf on crysis 2 if anything. Have you tried switching drivers to see if it still shows that problem?

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I think I had a virus scan running in the background and it was a hard driver issues. It was chugging whenever new textures were loading. After a restart the problem was gone.