Catalyst 10.12 performance review and comparison of three generations of AMD/Nvidia

[Termie]

Link: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Catalyst_10.12_Performance/1.html

This is interesting not only for those looking to install catalyst 10.12, but also as a comparison between the 4870, 5870, 6970, GTX285, GTX480, and GTX580.

The first thing you'll see is generally modest improvements in performance over time for all cards, with a few big jumps in some games, as well as some surprising drop-offs. The second thing you'll see is that the 5870 was a much bigger jump over the 4870 than the 6970 is over the 5870, and the history of driver improvements suggests that the 6970 will never really pull that far away from the 5870 (except in tesselation, given the Unigine results).

A couple of notes: (1) the older cards are only shown in older non-DX11 games; and (2) the article doesn't specify whether the 4870 is 512MB or 1GB, but from the poor score it puts up in Far Cry 2, I'm guessing 512MB.

 

[thilanliyan]

Lol, it's funny that performance goes down sometimes for the ATI cards. Also, the 5870 seems to be holding its own...not bad for a year+ old card.

EDIT:
Performance goes down for the 285 and 480 sometimes too. Its just funny to see that.

 

[Lonyo]

Link: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Catalyst_10.12_Performance/1.html

This is interesting not only for those looking to install catalyst 10.12, but also as a comparison between the 4870, 5870, 6970, GTX285, GTX480, and GTX580.

The first thing you'll see is generally modest improvements in performance over time for all cards, with a few big jumps in some games, as well as some surprising drop-offs. The second thing you'll see is that the 5870 was a much bigger jump over the 4870 than the 6970 is over the 5870, and the history of driver improvements suggests that the 6970 will never really pull that far away from the 5870 (except in tesselation, given the Unigine results).

A couple of notes: (1) the older cards are only shown in older non-DX11 games; and (2) the article doesn't specify whether the 4870 is 512MB or 1GB, but from the poor score it puts up in Far Cry 2, I'm guessing 512MB.

Well what some people think for the HD6970 is that the new architecture may lead to some performance games when they are more optimised for it.
It's quite surprising that the 5870 got as big gains as it did in some games, given that it's pretty much the same as the 4870.
If you look at SupCom, that got a 10+% gain from one driver update. (Obviously not going to apply across the board). There might be room for gains due to the new architecture, but gains through updates are never guaranteed, so you can only go based on current performance.

 

[CraigRT]

As a 5870 owner with the newest 10.12 drivers, this makes me happy to see.

It's a rockin' card.

 

[BD231]

Lol, it's funny that performance goes down sometimes for the ATI cards. Also, the 5870 seems to be holding its own...not bad for a year+ old card.

Its on the exact same process ...

 

[sandorski]

Lol, it's funny that performance goes down sometimes for the ATI cards. Also, the 5870 seems to be holding its own...not bad for a year+ old card.

Sometimes for nvidia too.

 

[AlucardX]

went from 10.4 to 10.12 (uninstalled old through program features, didn't use driver cleaner) and the next day i found out my machine blue screened at 6AM. i ran a crash report on the dump file and it was an ATI driver file. uninstalled, driver cleaned, and rolled back to 10.11..

did some searches on google and seems like other people were getting bluescreens with the 10.12's as well.

 

[tijag]

Link: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Catalyst_10.12_Performance/1.html

This is interesting not only for those looking to install catalyst 10.12, but also as a comparison between the 4870, 5870, 6970, GTX285, GTX480, and GTX580.

The first thing you'll see is generally modest improvements in performance over time for all cards, with a few big jumps in some games, as well as some surprising drop-offs. The second thing you'll see is that the 5870 was a much bigger jump over the 4870 than the 6970 is over the 5870, and the history of driver improvements suggests that the 6970 will never really pull that far away from the 5870 (except in tesselation, given the Unigine results).

A couple of notes: (1) the older cards are only shown in older non-DX11 games; and (2) the article doesn't specify whether the 4870 is 512MB or 1GB, but from the poor score it puts up in Far Cry 2, I'm guessing 512MB.

I think saying that the 5870 was a bigger leap over the 4870, than the 6970 is over the 5870 is sorta a no brainer conclusion. The 6970 and the 5870 are on the same process, obviously it won't have the performance increases that the 5870 had over the 4870. Also, isn't it fair to say that the GTX480 increased over the GTX280 much more than the GTX 580 did over the GTX480?

 

[Qbah]

Man, it just shows what an amazing card the HD5870 was and still is. It's available for 15 months now!

People yap about that the HD6970 is a new architecture and what not... but who cares? It's the end result that matters and this "new generation" is a failure in my eyes. It's pretty much HD5870 with better tessellation, performance-wise. It even has the same MSRP as the HD5870... So pretty much the same performance and the same price for what was available 15 months ago already... yay, not.

AMD had a chance here. They were the absolute leaders for ~8 months with the HD5xxx series. And they blew it. This could have been the "two" in "one-two". All the people who grabbed their 5-series Radeons on release day have made the best choice ever IMO.


EDIT: It very much reminds me of X1950XTX -> HD2900XT. Hell, the HD6970 seems even weaker actually as it offers absolutely nothing new, just better tessellation speed. Even that doesn't really show either... and if it does, either both cards completely suck (Metro2033) or play the game smooth anyway (HAWX2). At least the HD2900XT has DX10... And it was considered a failure! So why is a HD6970 suddenly so awesome?

 

[sandorski]

Man, it just shows what an amazing card the HD5870 was and still is. It's available for 15 months now!

People yap about that the HD6970 is a new architecture and what not... but who cares? It's the end result that matters and this "new generation" is a failure in my eyes. It's pretty much HD5870 with better tessellation, performance-wise. It even has the same MSRP as the HD5870... So pretty much the same performance and the same price for what was available 15 months ago already... yay, not.

AMD had a chance here. They were the absolute leaders for ~8 months with the HD5xxx series. And they blew it. This could have been the "two" in "one-two". All the people who grabbed their 5-series Radeons on release day have made the best choice ever IMO.


EDIT: It very much reminds me of X1950XTX -> HD2900XT. Hell, the HD6970 seems even weaker actually as it offers absolutely nothing new, just better tessellation speed. Even that doesn't really show either... and if it does, either both cards completely suck (Metro2033) or play the game smooth anyway (HAWX2). At least the HD2900XT has DX10... And it was considered a failure! So why is a HD6970 suddenly so awesome?

TSMC failed both AMD and Nvidia.

 

[GaiaHunter]

EDIT: It very much reminds me of X1950XTX -> HD2900XT. Hell, the HD6970 seems even weaker actually as it offers absolutely nothing new, just better tessellation speed. Even that doesn't really show either... and if it does, either both cards completely suck (Metro2033) or play the game smooth anyway (HAWX2). At least the HD2900XT has DX10... And it was considered a failure! So why is a HD6970 suddenly so awesome?

Because the competition isn't a 8800GTX either.

The 6970 is a cut down chip to fit die size on the 40nm process. For a new major architecture, that was designed to 32nm, doesn't seem to have the major problems that sometimes happen.

It is faster than the 5870, sometimes not that much, but at higher resolutions the difference gaps widens, this card performance isn't far from the GTX580 and it is not that expensive.

Of course the fact that the 2900XT was a really big chip, much slower than the competition and came late didn't help it one bit.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Wow, the 5870 gave the GTX480 a pretty good run in a lot of those tests. When the GTX480 was faster, it was generally faster by a larger margin. But in quite a few of those tests the 5870 was right there with the GTX480.

It looks like newer drivers are a pretty mixed bag. Overall the cards look like they gained when compared to launch drivers, but a lot of the results didn't budge too much after a while.

 

[Gloomy]

Well, when you're in the habit of randomly 'optimizing' gfx quality without anyone's consent...

 

[BFG10K]

This is actually a timely piece given I’ve just finished an article about the performance effect of driver updates on the Radeon 5770.

It’s a shame they wasted two whole pages on synthetics when they could’ve filled those slots with more games.

 

[Phynaz]

This is actually a timely piece given I’ve just finished an article about the performance effect of driver updates on the Radeon 5770.

It’s a shame they wasted two whole pages on synthetics when they could’ve filled those slots with more games.

Cool, thanks for this!

 

[Qbah]

It's the second time AMD does it (well, ATi before):

Almost no performance change:
X1950XTX -> HD2900XT -> HD3870
HD5870 -> HD6970

nVidia did it too, mind you:
8800GTX -> 9800GTX (plus all the renaming and general LOL products in the value/low-end segment)

We had great leaps from the HD3870 to the HD4870 (>x2 and same node!) to the HD5870 (~x2). Same with nVidia (9800GTX -> GTX280 -> GTX480). I just hate BS in general, doesn't matter which color it is. And for me the HD69xx is BS. At least the GTX570/GTX580 improved thermals and noise drastically with a small speed bump. Something measurable and part of enjoying your games. There's nothing that screams "BUY ME!" when looking at the new HD69xx. A very much "past nVidia" attitude for me - "we'll give them pretty much the same thing with a new name, call it NEXT GEN! and make pretty eyes".

 

[sandorski]

It's the second time AMD does it (well, ATi before):

Almost no performance change:
X1950XTX -> HD2900XT -> HD3870
HD5870 -> HD6970

nVidia did it too, mind you:
8800GTX -> 9800GTX (plus all the renaming and general LOL products in the value/low-end segment)

We had great leaps from the HD3870 to the HD4870 (>x2 and same node!) to the HD5870 (~x2). Same with nVidia (9800GTX -> GTX280 -> GTX480). I just hate BS in general, doesn't matter which color it is. And for me the HD69xx is BS. At least the GTX570/GTX580 improved thermals and noise drastically with a small speed bump. Something measurable and part of enjoying your games. There's nothing that screams "BUY ME!" when looking at the new HD69xx. A very much "past nVidia" attitude for me - "we'll give them pretty much the same thing with a new name, call it NEXT GEN! and make pretty eyes".

So they basically accomplished what AMD had with the 5xxx series, then AMD got similar gains going from 58xx to 69xx as NVidia got going 4xx to 5xx.

TSMC is the culprit.

 

[Qbah]

So they basically accomplished what AMD had with the 5xxx series, then AMD got similar gains going from 58xx to 69xx as NVidia got going 4xx to 5xx.

TSMC is the culprit.

I guess you can look at it this way too. They did all they could with the resources available, doing a major architecture change in preparation for next generation cards on smaller nodes. CF scaling is amazing so it does bring hope for the future cards (like HD4870->HD5870 earlier). But still, now is now and I will be happy about future products when this future actually arrives and I will be able to buy said products. I am judging the latest offerings based on what is already available on the market. Hence for me the new cards are weak.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

It's the second time AMD does it (well, ATi before):

Almost no performance change:
X1950XTX -> HD2900XT -> HD3870
HD5870 -> HD6970

nVidia did it too, mind you:
8800GTX -> 9800GTX (plus all the renaming and general LOL products in the value/low-end segment)

We had great leaps from the HD3870 to the HD4870 (>x2 and same node!) to the HD5870 (~x2). Same with nVidia (9800GTX -> GTX280 -> GTX480). I just hate BS in general, doesn't matter which color it is. And for me the HD69xx is BS. At least the GTX570/GTX580 improved thermals and noise drastically with a small speed bump. Something measurable and part of enjoying your games. There's nothing that screams "BUY ME!" when looking at the new HD69xx. A very much "past nVidia" attitude for me - "we'll give them pretty much the same thing with a new name, call it NEXT GEN! and make pretty eyes".

To the bolded part. Seriously? I see an almost consistent 20%+ bump in speed. In newer games (shader heavy) its over 50% faster...

http://xtreview.com/review195.htm

 

[Qbah]

To the bolded part. Seriously? I see an almost consistent 20%+ bump in speed. In newer games (shader heavy) its over 50% faster...

http://xtreview.com/review195.htm

Next time you might want to:

1. Link to a review that actually compares the X1950XTX to a HD2900XT
2. Use some normal site, like TPU - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/HD_2900_XT/6.html

Just sayin'

 

[Voo]

Did I miss something or why do the Cat 9.4 drivers result in MUCH better performance in lots of games for the 4870 cards? I can understand why we don't see a large improvement, but a loss from 71 to 58.3fps (Dawn of war 2) or 26.8 to 23.8 (FC 2) is noticeable..

 

[Troll Trolling]

Next time you might want to:

1. Link to a review that actually compares the X1950XTX to a HD2900XT
2. Use some normal site, like TPU - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/HD_2900_XT/6.html

Just sayin'

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1115/msi_radeon_hd_2900_xt_512mb_graphics_card/
Newer drives improved performance by a lot. In a few weeks.

OT: I searched in Google if I was spelling "weeks" right (I wrote 'weaks' first, than I got confused, than I googled it), and Google said that, according to his calculator, 1 week = 7 days.
I lol'd

 

[Lonyo]

This is actually a timely piece given I’ve just finished an article about the performance effect of driver updates on the Radeon 5770.

It’s a shame they wasted two whole pages on synthetics when they could’ve filled those slots with more games.

Actually it's not a total shame (although it is excessive), since it does show that they are optimising for games and not for synthetics (which is what common sense says they should be doing anyway), and reinforces the idea that synthetics are indeed useless, as improvements in games don't get reflected by them pretty much at all.

They've done the crappy work so you don't have to!

 

[3DVagabond]

Man, it just shows what an amazing card the HD5870 was and still is. It's available for 15 months now!

People yap about that the HD6970 is a new architecture and what not... but who cares? It's the end result that matters and this "new generation" is a failure in my eyes. It's pretty much HD5870 with better tessellation, performance-wise. It even has the same MSRP as the HD5870... So pretty much the same performance and the same price for what was available 15 months ago already... yay, not.

AMD had a chance here. They were the absolute leaders for ~8 months with the HD5xxx series. And they blew it. This could have been the "two" in "one-two". All the people who grabbed their 5-series Radeons on release day have made the best choice ever IMO.


EDIT: It very much reminds me of X1950XTX -> HD2900XT. Hell, the HD6970 seems even weaker actually as it offers absolutely nothing new, just better tessellation speed. Even that doesn't really show either... and if it does, either both cards completely suck (Metro2033) or play the game smooth anyway (HAWX2). At least the HD2900XT has DX10... And it was considered a failure! So why is a HD6970 suddenly so awesome?

I feel pretty much the same way. Not quite as strongly as to call it a failure, but not impressed for sure. Especially when considering, as you said, how much better, overall, the 5000 series was compared to the competition and all nVidia came out with was a 100& working 400 series. The 6800 is a much bigger improvement than the 6900, with all of it's new architecture. So, yeah, overall, pretty disappointing for me as well.

 

[Kuzi]

The 69xx series is a more radical change compared to the older Radeons released over the last few years. It seems obvious to me that at least in some cases Cayman cards are being held back by the drivers. I think in the next few months we'll see a nice jump in performance for the 6970 and 6950 from newer drivers.