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Get your AMD 10.3a Drivers today: Yes, with an "a".

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sciwizam

sciwizam

Golden Member
Oct 22, 2004
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[H]

AMD is putting out a new "performance" driver that sports some very aggressive frame rate increases according to AMD. The new "10.3a" driver will soon be released to the enthusiast with a WHQL driver coming in shortly behind that. Interestingly enough, the non-WHQL will have a couple more tweaks than the WHQL version. Let's give you the details.
Click to expand...
I am going to cut and paste here so you can see exactly what AMD is telling us.
This ATI Catalyst™ driver update will unlock new performance improvements on top of the already previewed features in the initial Catalyst™ 10.3 Preview driver we sampled you in February. This driver will be available to download on March 17th from undgerground.amd.com and it will be called "Catalyst 10.3a Preview". On March 24th we will post the official Catalyst™ 10.3 WHQL certified on amd.com. The difference between the two is that Catalyst™ 10.3a Preview will contain future Eyefinty 6 updates and an Alien vs. Predator optimization which the Catalyst™ 10.3 WHQL posting does not have.
​
As noted there in bold, the non-WHQL driver will contain a couple of features that the WHQL 10.3 will not. I would guess that these features did not make it into the driver in time for WHQL testing and will likely be rolled in next time. If you are playing AvP, it would make sense to grab to non-WHQL version to get every frame you can out of AvP as it is a very demanding game.
Click to expand...
AMD is referring to this new 10.3a driver internally as "The Performance Driver." As you might guess, we have been wondering exactly what is gong to perform better and it looks as if AMD is not just blowing PR smoke on this point. Here is an AMD-supplied list of gaming performance improvements. These are NOT HardOCP in-house test numbers, so they are to be taken with a grain of salt. But surely the 10.3 driver looks to be a big step forward as AMD had made some impactful tweaks to its Catalyst driver set. It is very interesting to note that not all the performance benefits are only extended to the Radeon 5000 series but also to the Radeon 4800 series of GPUs as well.

Aliens vs. Predator


  • Overall performance increases 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
Battleforge


  • Improves up to 8% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
  • Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Call of Duty: World at War


  • Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
  • Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Company of Heroes


  • Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
  • Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Crysis and Crysis Warhead


  • Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
  • Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
DiRT 2


  • Improves up to 30% on ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
  • Improves up to 20% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
  • Improves up to 10% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Far Cry 2


  • Improves up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
  • Improves up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Left 4 Dead & Left 4 Dead 2


  • Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Clear Sky


  • Improves up to 2% with ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
  • Improves up to 2% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
Resident Evil 5


  • Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series products
  • Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.


  • Improves up to 15% with ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics products
  • Improves up to 20% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
  • Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products
World in Conflict


  • Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series products
  • Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series products
  • Improves up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series products

Note: This list is not exhaustive and more improvements are possible
Click to expand...
All of this according to AMD, so YMMV.
 
Kuzi

Kuzi

Senior member
Sep 16, 2007
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ATI doesn't want to give Nvidia any kind of break it seems, now with the release of these drivers the situation may look worse for Fermi.

I'm also guessing an ATI refresh card is not far off.
 
Keysplayr

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,219
55
91
Great, I'll have two WHOLE days to be able to use 10.3a WHQLs for my testing.
 
The Sauce

The Sauce

Diamond Member
Oct 31, 1999
4,741
34
91
Is anyone seeing a link to the drivers at that site? I checked last night and they weren't there. Still not seeing them.
 
S

SlowSpyder

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
17,305
1,002
126
I'd love to see a site like Anandtech do some benches with these drivers and previous driver versions. You almost have to wonder if AMD was sandbagging a little bit, waiting to get close to the Fermi launch to release a driver that unlocks more oomph.
 
sciwizam

sciwizam

Golden Member
Oct 22, 2004
1,953
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keysplayr said:
what is going to be available on march 24th on amd.com?
Click to expand...

on march 24th we will post the official catalyst™ 10.3 whql certified on amd.com. the difference between the two is that catalyst™ 10.3a preview will contain future eyefinty 6 updates and an alien vs. Predator optimization which the catalyst™ 10.3 whql posting does not have.
Click to expand...

RTFA :awe:
 
K

Kenmitch

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
8,505
2,250
136
Bateluer said:
I own none of the games on the list . . .
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Dude look at my sig....I don't own any games. I'm not a gamer but I like to play with the technology. :D

Now I'm thinking of buying a game but haven't decided which one. I kinda like the game play of things like Tomb Raider, Drakes Fortune etc. Anybody got some rec's for something that has some nice eye candy and would take advantage of my system.

BD231 said:
Doing as much as they can before Fermi, cool.
Click to expand...

I think they are just trying to tweak the drivers for better performance currently. If it was just to mess with nvidia then I'd think something more like a bios update for the ref cards would be more in order. Most of the cards are conservativly clocked at the moment.
 
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sciwizam

sciwizam

Golden Member
Oct 22, 2004
1,953
0
0
Soleron said:
Review of 10.3a's performance: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1253/1/
Click to expand...

Crossfire folks have something to look forward to!

During our conversation with AMD this morning, we also got a heads up that in the next few days an ATI Crossfire profile update is in the works for Battlefield2: Bad Company that will increase performance by up to 75%!

"We are also getting ready an Crossfire profile update ready to post in the next few days that will improve performance even more. For example rumor has it that Battlefield2: Bad Company will see an FPS increase from 40 to 70" AMD PR
Click to expand...
 
B

blanketyblank

Golden Member
Jan 23, 2007
1,149
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0
If 480 was expected to be only about 15-20% faster than a 5870 and the new drivers boost these cards performance 2-20% depending on the game, benchmarks are going to look pretty bad for Nvidia's new card. I guess a lot of the difference between benchmarks is going to be based on what games are chosen now with sites who want to show Fermi dominating always including batman in their tests while excluding hawx and dirt 2 where the bump would help ATI.
 
Sylvanas

Sylvanas

Diamond Member
Jan 20, 2004
3,752
0
0
Impressive gains. Particularly interested in the Stalker COP DX11 situation.
 
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