[hardocp] 2012 AMD Video Card Driver Performance Review

[Final8ty]

We continuing our look at driver performance improvements over time by evaluating AMD’s 2012 driver performances on both the AMD Radeon HD 7970 and HD 7950 video cards. We will see how drivers from the beginning of the year to the end of year have impacted real world gameplay performance .

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/02/18/2012_amd_video_card_driver_performance_review#.USO3lGdw6do

 

[Eureka]

I can't tell if this says that the AMD driver team is extremely competent and managed to pull a miracle out of their cards, or if they were wholly incompetent and finally figured out how to write drivers for their cards after nvidia brought on competition.

60% improvement on the 7950 from the RC to the 12.11 release??

 

[Tweak155]

Yeah overall that's a bad thing. Buying a card and then not being able to use it in a sense? Pretty annoying.

Obviously this is a good thing now for current owners, but overall seems like a mess.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

By far the stupidest collection of in game settings to test high end gpu's I have ever witnessed. They show the 7950 getting huge gains compared to the 7970 by using completely different settings with seemingly no rhyme or reason to it.

 

[WelshBloke]

Yeah overall that's a bad thing. Buying a card and then not being able to use it in a sense? Pretty annoying.

Obviously this is a good thing now for current owners, but overall seems like a mess.

People bought it on the strength of its performance at the time of purchase. The extra performance later is just a bonus.

If it had been sold on the basis of the extra performance and you didn't get that until months later then you'd have a legit gripe.

 

[Tweak155]

People bought it on the strength of its performance at the time of purchase. The extra performance later is just a bonus.

If it had been sold on the basis of the extra performance and you didn't get that until months later then you'd have a legit gripe.

Yeah but makes you wonder what other performance you're missing due to bad software.

It all depends on your views I suppose. I see it as not getting something you should have had in the first place for X amount of time.

 

[The Alias]

Yeah but makes you wonder what other performance you're missing due to bad software.

It all depends on your views I suppose. I see it as not getting something you should have had in the first place for X amount of time.

but you bought the product for what it was at the time so if it gets better then that should strictly be a good thing

 

[blastingcap]

I can't tell if this says that the AMD driver team is extremely competent and managed to pull a miracle out of their cards, or if they were wholly incompetent and finally figured out how to write drivers for their cards after nvidia brought on competition.

60% improvement on the 7950 from the RC to the 12.11 release??

The latter.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Hey works for me, with Titan price gouging I'll vote with my wallet and pick up an extremely undervalued 7950.

Glad AMD is getting their drivers sorted, they've always had better hardware.

 

[Tweak155]

but you bought the product for what it was at the time so if it gets better then that should strictly be a good thing

You can't assume one's reason for buying the card. This is bad reasoning.

 

[Meekers]

You can't assume one's reason for buying the card. This is bad reasoning.

That does not even make sense. How else to you evaluate cards other than what their performance is at the time of purchase?

I bought my 7950 in July when the price suddenly plummeted to $315 while after market 670s were still all over $400. I had no idea that there would be massive driver improvements coming after my purchase, and I certainly did not count on anything other than normal marginal improvements. I bought the card because at the time of purchase it was the best value at my price range. Any other reason is pretty stupid.

 

[Phynaz]

Yeah overall that's a bad thing. Buying a card and then not being able to use it in a sense? Pretty annoying.

Obviously this is a good thing now for current owners, but overall seems like a mess.

Who bought one of these cards and wasn't able to use it "in a sense"?

 

[Tweak155]

That does not even make sense. How else to you evaluate cards other than what their performance is at the time of purchase?

I bought my 7950 in July when the price suddenly plummeted to $315 while after market 670s were still all over $400. I had no idea that there would be massive driver improvements coming after my purchase, and I certainly did not count on anything other than normal marginal improvements. I bought the card because at the time of purchase it was the best value at my price range. Any other reason is pretty stupid.

A stupid reason is still a reason. But can you tell me why I bought my 560ti 448? You should be able to since you know everyone else's reason.

EDIT:

Same for my 6870. I don't play on one side of the fence although you may get that impression.

 

[Tweak155]

Who bought one of these cards and wasn't able to use it "in a sense"?

They were able to use it in a crippled manner. Sure, if they were unhappy with it they could likely return it.

Regardless, you're saying it's a good thing AMD didn't write the drivers correctly to begin with?

 

[Madpacket]

A little off topic but TBH I'm pretty happy about this.

I've been BTC mining on my pair of 7970's for over a year now and they have earned 3x their value. The driver fixes for microstutter and performance increases are taking place at the perfect time as I'm actually going to start very soon playing games on them (ASICS will be out soon rendering GPU's useless for mining).

Pretty happy

 

[MustangSVT]

they were good value with performance/price. extra performance with driver is just a good thing.

if they were not a good value, it would be like AMD cpus .

 

[MustangSVT]

A stupid reason is still a reason. But can you tell me why I bought my 560ti 448? You should be able to since you know everyone else's reason.

EDIT:

Same for my 6870. I don't play on one side of the fence although you may get that impression.

yes but a stupid one.

 

[Tweak155]

they were good value with performance/price. extra performance with driver is just a good thing.

if they were not a good value, it would be like AMD cpus .

I'm not saying extra performance from a driver update is a bad thing. I'm saying having such a large performance gap from the beginning is a bad thing. If I had to pick which one currently "weighs" more, I would say the missing performance from the beginning holds greater weight.

In a year or so, it won't matter as much.

But like I originally said, it is also your personal point of view.

 

[RussianSensation]

Glad AMD is getting their drivers sorted, they've always had better hardware.

Until they fix DX10/11 stuttering with a full memory management re-write, it somewhat makes sense that they focus on improving the gaming experience for millions of existing HD7000 owners and potential ones still looking to upgrade to cheaper cards. There are plenty of people who had no interest in buying $400-500 mid-range GPUs last year and in 2013 they'll be looking to jump to a $250 HD7970 / GTX670. Also, drivers need to be solid for their mobile parts.

Around Mid-2012 HD7970M got its ass kicked by GTX680M. By end of this month AMD managed to get it to perform at 95% of the GTX680M!! GTX680M costs $350 more. :biggrin:
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellst...el_id=alienware-m17x-r4&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19

I wouldn't say AMD has had better hardware always though. HD2900XT/3870 sucked. Also, I can't say my HD6950 was better than GTX470 quality wise. I was very impressed by the reference quality of the 470 actually. That card took a beating and a half in my system running Seti @ Home loaded 99% for almost a year @ 760mhz GPU clock and didn't skip a beat/fail.

 

[BoFox]

60% improvement on the 7950 from the RC to the 12.11 release??

If [F]laccidOCP really wanted to be honest (as to not be misleading), they would've used games that were already available with the oldest drivers, rather than mainly using games like FC3, etc.. that came much later on.

Of course, such newer games would be terribly unoptimized with much older drivers. Once these newer demanding kinds of games are released, they need a lot of driver optimization, to take advantage of the video card architecture - even for the setup of specific individual cards.

[H]ARD FAIL.

 

[ehpexs]

A little off topic but TBH I'm pretty happy about this.

I've been BTC mining on my pair of 7970's for over a year now and they have earned 3x their value. The driver fixes for microstutter and performance increases are taking place at the perfect time as I'm actually going to start very soon playing games on them (ASICS will be out soon rendering GPU's useless for mining).

Pretty happy

Is it possible, not having free electricity, for bit coin mining to actually make you money?

 

[Phynaz]

They were able to use it in a crippled manner. Sure, if they were unhappy with it they could likely return it.

Regardless, you're saying it's a good thing AMD didn't write the drivers correctly to begin with?

Got a link to any review of the products that said they were crippled upon release?

I like the fact the engineers have continued to invest the time and effort to improve the experience I have with the hardware I have purchased. It actually increases the value of my purchase over time.

 

[Enigmoid]

Why do they put this series of three graphs? Frankly it seems silly, they should have a graph with the release driver and with the latest driver so that people can see directly the improvement, rather than extrapolating from graph 1 to graph 2 to graph 3.

What is exactly the point of testing games that were released after the card was released? Games tested should be available when the card was first released so that an accurate comparison can be made.

 

[Tweak155]

Got a link to any review of the products that said they were crippled upon release?

I like the fact the engineers have continued to invest the time and effort to improve the experience I have with the hardware I have purchased. It actually increases the value of my purchase over time.

This thread? You think hardware was magically added from these driver updates?

 

[f1sherman]

Including FC3 was indeed a weird decision...

According to computerbase relative perf. of NV and AMD cards is virtually unchanged since GTX 670 release (May 2012).
Pretty shocking considering how often we hear about AMD drivers pulling ahead with each release.
With newer drivers GCN does pull ahead vs HD6000, but not so much vs Fermi, and not at all vs Kepler.

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/test-nvidia-geforce-gtx-670/4/
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2013/test-17-grafikkarten-im-vergleich/3/