New Catalyst 10.7 available now!!

[happy medium]

10.4's 10.6's had performance improvements, as does this release for Borderlands. Nvidia has release 2 solid performance drivers since release, ATI has released many more than that since release (naturally, they had a 6month head start). The way the driver team operates you cannot expect every month a new driver that increases every game by 5%, it would be nice if that happned but driver teams need to prioritise other things many months prior (it takes 2 months generally from when a driver is 'finnished' to when it arrives with WHQL certification for download). These priorities may be panel scaling, video features or bug fixes, none of which are trivial investments.

Funny, if there were improvements why would they say that in the review?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3809/nvidias-geforce-gtx-460-the-200-king/5

So with the 6 month head start, your saying that ATI pretty much did most of its game performance upgrades on a driver level allready?
That might explain the gtx 470 creeping up on 5870 level of performance?

As far as the these drivers are concerned, you guys think they are worth a download? My system seems just fine the way it is.

 

[evolucion8]

By HappyMedium's review, this is my summary.

In Crysis, the 5870 matched the GTX 470 in everything except in minimum framerates at 2560x1600 were both were too slow to matter, interesting point that the HD 5850 was slightly ahead of the HD 5870 and the HD 4890 was only .4fps behind of it, is it a driver issue or VRAM limitation?

In Battleforge DX10, the GTX 470 was slightly faster than the HD 5870 except in 2560x1600 were the sides are switched and the slight edge goes to the 5870, in this game the difference between the GTX 470 and the HD 5870 are slim.

In BattleForge DX11, the same story goes again, but this time the performance difference between GTX 470 and HD 5870 gets smaller.

HAWX the same thing again.

In Left for Dead, the HD 5870 even dominates the GTX 480, but at such high fps, does it really matter?

In Battlefield BC 2, the HD 5870 is slightly faster than the GTX 470 except in 2560x1600 were the GTX 470 is slightly faster, but yet both are too slow for playability.

The same thing repeats again in STALKER COP.

In Dirt 2, the GTX 470 is slightly faster in 1680x1050 resolution, matches the HD 5870 in 1920x1080 and looses against the HD 5870 at 2560x1600 by a small margin.

In Mass Effect 2, the HD 5870 outperforms by 15% average the GTX 470 in all resolutions except 2560x1600 were the performance difference is about 5.1fps.

In Wolfenstein, the HD 5870 abnd GTX 470 are evenly matched at 1680x1050 but at higher resolutions the HD 5870 edges the HD 470 by a noticeable margin.

"We’ve seen the GTX 460 lock horns with the 5850, and while the 5850 is undoubtedly the faster gaming card the $300 price point no longer makes as much sense as it once did with a $230 1GB GTX 460 below it. AMD either needs a 5840, or a price drop on the 5850 to bring its price more in line with its performance."

I think that means that the hybrid scalar/superscalar approach like the GTX 460 has, is better than a native superscalar approach like AMD has in its current architecture, I think that the HD 5800 series are maxed, that's why AMD will not create a 3200 stream processor monster, doesn't make any sense to go any wider if you can't keep feeding the execution resources, they need to improve their architecture or will stall. But at least were are sure for something, AMD compiler is one of the best compilers currently in the market.

I find pretty interesting the fact that they're still improving the HD 4800 performance currently, seems that it proves once again that the HD 4800 stream processors has higher IPC compared to the HD 5800 stream processors which proves that the HD 5800 series are less sensitive to driver performance gains.

 

[konakona]

By HappyMedium's review, this is my summary.

Good summary, and the conclusion makes a lot of sense. I wonder how different / similar SI will be compared to the 5000 class, if they are too similar then they may not fare well against the refreshed version of fermi. Of course, I don't know enough about SI to make any predictions.

Currently though, for 1080p and below anyway looks like you would be happy with either card performance-wise... When is crysis 2 coming out agian?

 

[happy medium]

By HappyMedium's review, this is my summary.

In Crysis, the 5870 matched the GTX 470 in everything except in minimum framerates at 2560x1600 were both were too slow to matter, interesting point that the HD 5850 was slightly ahead of the HD 5870 and the HD 4890 was only .4fps behind of it, is it a driver issue or VRAM limitation?

In Battleforge DX10, the GTX 470 was slightly faster than the HD 5870 except in 2560x1600 were the sides are switched and the slight edge goes to the 5870, in this game the difference between the GTX 470 and the HD 5870 are slim.

In BattleForge DX11, the same story goes again, but this time the performance difference between GTX 470 and HD 5870 gets smaller.

HAWX the same thing again.

In Left for Dead, the HD 5870 even dominates the GTX 480, but at such high fps, does it really matter?

In Battlefield BC 2, the HD 5870 is slightly faster than the GTX 470 except in 2560x1600 were the GTX 470 is slightly faster, but yet both are too slow for playability.

The same thing repeats again in STALKER COP.

In Dirt 2, the GTX 470 is slightly faster in 1680x1050 resolution, matches the HD 5870 in 1920x1080 and looses against the HD 5870 at 2560x1600 by a small margin.

In Mass Effect 2, the HD 5870 outperforms by 15% average the GTX 470 in all resolutions except 2560x1600 were the performance difference is about 5.1fps.

In Wolfenstein, the HD 5870 abnd GTX 470 are evenly matched at 1680x1050 but at higher resolutions the HD 5870 edges the HD 470 by a noticeable margin.

"We’ve seen the GTX 460 lock horns with the 5850, and while the 5850 is undoubtedly the faster gaming card the $300 price point no longer makes as much sense as it once did with a $230 1GB GTX 460 below it. AMD either needs a 5840, or a price drop on the 5850 to bring its price more in line with its performance."

I think that means that the hybrid scalar/superscalar approach like the GTX 460 has, is better than a native superscalar approach like AMD has in its current architecture, I think that the HD 5800 series are maxed, that's why AMD will not create a 3200 stream processor monster, doesn't make any sense to go any wider if you can't keep feeding the execution resources, they need to improve their architecture or will stall. But at least were are sure for something, AMD compiler is one of the best compilers currently in the market.

I find pretty interesting the fact that they're still improving the HD 4800 performance currently, seems that it proves once again that the HD 4800 stream processors has higher IPC compared to the HD 5800 stream processors which proves that the HD 5800 series are less sensitive to driver performance gains.

:thumbsup:

 

[Sylvanas]

Funny, if there were improvements

Which there were, read the release notes.

why would they say that in the review?

That's the reviews opionion, this doesn't change anything nor is related to what I said.

So with the 6 month head start, your saying that ATI pretty much did most of its game performance upgrades on a driver level allready?
That might explain the gtx 470 creeping up on 5870 level of performance?

No, that's not what I said, in fact the opposite is probably true. I noted the history of the previous few months whereby there have been performance improvements with every other revision give or take. The same is true for Nvidia so it goes to show that both vendors are still actively pursuing optimisations on a per game basis even to the present day.

 

[Scali]

No, that's not what I said, in fact the opposite is probably true. I noted the history of the previous few months whereby there have been performance improvements with every other revision give or take. The same is true for Nvidia so it goes to show that both vendors are still actively pursuing optimisations on a per game basis even to the present day.

I think nVidia has more wiggle-room when it comes to non-specific optimizations though, with the Fermi architecture still being relatively new (and the GF104 even newer). The 5000-series is pretty much a continuation of the 4000-series architecture anyway, so I suppose there is not a lot to be done anymore aside from per-game tweaks. The basis should be pretty solid by now.

 

[Jacky60]

Try the following for Crossfire support, go to the registry and find or create a 32-Bit DWORD with the name MVPUMode and use the following values for the desired effect.:

3100 - AFR
3200 - scissor
3300 - super tiling
3400 - super FSAA

Or rename the game's exe to AFR-FriendlyD3D.exe and try. It worked for me in lots of games except Assassin Creed 2 which would flicker, but using V-Sync fixed the issue.

Sorry to be a total dweeb but how do I do this? I know regedit gets me into registry then I can edit but where to I type the above?

 

[MrK6]

Oh, wow, didn't even notice. I'll have to check these out later today.

 

[SlowSpyder]

How are 10.7's working for those who are using them? I'm still on 10.3, they just seem to work for me and the last few releases have not been up to par. So I'm hessitant to upgrade, just curious if anyone has yet and what their thoughts are. Otherwise I might check them out tonight and see how it goes.

 

[aclim]

I just want to know if they fixed the z-lighting issues for quake games etc...

 

[happy medium]

Which there were, read the release notes.


That's the reviews opionion, this doesn't change anything nor is related to what I said.



No, that's not what I said, in fact the opposite is probably true. I noted the history of the previous few months whereby there have been performance improvements with every other revision give or take. The same is true for Nvidia so it goes to show that both vendors are still actively pursuing optimisations on a per game basis even to the present day.

Mabe you misunderstood me....

If there were improvments why would a credible hardware review site get away with saying something like that?

" As for our Radeon cards, we are continuing to use the 10.3a drivers. Radeon 5000 series performance has not changed for the games in our suite since those drivers were released".

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3809/nvidias-geforce-gtx-460-the-200-king/5

I don't have the resources to check this, they do, and Anand never really blantantly lied like that, so I tend to believe them.

Which makes me tend to believe when Nvidia is "done" optimising its drivers the gtx470 will be as fast as a 5870. I think thats safe to say.

More on topic:
So how is the Vlc acceleration, I use that once in a while?
Has anyone tried this?

 

[evolucion8]

Sorry to be a total dweeb but how do I do this? I know regedit gets me into registry then I can edit but where to I type the above?

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{41621A02-AAD3-4F2F-AD64-51293458819E} <<That final value that looks like gibberish is different in every computer, you will have a lot of them but most are empty, you will have to double click on each one individually to find which one has three values inside which are 0000, 0001 and video, if you do find such values inside of that gibberish, then click on 0000, if the 0000 value has only like 7 values or less, its worthless, move to the next gibberish value until you find the 0000 value full of values and tweaks, it has a very long lists of values like ASE which will allow you to choose between Super Sampling and Adaptive Multi Sampling in the CCC.

Ok, now once you are in the 0000 value which is full of stuff, do what I told you in my previous post. Once you are done, restart the CCC runtime by choosing in the CCCs start menu, Restart Runtime.

 

[GearJunkie]

What's the veerdict on the 10.7's for BC2? I'm still on the 10.4's and am anxious for an update to fix the V-sync issues and disappearing textures.

 

[Kev]

What's the veerdict on the 10.7's for BC2? I'm still on the 10.4's and am anxious for an update to fix the V-sync issues and disappearing textures.

same here

 

[Compddd]

I play BFBC2 at 2560 x 1600 with 4xAA and 16xAF and get 40 average FPS?

 

[MrK6]

I play BFBC2 at 2560 x 1600 with 4xAA and 16xAF and get 40 average FPS?

In general or with the 10.7's? That seems kind of low (even without an overclock).

 

[Nirreln]

In general or with the 10.7's? That seems kind of low (even without an overclock).

It's not. Bear in mind that those are the 10.2 drivers being used.

 

[Compddd]

I get 60 FPS constant about 40&#37; of the time. The 5870 is just all around great in BFBC2.

 

[AlucardX]

I just want to know if they fixed the z-lighting issues for quake games etc...

wondering this too.. i'm still on 10.4 because it's the last one that didn't bork OpenGL

 

[frombauer]

10.7 seems noticeably snappier for win7 aero than 10.6. Otherwise in games I haven't noticed any substancial difference.

Also nice is VLC HW accelaration.

 

[Mem]

Rage3D have posted their feedback on the 10.7 drivers here http://www.rage3d.com/articles/ati_catalyst_10_7/.

 

[ectx]

Hey now, don't dis the classics. Been a long time since they made games that good.

VLC 1.1.1 GPU acceleration is good though.

VLC1.1.1 + 10.7 do reduce the cpu usage significantly - however the playback is jerky in my test video - planet earth From pole to pole 1080p version (I have hd5830 and Oc'ed Q9550). Without the forced GPU acceleration (VLC tools/preferences/input &Codec/use GPU acceleratio), the video is smooth in almost all segements excep in a couple scenes. CPU usage is as high as 30+%. With the acceleration in VLC, CPU usage is less than 10% but the video is jerky in many different place. I did not test other video, I just had to use the vlc w/o acceleration.

Note: WPM12 and MPC-HC can both play the video smoothly.... (my i7-920 can play the video smoothly w/o GPU acceleration).

Anyway, I simply cannot fine one media player that can handle all the situations. A little off topic rant...

 

[happy medium]

VLC1.1.1 + 10.7 do reduce the cpu usage significantly - however the playback is jerky in my test video - planet earth From pole to pole 1080p version (I have hd5830 and Oc'ed Q9550). Without the forced GPU acceleration (VLC tools/preferences/input &Codec/use GPU acceleratio), the video is smooth in almost all segements excep in a couple scenes. CPU usage is as high as 30+%. With the acceleration in VLC, CPU usage is less than 10% but the video is jerky in many different place. I did not test other video, I just had to use the vlc w/o acceleration.

Note: WPM12 and MPC-HC can both play the video smoothly.... (my i7-920 can play the video smoothly w/o GPU acceleration).

Anyway, I simply cannot fine one media player that can handle all the situations. A little off topic rant...

Same here, I'll just keep the 10.6's for now.