AMD Catalyst 11.6 Driver Analysis

The olden days saw drivers being released every so often but stepping forward into the current times and the likes of AMD, Nvidia and other manufacturers are releasing drivers much more frequently. AMD have been bang on the money every month with fresh, new drivers that claim to bring improved performance and stability to a variety of platforms. Today sees us looking at the newest set of drivers from AMD; Catalyst 11.6. This set of drivers is said to improve performance on certain games, give image stabilization to YouTube as well as other new video features that have been incorporated. Among these, we also find extra bug fixes and improved stability on Windows XP, Vista and 7. This is our first look at a set of drivers and we hope to analyse the performance between its predecessor and the current new release as well as listing what new features and performance enhancements have been brought to the table in more detail. Release notes Highlights of the AMD Catalyst 11.6 Windows release includes: New Features: AMD Steady Video [LIST] Steady Video is currently an AMD exclusive feature based on AMD APP Technology By applying advanced algorithms behind the scenes, users do not have to deal with shaky or unstable video ever again! Capabilities scale with hardware and are end user controlled [*]Image Stabilization brought to YouTube! [*]Decode Acceleration of MPEG-4 part 2 content AMD has enabled decode acceleration of MPEG-4 part 2 content in Microsoft video player applications (through MFT support) for all AMD Radeon 6000 Series [/LIST]Performance Enhancements Performance highlights of the AMD Catalyst 11.6 release includes: Performance gains in Crysis of up to 7% on AMD Radeon HD 6000 series single card configurations. Performance gains in F1 2010 of up to 8% in DirectX 11 mode on AMD Radeon HD 6000 series products in single and Crossfire configurations. Performance gains in Far Cry 2 of up to 5% on AMD Radeon HD 6000 series products in single and Crossfire configurations. Performance gains in HAWX of up to 8% on AMD Radeon HD 6000 series products in single and Crossfire configurations. Performance gains in the Unigine OpenGL tests of up to 10% on AMD Radeon HD 6000 series single card configurations. Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalyst 11.6 software suite for Windows 7. These include: Flashing titles are no longer displayed when playing F1 2010 in a Crossfire environment. Video playback no longer intermittently displays a black screen when using Windows Media Player. Graphics and Gaming scores are now correctly computed in the Windows Performance Index. A BSOD error is no longer generated randomly when Crossfire is enabled/disabled after video/LCD overdrive settings are changed on HD 6900 series products. Crossfire is now correctly enabled when playing The Witcher 2 on HD 6800 series products. (when used with AMD Catalyst 11.5 CAP 5 release) Screen tearing is no longer randomly seen when playing Riddick 2 at high performance settings and with Crossfire enabled. The game Kings Bounty now renders correctly. The game Empire Total War now no longer displays random flickering and in-game buttons display correctly. Google Earth now performs smoothly in OpenGL mode. Crossfire is now correctly enabled when playing Cars 2 on HD 6900 series products. Sid Meyers Civilization V no longer displays intermittent graphical corruption when played in DirectX 10 mode in a Crossfire environment. Heaven 2.1 running in DirectX 11 mode no longer displays intermittent graphical corruption in a Crossfire environment. Crossfire is correctly enabled when playing LEGO : Pirates of the Caribbean on HD6800 and HD 6900 series products. Poor performance is no longer experienced while Playing Heroes of Newerth and when the cursor is moved to the top right or bottom right corner of the screen. Mouse cursor corruption (in the upper right portion of the screen) should be resolved Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalyst 11.6 software suite for Windows Vista. These include: The screen no longer briefly flashes green while changing screen resolution and playing a BluRay title using PowerDVD 10. Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalyst 11.6 software suite for Windows XP. These include: World of Warcraft no longer randomly crashes or fails to launch when using an A-Series APU. Random graphics corruption is no longer observed while playing World of Warcraft. Playing Dead Rising 2 no longer causes the system to hang. Known issues under the Windows 7 operating system The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under the Windows 7 operating system in the latest version of AMD Catalyst. These include: Some BluRay content may experience jittery playback. Star Wars Jedi Knight II / Jedi Academy may randomly crash on launch. Image rotation might not function correctly in Photoshop CS5. OpenGL acceleration might not be available in Photoshop CS5. High GPU speeds might be retained after exiting a 3D application. Display corruption may be observed while changing video resolution / settings while playing a video clip using Windows Media Center. Shogun 2 cinematics may display rendering issues while running in DirectX 9 mode in certain Eyefinity configurations. Known Issues under the Windows Vista Operating System The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under the Windows Vista operating system in the latest version of AMD Catalyst. These include: Windows Aero settings might not be available in some circumstances. Doom 3 and Quake 4 may experience random corruption on HD 4000 series products. Performing bezel compensation on a 3x2 configuration may cause the Bezel group to not appear. Test SystemThe test the performance of the drivers, we will be using Catalyst 11.5 as well as the latest 11.6 drivers from our downloads section and running each test three times to obtain a fair average set of results. Test System: Asus Crosshair V Formula AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 4GB Kingston HyperX 1800MHz HIS Radeon HD 6950 Noctua NH-C14 Thermaltake ToughPower Cable Management 1200W Games used: Batman: Arkham Asylum Dirt 2 Dirt 3 Just Cause 2 Mafia II Metro 2033 Hardware used: Plug-in electricity usage monitor Sound level meter Software used: 3DMark 11 3DMark Vantage FurMark HWMonitor Unigine Heaven Benchmark Windows 7 Professional 64-bit 3DMark 113DMark 11 is the latest offering from Futuremark, taking full advantage of DirectX 11 by utilising tessellation features and volumetric lighting. It takes your graphics and CPU hardware to the edge to simulate the most extreme conditions whilst working as a stand point to compare results with other users online. 3DMark 11 showed an ever so slight increase in scores when updating to 11.6 but nothing that would be noticeable. 3DMark Vantage3DMark Vantage is the industry standard performance benchmark for DirectX 10 gaming PCs. It includes two graphics tests, two CPU tests and six feature tests. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark Vantage is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 10 under game-like loads. 3DMark Vantage actually showed a decrease in performance, which hopefully can be rectified in a hotfix or by waiting for the next Catalyst update. Unigine HeavenHeaven 2.1 is regarded to be one of the most intensive Benchmarking utilities about at the moment along with the likes of 3DMark. It makes use of highly comprehensive tessellation technology, advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion) and a highly defined light algorithm to produce ever changing light conditions amongst other items. Heaven saw a slight increase in FPS, which when looking at the way that Heaven works in order to obtain a steady frame rate, 3 FPS is quite an increase for this type of benchmark. Batman: Arkham AsylumBatman: Arkham Asylum is an action-adventure stealth game that uses the Unreal Engine 3. It relies heavily on nVidia's PhsyX engine to give improved physics throughout if available. and uses lots of textures and polygons to build the character. Batman only saw a slight increase of 2FPS, though at over 100 frames per second to start with, you won't notice any great increase on in-game performance. Dirt 2The physics engine from within Dirt 2 is a good test of a card and it's rendering capabilities with fine details such as dust trailing from the rear of the car. There is also the aspect of light and reflections from the cars bodywork and the ability to work with the in game physics and damage rendering engines to produce a realistic gaming experience. Dirt 2 only saw a slight increase by installing the 11.6 drivers, and at the high frame rate given, it's not something that will be noticeable in-game. Dirt 3Dirt 3 was released in May 2011 and is the third in the Dirt series offering a complete overhaul in terms of graphics for the DirectX 11 platform which extreme lighting effects and reflections as well as showcasing fast moving graphics and using in game physics to bring the most extreme quality in terms of video rendering. Dirt 3 was very much the same, only giving an ever so slight increase in frame rates, but performance won't be noticeable in-game, but as they say; every little helps. Just Cause 2Just Cause 2 is an open world action-adventure video game that was released at the beginning of 2010. The game uses the Avalanche Engine 2.0 and runs on DirectX 10. Several graphics effects and features are used to give a thorough workout to new and even older graphics cards. Just Cause 2 like most saw a modest 2 frames per second increase, which in the real-world won't relate to any extra added performance and will not be noticeable. Mafia IIMafia II is an older game and therefore it does have older graphics engines, however this is is still a good all-round in game benchmark that combines the terrain and explosion rendering of Crysis with the dust and dirt particle rendering test of Dirt 2. It also takes into account the changing light conditions albeit not in quite the same detail as the others, but none-the-less still proves a cards capabilities on slightly older games. Mafia II saw no real change at all thus meaning that it didn't benefit from the driver update at all. Metro 2033Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter game based in the Russian metro system. Metro 2033 is very similar to the much loved game STALKER as it is developed by the same programmers. The game utilises DirectX 11 and relies heavily on tessellation features and is considered to be one of the most graphics intense games on the market. Metro 2033 (based on the settings we use) doesn't generally see a mass increase in performance regardless of which software and drivers are used and relies heavily on the hardware that's installed. Due to this, we didn't notice any significant increase in performance and the extra added frame rate won't be noticed. Final ThoughtsOverall the 11.6 drivers were destined for great things in terms of performance increases and the games listed in the release nots should be seeing the performance increases straight away. Unigine benchmarks were said to give up to 10% increased performance and we saw just that, so we can only assume the likes of Crysis, F1 2010, Far Cry 2 and HAWX will see this boost too. We tested the drivers with our usual plethora of gaming benchmarks and whilst we saw some slight increased performance in some, we saw a decrease in others. 3DMark Vantage is a prime example of this, and we can only hope that AMD address this issue in conjunction with Futuremark so that user benchmark results are not affected long-term. We could have run these tests on several graphics cards, but with the price of cards being more competitive than ever, we're seeing more and more users welding 6900 series cards. For us to appeal to you, we showed exactly what results we got with our 6950 graphics card. The drivers have been out for a couple of days now and from the feedback we've received, we are hearing good things about the improved performance increases and stability across multiple ranges of graphics cards and multiple operating system platforms. Whether you update to the latest 11.6 drive is of course a personal choice of your own, but barring the 3DMark Vantage tests, we can't see any reason why you shouldn't as you will see improved stability and increased performance on a variety of games, applications and benchmarks on various platforms including Windows XP, Vista and of course Windows 7. Attached files 3dmark11.jpg (35.2 KB) 3dmarkvantage.jpg (38.2 KB) Batman.jpg (37.4 KB) Catalystlogo.jpg (50.4 KB) Dirt-2.jpg (32.1 KB) Dirt-3.jpg (31.5 KB) Heaven.jpg (34.1 KB) Just-Cause-2.jpg (33.3 KB) Mafia-II.jpg (32.2 KB) Metro2033.jpg (32.7 KB)