cataclyst 12.11 driver review

[Deleted]

Just came across this in another forum.
techpowerup reviewed the new 12.11 driver update for AMD cards. This update seems to be really good for the 7xxx line from AMD.

WoW performance
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...rmance/20.html

BF3 performance
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...ormance/5.html

The increases in these 2 games should be noticable.

the conclusion

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...rmance/24.html

Actual performance improvements vary between cards. Improvements start with 4% for the HD 7750 and reach an amazing 10% for the HD 7870. The HD 7950, HD 7970 and HD 7970 GHz Edition settle in at 7%. Single digit improvements may not sound like much, but these results are the biggest performance boosts we've ever seen through a driver update. Especially the 10% on the HD 7870 made it feel like a completely different card while gaming.

[chaud]

Yeah, it looks exciting. AMD now is back to solidly being the best bang for the buck with these drivers.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Then I'll update when my CCC starts to annoy me once again that there is a new driver version.

edit:

AMD's Never Settle Catalyst 12.11 driver will be available as a non-WHQL beta immediately. A WHQL version will follow later on in November.

So if you can't be bothered with the possible issues related to beta version drivers (like me), you have got to wait a few weeks longer

[Deleted]

To bad the increase is only in a couple of games. They really focused on a couple of popular games, but still.

If all you play is wow/BF3/skyrim and a couple of others. The best bang for buck is i think the 7870. It performs on par with the 660ti, which is overhere 75 euros more expensive!

[Erous]

Where can you find the download? I have the 12.9 beta drivers at the moment (.NET 4.0 version). Curious if they're be releasing the 4.0 version for these as well unless it's already included.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Will presumably be up in a day or so.

[Deleted]

Impressive update, but one can wonder how much performance there is ideally. I mean, if AMD can push 10% more performance from a simple driver update - a good few months after the release of the cards - how much more performance would these cards offer in deal scenarios? 10% more? 20%? 40%? Updates like these just makes one realize how inefficient some drivers/firmwares/etc can (might?) be.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I think they have probably been sand-bagging the GCN architecture a bit/a lot (I tend to the latter due to the performance boosts solely from 12.6 and 12.11 - let's forget about the 7950B and the 7970 GHz chips) so that they can show even bigger increases for the HD 8xxx series.

[Lemmiwink]

Impressive update, but one can wonder how much performance there is ideally. I mean, if AMD can push 10% more performance from a simple driver update - a good few months after the release of the cards - how much more performance would these cards offer in deal scenarios? 10% more? 20%? 40%? Updates like these just makes one realize how inefficient some drivers/firmwares/etc can (might?) be.

Yeah, thinking the same. Now a days you don't know what video card is the top dog. A simple driver update can turn everything upside down. The 7870 looks a real bargain now and will presumably only get better. Now it will be interesting to see how the 7970 fares against the 680. I'm thinking it will be a clear AMD victory this round.

[Erous]

Looks like the driver became available last night. I attempted the .NET 4 version and I had somewhat of a nightmare. It installed without a hitch, then I went into Maraudon and WoW bombed out with a critical error. Came back in, attempted Maraudon again and it locked up my PC. Restarted and I had trouble with a signal moving from Windows to my monitor.

Had to wipe out the driver and go with the 11.10 release to make things stable. As a note, I modded my 6950 with the 6970 BIOS quite some time ago. It may not be playing nice.

[Deleted]

performance increases are mainly for the 7xxx series. Dont think there is much of an increase for the other series. That said, there was also a bugged version, which was the reason they got it offline again. Maybe you got the bugged version, could try again. I got the new one and have not experienced a crash, for the 2 hours i played :P

[Erous]

performance increases are mainly for the 7xxx series. Dont think there is much of an increase for the other series. That said, there was also a bugged version, which was the reason they got it offline again. Maybe you got the bugged version, could try again. I got the new one and have not experienced a crash, for the 2 hours i played :P

Just my luck! lol. I guess that might have been the case

---------- Post added 2012-10-23 at 01:12 PM ----------

performance increases are mainly for the 7xxx series. Dont think there is much of an increase for the other series. That said, there was also a bugged version, which was the reason they got it offline again. Maybe you got the bugged version, could try again. I got the new one and have not experienced a crash, for the 2 hours i played :P

Just my luck! lol. I guess that might have been the case

EDIT: Looks like when I got the download, it was beta3, now the file is beta4.

[Cilraaz]

Thanks for mentioning this. 12.11 beta4 gave a pretty decent performance boost over 12.9 pre-release. I can't give exact numbers, since I didn't benchmark before-hand, but it has a smoother "feel" and is a definite increase at idle. I'll have to see how it is during raid.