AMD "Never Settle" 12.11 Driver - benchmarks

Final8y · 22 Oct 2012 at 07:21

Slides: http://www.techpowerup.com/174145/AMD-Announces-Never-Settle-Catalyst-12.11-Driver-Update.html

Game bundles: http://www.techpowerup.com/174146/AMD-Also-Announces-Never-Settle-Game-Bundles.html

Benchmarks:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Catalyst_12.11_Performance/1.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6393/amds-holiday-plans-cat1211-new-bundle

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graph...211-benchmarked-surprising-performance-gains/

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...md-12-11-never-settle-driver-performance.html

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2059/1/

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_catalyst_12_11_driver_performance.html

Just Imagine a ASUS MATRIX HD 7970 Platinum Video Card with those drivers.

Catalyst 12.11 is coming... 10/22 3PM ET

AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta Download
http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/amd_catalyst_12_11_beta_download.html

Hilbert Hagedoorn said:
We might need to take these drivers offline, AMD is creating a new build to fix some bugs that are in this version. Just so that you guys know !

whyscotty · 22 Oct 2012 at 07:44

Looks like a good improvement

LtMatt · 22 Oct 2012 at 07:57

Wow what the hell, where did this come from? Holy smokes!

LtMatt · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:03

How the hell can they just add 20fps on to battlefield 3? Drool.

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph6393/51037.png

Yaayuh! · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:03

AMD would do anything to make sure they're beating nVidia in benchmarks. The question is, what have they done to get this sort of improvement?

LtMatt · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:06

The ghz edition now has a big lead over the 680. Guess GCN has serious potential, how much more can they get from it?

EDIT

When do these go live? Cannot wait now to test them out myself.

Final8y · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:10

Rossi~ said:
AMD would do anything to make sure they're beating nVidia in benchmarks. The question is, what have they done to get this sort of improvement?

With the 12.11 drivers AMD has completely eradicated their performance defecit in BF3, with the 7970, 7870, and 7770 being made performance competitive with (if not a hair faster than) their respective NVIDIA GTX 600 counterparts in our BF3 benchmark. AMD has told us that the specific performance benefits are map-dependent with our results appearing at the high-end of their guidance, so while not every map will see the same 20%+ performance gains, some of them will while others will be in the 10% range. Much like our overall performance averages, the largest gains are at 1920 with FXAA, while 2560 with FXAA and 1920 with MSAA will see smaller gains, once again hinting that AMD’s optimizations are on the shader/texture side rather than ROP/memory.

For our part we have long theorized that the Frostbite 2 engine’s heavy use of deferred rendering techniques – particularly its massive G-buffer – was the factor that AMD was struggling with. While these results don’t really further validate or invalidate that theory, what is clear is that AMD has fixed their Frostbite 2 performance problem. Given the fact that Frostbite 2 will be used in at least a couple more games, including the AMD Gaming Evolved title Medal of Honor Warfighter, this was an important engine for AMD to finally conquer.

For their part, AMD hasn’t told us much about what it is they’ve done to optimize their drivers. What we do know is that it’s not driver command lists (an optional DX11 feature that NV has supported for some time), so it has to be something else. AMD has briefly mentioned surface mapping and memory mapping optimizations, but it’s not clear what exactly they’ve done there and if those are the only optimizations.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6393/amds-holiday-plans-cat1211-new-bundle

Rusty0611 · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:11

LtMatt said:
The ghz edition now has a big lead over the 680. Guess GCN has serious potential, how much more can they get from it?

Does it? Like for like (% overclock) shows them round about even. There's one link where it has a significant gap but doesn't fit in with the other data.

The reason we made the OcUK benchmark thread was for this kind of thing: to prove/disprove results the reviewers are seeing.

Nonetheless it's good to see that the improvements being made. As I said on another thread - shame it took so long but it's great news for AMD owners that their cards are running at max (or close to) potential.

Marine-RX179 · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:13

Rossi~ said:
AMD would do anything to make sure they're beating nVidia in benchmarks. The question is, what have they done to get this sort of improvement?

Yea...I really don't want go with the saying "if it's too good to be true, it usually is". Wasn't there once that AMD got caught the performance increase hugely because the driver update drop the quality of the default AA to lower or something?

Also, if theses are just optimised performance for benchmark purpose only, how much improvement will we actually see under real-world gaming environment?

Really hope that the performance increase BF3/Frostbite 2 engine is genuine improvement, rather than dropping/lowering something hoping nobody finds out...

I might get a 7950 myself, when the price comes down a bit more.

Stanners · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:17

Marine-RX179 said:
Yea...I really don't want go with the saying "if it's too good to be true, it usually is". Wasn't there once that AMD got caught the performance increase hugely because the driver update drop the quality of the default AA to lower or something?

Also, if theses are just optimised performance for benchmark purpose only, how much improvement will we actually see under real-world gaming environment?

Yeah I think both amd and nvidia have been rumbled using driver optimisations before, fingers crossed this is not the case.

LtMatt · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:17

Final8y said:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6393/amds-holiday-plans-cat1211-new-bundle

Yep Nvidia got to work closely the bf3 devs and frostbite 2, looks like now AMD have now had chance to work with the same engine (albeit on MOH and danger close devs) it looks like they've caught up and even surpassed. Once you throw in the general overclocking potential of the 79xx series it should expand a little further as well. Good times.

Medal of honor unlocks later as well on origin so ill be playing that.

Rusty0611 · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:17

Marine-RX179 said:
Yea...I really don't want go with the saying "if it's too good to be true, it usually is". Wasn't there once that AMD got caught the performance increase hugely because the driver update drop the quality of the default AA to lower or something?

Also, if theses are just optimised performance for benchmark purpose only, how much improvement will we actually see under real-world gaming environment?

Really hope that the performance increase BF3/Frostbite 2 engine is genuine improvement, rather than dropping/lowering something hoping nobody finds out...

BF3 is the biggest winner going on this data. Other games have had decent improvements too.

Final8y · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:19

LtMatt said:
Yep Nvidia got to work closely the bf3 devs and frostbite 2, looks like now AMD have now had chance to work with the same engine (albeit on MOH and danger close devs) it looks like they've caught up and even surpassed. Once you throw in the general overclocking potential of the 79xx series it should expand a little further as well. Good times.

Medal of honor unlocks later as well on origin so ill be playing that.

I read mention of steam keys as well, whether that is true or not we will find out.

Stanners · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:21

Does moh unlock on origin today?

Final8y · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:22

Hmm no CF benches.

Amatsubu · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:26

Very promising, I really hope I'm not going to have the same graphical issues with these drives as I had with 12.6 and onwards. Some people were writing about some black triangular polygons flashing randomly on the screen for a brief second. I had these too, mainly in Witcher 2 EE. It happened on 12.6, 12.7, 12.8 and 12.9:/ It was practically identical to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPLrkozKoA

If it turns out that the new drivers do the same I'll be really gutted:/

Rusty0611 · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:27

Thought MoH unlocked Friday?

Dysehunter · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:33

I bet nvidia will come out with something along the same lines and wipe the smile off AMD's face

LtMatt · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:39

Rusty0611 said:
Thought MoH unlocked Friday?

It unlocks today if you have an american/korean ip address.

fluidz · 22 Oct 2012 at 08:39

Amatsubu said:
Very promising, I really hope I'm not going to have the same graphical issues with these drives as I had with 12.6 and onwards. Some people were writing about some black triangular polygons flashing randomly on the screen for a brief second. I had these too, mainly in Witcher 2 EE. It happened on 12.6, 12.7, 12.8 and 12.9:/ It was practically identical to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPLrkozKoA

If it turns out that the new drivers do the same I'll be really gutted:/

Seeing them too here. On the desktop they're thin horizontal lines, in games they show as random shapes, appear and disappear in a blink of eye. Seen two flashes on the desktop in the last 10 minutes.