AMD "Never Settle" 12.11 Driver - benchmarks

[Nightglow]

I can't understand it either. I will be absolutely delighted even if my cards still have another 50% left in the tank that will be released in future drivers too

Picture it this way, if your car dealer came and fitted a super chip for free which gave you +30 BHP and no worse fuel economy, would you be over the moon or would you moan that it wasn't done earlier and that your engine wasn't running at 99% efficiency from the off?

AMD Graphics Core Next (GCN) Architecture is what help the 7xxx cards & the extra performance.
Last year it was said it will be 2013 before we see the full benefits of this new architecture & DX11 benefits.

 

[Gregster]

Wow, so much defense and nobody is allowed to have an opinion of AMDs short comings up till now... This thread is called "AMD never settle 12.11 driver - benchmark". So as long as you praise AMD up, it is fine to post but if you dare mention how they have have taken so long to bring their drivers up to scratch, a barage of "Fanboy/Boring/Goading" comments get thrown at said poster.

If it was Nvidia, I would be moaning at them. No room for debate anymore without the same old names jumping to the defence of something that is mentioned about their beloved GPU manafacturer. I remember the days we could debate without all these die hards kicking up a fuss each time.

If you read my post, I am angry that it has taken so long because I am sitting on 2*680s that cost me a fortune and under perform as opposed to the 7970s. I could have had 2*7970s for the same price or less and better performance if AMD had done what they should have earlier on. The same few jump to their pitch forks and chase down anyone who has an opinion that doesn't agree with sucking up to AMD. I find this sad and quite frankly desperate. Sorry for having an opinion.

 

[psychodil]

Come on Gregster, the 7970's were a good bit faster at your res way before 12.11.

 

[Yaayuh!]

Wow, so much defense and nobody is allowed to have an opinion of AMDs short comings up till now... This thread is called "AMD never settle 12.11 driver - benchmark". So as long as you praise AMD up, it is fine to post but if you dare mention how they have have taken so long to bring their drivers up to scratch, a barage of "Fanboy/Boring/Goading" comments get thrown at said poster.

If it was Nvidia, I would be moaning at them. No room for debate anymore without the same old names jumping to the defence of something that is mentioned about their beloved GPU manafacturer. I remember the days we could debate without all these die hards kicking up a fuss each time.

If you read my post, I am angry that it has taken so long because I am sitting on 2*680s that cost me a fortune and under perform as opposed to the 7970s. I could have had 2*7970s for the same price or less and better performance if AMD had done what they should have earlier on. The same few jump to their pitch forks and chase down anyone who has an opinion that doesn't agree with sucking up to AMD. I find this sad and quite frankly desperate. Sorry for having an opinion.

Granted it must be quite frustrating for you, i agree. I would be annoyed if i were you.
However, there is no telling whether or not these drivers should have or even could have existed earlier. These things happen naturally as time goes on, they just hit the jackpot when maturing them along the way. These things take time.

 

[Rusty0611]

As I said - to say the last 10 months performance doesn't matter anymore is just incorrect. If you applied that logic to anything other that the emotionally charged arena of graphics cards it just wouldn't hold up. Simple as that. If you think otherwise you're wrong. In fact it's fairly poor debating skills actually but what do I expect in this sub forum?

If you bought something at a high cost and it performed at only 85% of its potential this is OK? Why are people who have no financial connection or connection at all putting their stakes in the ground to defend something which is basically unacceptable? I'm in the same camp a you lot - I bought in late so I don't care what performance was 10 months ago but to try and dismiss this viewpoint is wrong. if you think that by quoting each other and giving yourselves virtual pats on the back reinforces this method of debate then think again. It's OK to hail these drivers by "the same people" but not point out how long it took to release them? More incoherence.

I notice most of the people arguing saying it is OK for a company to release products which aren't running at full potential and then effectively fix them post release are those that didn't buy early. No surprise there. Performance was indeed hardly poor before but that's not point and doesn't counter anything said against the drivers.

 

[arknor]

how do we know nvidis are gettign 100% from there cards ? before these drivers you wouldnt know amd werent...

 

[Rusty0611]

how do we know nvidis are gettign 100% from there cards ? before these drivers you wouldnt know amd werent...

The lack of noise since from them since AMD undisputably became the fastest and cheapest (a strong marketing combo) and lack of any kind of tangible increases since release from nVidia would suggest - as would previous rumours/speculation - that the GTX680 and its cut down variants are running at max voltage/max potential.

What I will say is that the momentum is definitely with AMD. You have to remember that the AMDs fastest card before was the 6970 which was roughly comparable to a 570. nVidia then had the GTX580 up their sleeve. AMD have caught up the difference and surpassed nVidia's top end card from this generation. A really good achievement and driver performance now looks to be on the up as well and the issues they were having, resolved.

 

[Addicted]

Does anyone know when this driver will be released properly?

I have an issue that as soon as I install the driver I can no longer run Catalyst Control Center - when I try to launch it it just does nothing .

I've tried all the obvious fixes, reinstalling drivers (with DriverSweeper Clean), Reinstalling .NET 4 and various other stuff!

Anyone have any suggestions?

It means I cannot use my cards in Eyefinity as I can't set it up .

 

[Gregster]

Come on Gregster, the 7970's were a good bit faster at your res way before 12.11.

But were they? I am a BF3 fan or was till recently and there wasn't anything in it as I could tell. You have to remember I bought a 680 on day 1 of its release and the 680 beat the 7970 at 1080P till this new driver. Maybe me being naive and having 3 nvidia monitors made me stick with it and buy another 680. Anyhow I will reiterate that my dig is at AMD for taking so long to get it sorted and also myself for not seeing the increases these new drivers have bought.

You are a sensible guy and can see my point surely?

Granted it must be quite frustrating for you, i agree. I would be annoyed if i were you.
However, there is no telling whether or not these drivers should have or even could have existed earlier. These things happen naturally as time goes on, they just hit the jackpot when maturing them along the way. These things take time.

Cheers Rossi for seeing the bigger picture. They have the drivers now which is awesome, I just wish they had them a couple of months earlier so I could have possibly purchased differently.

 

[dave_beast]

Haven't the 7970 and the 680, when moderately overclocked been roughly the same performance since release? A few fps either way in various games, but more or less the same.

 

[Rusty0611]

Haven't the 7970 and the 680, when moderately overclocked been roughly the same performance since release? A few fps either way in various games, but more or less the same.

We thought so but the benchmark thread showed a fairly chunky difference between them in BF3 at least on the older drivers. Well I say chunky but a fair few % at least in terms of average FPS...

Now the 7970 is a touch faster from what I can tell though.

You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two cards before/after even with an FPS counter on though .

 

[tommybhoy]

I'm not defending AMD, that wasn't the point of my post, the point was all about the pedantic posting, generally from Nvidia users-I haven't singled anyone out and there was no intention to.

I don't bring it up in every other thread regarding an Nvidia topic about 'the stutter bugs been fixed since the 660 arrived so go and buy one' in the same vein as the repeated '10 months later performance gains', as I'm above that.

Iv'e mentioned it now but anyone can feel free to go over my post history to see when I last mentioned it to the point of pedantic posting.

Take the performance as a bonus as folks based their buying decisions on the data they had at the time.

Haven't the 7970 and the 680, when moderately overclocked been roughly the same performance since release? A few fps either way in various games, but more or less the same.

The performance has always been there or there about in the first place in single card mode at the very least, the majority in here know that when both pushed, there's not much in it, there still isn't.

We knew that dave, that's why we have one!

I never said the performance gains shouldn't be mentioned, I'm only voicing my opinion on the pedantic repeating of the same thing over and over again.

Cheers Rossi for seeing the bigger picture. They have the drivers now which is awesome, I just wish they had them a couple of months earlier so I could have possibly purchased differently.

You were duped to an extent from the mass reviews greg, as rusty said, they tell lies as 95% at least are paid in one form or another.

I had a thread in here that only saw 23 posts considering the information it brought at the time:

BF3 performance in May from reviewers with a clear preference of Nvidia due to sponsorship:

Spoiler

http://hardocp.com/article/2012/05/14/geforce_680_670_vs_radeon_7970_7950_gaming_perf/3

It doesn't take a genius why it never received much attention.

Way way back I said there was nothing in it, but numbers were taken as gospel, if the OcUK BM thread had started a lot sooner, things may have been different.



Rusty's results on a very averaged clocked 7950 CrossFire setup v's very good oc'ed 680's speak speak a thousand words, reviewers BM's would have had you believe the 670 was faster than a 7970!

The sad thing is, plenty did, but most will forget.

That's the second tier card v's the top end and it's not just beating it either, it batters it.

Add the fact that the performance arrived in July with the 12.8 betas(the reason I made the move), not 10 months later.


If someone can point out the masses of unhappy AMD users in here in comparison to the many delighted AMD users, then I'll take a seat and have a KitKat and say no more on the matter.

Right now I'm more ***** about the Xoom's auto spelling than anything else.

 

[oweneades]

But were they? I am a BF3 fan or was till recently and there wasn't anything in it as I could tell. You have to remember I bought a 680 on day 1 of its release and the 680 beat the 7970 at 1080P till this new driver. Maybe me being naive and having 3 nvidia monitors made me stick with it and buy another 680. Anyhow I will reiterate that my dig is at AMD for taking so long to get it sorted and also myself for not seeing the increases these new drivers have bought.

Having owned all of the top end cards, bar the HD7950, I would have to say the performance was generally equal at triple screen resolutions up until the 12.11 drivers. There were wins and loses here and there but generally performance was within a few % either way. BF3 for example was roughly 59FPS on a overclocked GTX680 (1200/6800) vs 61FPS on a overclocked HD7970 (1125/6600) - BF3 @ 3620x1920 "High settings".

On the 12.11 drivers a HD7970 clocked at Ghz clocks (1050/6000) is now managing over 67FPS in the same scenario. Matching the overclocks on my original HD7970 I would imagine 70FPS would be broken quite easily.

Nvidia performance has remained relatively flat in the same timeframe.

1080p performance when comparing stock vs stock was slightly in Nvidias favour (especially on launch drivers), but a mild overclock on the 7970 would often make the difference neglible at best (or in other words you wouldn't notice unless you benchmarked).

TBH whilst I appreciate the effort AMD have put in with these drivers, I do wish that we could have seen this performance 3-4 months after release rather than 10 months.

 

[Rusty0611]

Good points Oweneades/Tommy...

 

[Gregster]

You never know, maybe Nvidia will release a driver that gains in performance across the board and I will be happy and yet have a pop at the same time. I am at least glad some people see my reasoning for a moan and understood instead of jumping straight onto me.

I praise when it is justified and moan when it is justified....Rant over.

 

[kissenger]

You never know, maybe Nvidia will release a driver that gains in performance across the board and I will be happy and yet have a pop at the same time. I am at least glad some people see my reasoning for a moan and understood instead of jumping straight onto me.

I praise when it is justified and moan when it is justified....Rant over.

Maybe, but I'm doubtful of any major gains due to the fact that the gains the 12.11s made were mainly due to AMD getting the same access to dev studios such as Dice which Nvidia have had all along.

Also that 256-bit bus is always going to hold the 680 back. The flipside is the lower power consumption of the 680, but in pure performance terms it's clearly a hindrance.

 

[Addicted]

Anyone know any solutions/help to my problem above? (Post #708), Can't seem to see anything over all the pointless bickering!

 

[LtMatt]

Anyone know any solutions/help to my problem above? (Post #708), Can't seem to see anything over all the pointless bickering!

Good shout, i thought this was a benchmark thread for posting results and discussion of the results of the 12.11 benchmarks, not how good amd drivers should have been 10 months ago.

Try installing net framework 4.5 mate.

As for your other question the WHQL for these drivers will be next month afaik however more beta versions are due shortly.

 

[Rusty0611]

Good shout, i thought this was a benchmark thread for posting results.

I don't think this has been a "benchmark" thread for the past 20 pages!

Also don't be hypocritical - I don't need to quote your post on this same page which is in the same general manner as those you're criticising.

It's all good - the discussion is good natured. Agree to disagree etc.

p.s. I'm starting a new MM thread in a bit for my 3D Kit. No "trashing" please.

 

[drs101]

Anyone know any solutions/help to my problem above? (Post #708), Can't seem to see anything over all the pointless bickering!

bit extreme but did you try a fresh install of windows?

* sorry cant remember if you did that already from your prev post