Cat 7.10's undo good work by ATI

[Soul Rider]

There was a massive improvement and bugfix in the 7.9 Cat drivers which gave me hope that my HD2600XT was going to be a well supported, continually improving card. Then ATI released the 7.10's and reintroduce the old problem. I'll show below my 3DMark06 results, just at standard clocks, for 7.7's, 7.9's and 7.10's (forgot to benchmark 7.8's at default, but they have the same error). Pay particular attention to the Vertex Shader - Simple results:

System Set-up
AMD X2 939@ 2.2Ghz
HD 2600 XT
Core @ 800Mhz
Mem @ 2200Mhz
Cat 7.7
3DMark Score 4273 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score 1546
HDR/SM3.0 Score 1898
CPU Score 1640

GT1 - Return To Proxycon 11.296 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest 14.469 FPS
CPU1 - Red Valley 0.518 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley 0.830 FPS
HDR1 - Canyon Flight 16.869 FPS
HDR2 - Deep Freeze 21.100 FPS
Fill Rate - Single-Texturing 2865.933 MTexels/s
Fill Rate - Multi-Texturing 6346.437 MTexels/s
Pixel Shader 180.264 FPS
Vertex Shader - Simple 74.046 MVertices/s
Vertex Shader - Complex 77.424 MVertices/s
Shader Particles (SM3.0) 45.687 FPS
Perlin Noise (SM3.0) 59.752 FPS
8 Triangles 5.310 MTriangles/s
32 Triangles 21.170 MTriangles/s
128 Triangles 83.940 MTriangles/s
512 Triangles 110.783 MTriangles/s
2048 Triangles 110.817 MTriangles/s
32768 Triangles 111.196 MTriangles/s

System Set-up
AMD X2 939@ 2.2Ghz
HD 2600 XT
Core @ 800Mhz
Mem @ 2200Mhz
Cat 7.9
3DMark Score 4694 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score 1717
HDR/SM3.0 Score 2113
CPU Score 1691

GT1 - Return To Proxycon 12.669 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest 15.948 FPS
CPU1 - Red Valley 0.534 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley 0.857 FPS
HDR1 - Canyon Flight 18.285 FPS
HDR2 - Deep Freeze 23.966 FPS
Fill Rate - Single-Texturing 2885.115 MTexels/s
Fill Rate - Multi-Texturing 6343.516 MTexels/s
Pixel Shader 180.664 FPS
Vertex Shader - Simple 232.701 MVertices/s
Vertex Shader - Complex 79.443 MVertices/s
Shader Particles (SM3.0) 45.922 FPS
Perlin Noise (SM3.0) 54.333 FPS
8 Triangles 5.308 MTriangles/s
32 Triangles 21.185 MTriangles/s
128 Triangles 84.053 MTriangles/s
512 Triangles 110.828 MTriangles/s
2048 Triangles 111.087 MTriangles/s
32768 Triangles 111.290 MTriangles/s

System Set-up
AMD X2 939@ 2.2Ghz
HD 2600 XT
Core @ 800Mhz
Mem @ 2200Mhz
Cat 7.10
3DMark Score 4481 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score 1660
HDR/SM3.0 Score 1964
CPU Score 1690

GT1 - Return To Proxycon 12.328 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest 15.335 FPS
CPU1 - Red Valley 0.534 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley 0.855 FPS
HDR1 - Canyon Flight 17.838 FPS
HDR2 - Deep Freeze 21.434 FPS
Fill Rate - Single-Texturing 2883.100 MTexels/s
Fill Rate - Multi-Texturing 6347.705 MTexels/s
Pixel Shader 180.400 FPS
Vertex Shader - Simple 70.506 MVertices/s
Vertex Shader - Complex 80.783 MVertices/s
Shader Particles (SM3.0) 45.721 FPS
Perlin Noise (SM3.0) 54.328 FPS
8 Triangles 9.033 MTriangles/s
32 Triangles 42.423 MTriangles/s
128 Triangles 109.106 MTriangles/s
512 Triangles 111.042 MTriangles/s
2048 Triangles 110.943 MTriangles/s
32768 Triangles 111.179 MTriangles/s


As you can see the system has serious issues with simple Vertex Shader jobs, causing a big performance hit in gaming. This is much more noticable in my overclocked results, but I won't bother posting them up too, as too much data etc..

I run Windows XP64 and was running if people with the same card find the same results in 32bit, and whether it just affects the 2600XT, or any others in the HD2xxx series. If you have seen a 3DMark06 score drop with the new drivers, you probably have the same problem. This issue with the drivers means it has problems doing the basic Vertex shading, the bread and butter of the graphics card, and affects both SM2.0 and SM3.0. Please post it up here so I can see if this is wider spread issue, and if anyone knows a way to let ATI know....

 

[Cyber-Mav]

thats ati for you

 

[Soul Rider]

The worst thing is, as the base SM2.0 and SM3.0 scores are much higher in 7.10 than 7.7, this would indicate there is massive improvements in the drivers elsewhere, which would probably top the 7.9 score. They just seem to have re-introduced this issue and, understandbly, I want it fixed

 

[Cyber-Mav]

you can report the problem to them, forgot how its done though.

 

[J0hnb0y]

strange because 7.10 actually increased my 3dmark score