[H]-2012 AMD and NVIDIA Driver Performance Summary Review

[tommybhoy]

2012 AMD and NVIDIA Driver Performance Summary Review from [H]:

The Bottom Line
If we could suggest one thing for each company to work on in 2013, it would be improve the driver performance earlier on. AMD needs to keep its drivers up to date and ready for new games during the entire year. It cannot slack off at some point, it is just not acceptable. NVIDIA should also try to improve its software in order to squeeze out extra performance in demanding and popular games. Having a steady and consistent framerate the entire year is good, but we would still rather have more performance if it is available.

It is also very important to have public drivers when your hardware is launched. We are looking at you AMD! It was clear that there was a lot of potential for performance in the Radeon HD 7970 and 7950, but we didn't see that performance realized until the middle of the year at least. We could tell from several of the graphs that NVIDIA held a steady framerate until the Forceware 310.70 WHQL driver which added performance in many of our games. We want these performance boosts earlier, not six months or a year after a game is released.

2012 was an exciting year for us gamers and hardware enthusiasts. Both AMD and NVIDIA released impressive hardware that has allowed game manufactures to improve the quality of graphics, without worrying about a lack of performance. We need AMD and NVIDIA to continue being competitive, and to continue improving its software and hardware designs. In 2012 when AMD began to fall behind with its drivers, the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition was released and helped AMD to stay competitive.

So far in 2013, NVIDIA has made a big statement with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN video card. (Sadly we expect little in the way of retaliation from AMD.) We look forward to the continued advancement of performance and hopefully game developers will take advantage of it in this year's games.

http://hardocp.com/article/2013/03/04/2012_amd_nvidia_driver_performance_summary_review#.UTTXBKK-2So

Highlighted a bit there for the stubborn posters.

 

[Andy_1995]

So it's really the 7950 that's had the performance bump good information tommy. Makes me consider changing my 6950 very shortly .

 

[Gregster]

The Bottom Line
If we could suggest one thing for each company to work on in 2013, it would be improve the driver performance earlier on. AMD needs to keep its drivers up to date and ready for new games during the entire year. It cannot slack off at some point, it is just not acceptable. NVIDIA should also try to improve its software in order to squeeze out extra performance in demanding and popular games. Having a steady and consistent framerate the entire year is good, but we would still rather have more performance if it is available.

It is also very important to have public drivers when your hardware is launched. We are looking at you AMD! It was clear that there was a lot of potential for performance in the Radeon HD 7970 and 7950, but we didn't see that performance realized until the middle of the year at least. We could tell from several of the graphs that NVIDIA held a steady framerate until the Forceware 310.70 WHQL driver which added performance in many of our games. We want these performance boosts earlier, not six months or a year after a game is released.

2012 was an exciting year for us gamers and hardware enthusiasts. Both AMD and NVIDIA released impressive hardware that has allowed game manufactures to improve the quality of graphics, without worrying about a lack of performance. We need AMD and NVIDIA to continue being competitive, and to continue improving its software and hardware designs. In 2012 when AMD began to fall behind with its drivers, the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition was released and helped AMD to stay competitive.

So far in 2013, NVIDIA has made a big statement with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN video card. (Sadly we expect little in the way of retaliation from AMD.) We look forward to the continued advancement of performance and hopefully game developers will take advantage of it in this year's games.

I picked out what I would like to see happen

 

[Rusty0611]

It's clear to see that performance wasn't REALLY there until 12.11. Not saying there wasn't improvements before then but improving from a starting poor position is hardly shout from the rooftop territory.

On certain games, what was also shown at the time was performance regressed as well so it was one step forward and one step back on occasion. But the real competitive push came at 12.11 hence why I swapped. This was where AMD seized the initiative with a good promotion and really started to get the 7000 series running at close to full throttle and ahead of their nVidia comparison card.

Indeed, that was why they launched their game promotion as well as asking sites to reviews on the latest drivers at this point.

 

[flopper]

waited until June until the 7970 cost half of the launch price.
driver boost was welcomed but it did run great even before 12.11.

still considering watercooling.

 

[tommybhoy]

waited until June until the 7970 cost half of the launch price.
driver boost was welcomed but it did run great even before 12.11.

+1,

That's when I jumped on board too.

That was the turning point for me going from diamond clockers that were my 6950>70's, that's when I noticed an improvement-the middle of the year, not in November.

The 12.11's took the 79's a bit above the competition when both AMD/Nvidia had decent oc's in place, but the few oc'ed results that were available back in April/May had the 7970/680 matched.

This comparison is using non GHz/Boost versions with stock static clocked gpu's v's auto boosting clocks.

The 7950 even with a conservative 25% oc to 1000MHz would have shown completely different results from the off too.

It's almost a carbon copy of Fermi tbh, high pricing with huge price cuts and large performance gains through time.

It's looking quite like AMD wanted you to splash out on the 70 instead of the 50 considering that the 50 got massive gains as opposed to the 70's very conservative gains in comparison though, not cool AMD.

As greg pointed out above, would be better for us all if both of them tried harder though.

 

[OLDPHART]

So far in 2013, NVIDIA has made a big statement with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN video card. (Sadly we expect little in the way of retaliation from AMD.) We look forward to the continued advancement of performance and hopefully game developers will take advantage of it in this year's games.

Have we forgetting something---> 7990

 

[wolvers]

Looks like they didn't use the CAPs that go with each driver, well I can't see it mentioned. The BF3 performance looks to back that up too. IIRC all of those games have had optimisations in a CAP at some point.

 

[LtMatt]

waited until June until the 7970 cost half of the launch price.
driver boost was welcomed but it did run great even before 12.11.

still considering watercooling.

+1,

That's when I jumped on board too.

+2

I jumped on board around that time as well.

Looks like they didn't use the CAPs that go with each driver, well I can't see it mentioned. The BF3 performance looks to back that up too. IIRC all of those games have had optimisations in a CAP at some point.

They are the most biased review site ive seen.

 

[Gregster]

So far in 2013, NVIDIA has made a big statement with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN video card. (Sadly we expect little in the way of retaliation from AMD.) We look forward to the continued advancement of performance and hopefully game developers will take advantage of it in this year's games.

Have we forgetting something---> 7990

I think you have not realised that the 7990 is a dual chip card?

Titan is a single chip card. Basically, the 7990 is 2*7970's on one PCB.

 

[flopper]

Have we forgetting something---> 7990

No but as any indication single card is preferenced at least for me.
however more performance for cheaper price.

It also depends on games one play I guess, I am more a fps/mmo/rts so most of the time a crossfire solution would work fine.
I am sensitive though so whenever the syncing of frames is off I notice.

I would want to try 7970 in crossfire just to check if tis the same as my old 6870 setup.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Well aside from ignoring the cap's, as usual its just a crap review from [H], ultimately they said "AMD and Nvidia should provide perfect drivers from release and for every new game that comes out, anything less is failure".

I suggest he get into programming because apparently writing code, testing, designing, its all instant, he'd make a mint.

THe reality is, new architectures take time, the VLIW architecture was around for YEARS and years, and games, game dev's, everything to do with games was optimised for a previous architecture, it takes time to get drivers optimised, otherwise there would never be anything beyond an initial driver release for any product... ever.

The idea that they can perfect every game that comes out is again, stupid, neither AMD nor Nvidia has an unlimited supply of programmers, testers, there are lots of games(factoring in other devices).

[H] are living in a dreamland where everything should be perfect straight away, they're idiots and always have been.

All I need to know about [h] is there Asrock review, Kyle bought an Asrock mobo, it was broken before I used it, the PCI_e slot didn't work, he still reviewed it then complained about its poor performance AND refused to get an RMA which from what they said they got a very quick response from Asrock support who told them to RMA it. He refused to get a free fully working replacement and reviewed a broken board, claimed it was representative of all Asrock boards, then a day or two later reviewed a Asus board, given to them for free, with Asus add's everywhere and proclaimed how much better it was than the Asrock competitor. Disgusting behaviour, sickeningly biased and useless, worthless site.

 

[OLDPHART]

I think you have not realised that the 7990 is a dual chip card?

Titan is a single chip card. Basically, the 7990 is 2*7970's on one PCB.

Give this man a coconut, but if you read the articale yes it just mentions single, but both do dual cores --> 2012 AMD and NVIDIA Driver Performance Summary Review which should be taking into account --> ATI 7990 Vs GTX 690 there's very little in it, but would love a rematch with the latest drivers for both.

To see who is king of the Hill.

 

[Gregster]

@ DM

I couldn't agree more about Kyle. I have never enjoyed his reads and find them completely biased. As for Asrock, I had an Asrock board that lost sound after a year or so and RMA took exactly 7 days sending it and recieving it. I call that damned good.

Ideal boards that have some great features at a decent price.

Give this man a coconut, but if you read the articale yes it just mentions single, but both do dual cores --> 2012 AMD and NVIDIA Driver Performance Summary Review which should be taking into account --> ATI 7990 Vs GTX 690 there's very little in it, but would love a rematch with the latest drivers for both.

To see who is king of the Hill.

I will PM my addy for the coconut (Love them)

Fair points and I misread your post and thought you was comparing a 7990 to a Titan. My bad

The 7990 should win most games but depends on game scaling.

 

[LtMatt]

Well aside from ignoring the cap's, as usual its just a crap review from [H], ultimately they said "AMD and Nvidia should provide perfect drivers from release and for every new game that comes out, anything less is failure".

I suggest he get into programming because apparently writing code, testing, designing, its all instant, he'd make a mint.

THe reality is, new architectures take time, the VLIW architecture was around for YEARS and years, and games, game dev's, everything to do with games was optimised for a previous architecture, it takes time to get drivers optimised, otherwise there would never be anything beyond an initial driver release for any product... ever.

The idea that they can perfect every game that comes out is again, stupid, neither AMD nor Nvidia has an unlimited supply of programmers, testers, there are lots of games(factoring in other devices).

[H] are living in a dreamland where everything should be perfect straight away, they're idiots and always have been.

All I need to know about [h] is there Asrock review, Kyle bought an Asrock mobo, it was broken before I used it, the PCI_e slot didn't work, he still reviewed it then complained about its poor performance AND refused to get an RMA which from what they said they got a very quick response from Asrock support who told them to RMA it. He refused to get a free fully working replacement and reviewed a broken board, claimed it was representative of all Asrock boards, then a day or two later reviewed a Asus board, given to them for free, with Asus add's everywhere and proclaimed how much better it was than the Asrock competitor. Disgusting behaviour, sickeningly biased and useless, worthless site.

+1
You nailed it.

 

[ubersonic]

Give this man a coconut, but if you read the articale yes it just mentions single, but both do dual cores

Actually no they don't, the is no such thing as an AMD HD7990, however a few partners have taken it upon themselves to release "7990" and "7970X2" cards utilizing a pair of HD7970 GPU's (im not trying to be pedantic, merely pointing out that AMD don't officially have a dual GPU card this gen).

The idea that they can perfect every game that comes out is again, stupid, neither AMD nor Nvidia has an unlimited supply of programmers, testers, there are lots of games(factoring in other devices).

It does reflect a bit badly on AMD though that it took them ~1 year* to get their drivers stable in World of Warcraft, one of the most popular games on the planet, which hasn't seen a major update to its graphics engine since 2010.

*The 7950/70 launched in January 2012 and the random freezing issue wasn't fixed until the 13.1 drivers which were officially released in January of 2013.

 

[ubersonic]

Double Dragon!, I mean post

 

[Yaayuh!]

[H]? Nope, not even going to bother reading it.
Gave up on them a while ago.

 

[wolvers]

[H] is one of the few sites I just don't feel I can trust to be completely unbiased.

Actually no they don't, the is no such thing as an AMD HD7990, however a few partners have taken it upon themselves to release "7990" and "7970X2" cards utilizing a pair of HD7970 GPU's (im not trying to be pedantic, merely pointing out that AMD don't officially have a dual GPU card this gen).

To think that AMD had no involvment at all in the 7990s that exist would be a bit naive IMO and it's irrelevant whether AMD built it themselves or not, the fact is they exist so AMD are not going to ignore them or refuse to support them. In fact when an AMD dude was asked recently about Titan he stated that they weren't bothered because they felt they still had the fastest card with AresII.

 

[weehamish]

Actually no they don't, the is no such thing as an AMD HD7990, however a few partners have taken it upon themselves to release "7990" and "7970X2" cards utilizing a pair of HD7970 GPU's (im not trying to be pedantic, merely pointing out that AMD don't officially have a dual GPU card this gen).




It does reflect a bit badly on AMD though that it took them ~1 year* to get their drivers stable in World of Warcraft, one of the most popular games on the planet, which hasn't seen a major update to its graphics engine since 2010.

*The 7950/70 launched in January 2012 and the random freezing issue wasn't fixed until the 13.1 drivers which were officially released in January of 2013.

Been reading this thread and this stuck out!

Warcraft MMO is a Nvidia game, they are all over Nvidia with this game, maybe that has something to do with it?