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Review: ATI Catalyst 10.3a performance explored - 20 per cent gains?

by Tarinder Sandhu on 22 March 2010, 10:49

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD), Sapphire, ATi Technologies (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qawpu

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Far Cry 2, H.A.W.X, and basic summary

Driver

Driver

Driver

Far Cry 2 is a touch faster at all resolutions. The gains won't be noticed by players, however.

 H.A.W.X
Driver

Driver

Driver

But the graphics outfit has done some serious tweaking for the performance in H.A.W.X, which it reckons is improved by as much as 20 per cent from Catalyst 10.2 to 10.3a.

Interestingly, we see the larger gains at the lower resolutions, and the 10.3a performance is such that it matches the Radeon HD 5870's on Catalyst 10.2.

Summary

Our brief look at Catalyst 10.3a performance shows that ATI has found significant improvements in certain games - up to 20 per cent on a Radeon HD 5850. The cynic in us reckons that ATI's kept performance back, ready to be unleashed just before NVIDIA's prized high-end GPU, Fermi, is made available.

ATI's also promising an update to CrossFireX profiles that'll further boost performance in multi-GPU mode, too. You'll have to wait a short while to see where ATI's crop of DX11 GPUs shape up against NVIDIA's, which is also bringing performance jumps with its ForceWare 197.13s.

Newer, faster drivers are good for the consumer but they make testers pull their hair out with gay abandon at the thought of retesting a bunch of cards.

Feel free to download the Catalyst 10.3a drivers here and let us know how you get on.


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HEXUS Forums :: 14 Comments

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Posted by MonkeyL - Mon 22 Mar 2010 14:53
I'd rather they got to grips with the constant crashing and video buffer corruption issues:-

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ATI-Radeon-Gray-Screen-Crash,9529.html

Which have been ongoing since the cards were launched last year.
Posted by Phage - Mon 22 Mar 2010 15:36
MonkeyL
I'd rather they got to grips with the constant crashing and video buffer corruption issues:-

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ATI-Radeon-Gray-Screen-Crash,9529.html

Which have been ongoing since the cards were launched last year.

Yup - my card is a PoS. An RMA will lose me my PC for 20 days. The WHQL version is my last chance to keep the machine up.
Posted by Percy1983 - Mon 22 Mar 2010 16:24
I feel lucky as my 5850 is running perfectly and is overclocked quite far.

Waiting for the offical release before moving to 10.3 myself.
Posted by sadbuttrue - Mon 22 Mar 2010 17:00
GSODs are caused by changes to the GDDR5 memory. Overclocking/underclocking disables powerplay and keeps the memory at a fixed speed/voltage. A constant rollout of driver updates claiming to fix the problem has everyone convinced it is software related. I doubt the problem will ever get fixed tbh, which is annoying as I need a new card.

I can replicate the GSODs seen on 5xxx series cards with my 4770, simply by changing the memory speed back and forth very quickly.
Posted by Phage - Mon 22 Mar 2010 17:09
sadbuttrue
I can replicate the GSODs seen on 5xxx series cards with my 4770, simply by changing the memory speed back and forth very quickly.

Interesting - Have you told ATi ?
Or any of the hardware sites would be very interested by anyone who can reproduce the fault and therefore explain it. If so, I can get my money back or test for a card that works !

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