If you believe the most emphatic gamers, a graphics drivers update is good for—what, 10 or 15 percent additional performance? As a result, running benchmarks on Catalyst 8.6 when 8.8 is out automatically invalidates those other numbers and clearly indicates bias. All kidding aside, how much truth is there behind the assumption that every new driver update delivers untold performance enhancements?
AMD brings out a new Catalyst driver every month and if there’s a sales push for a new graphics chip between releases, additional beta drivers are released to the press. At Nvidia, the cycle between the official WHQL driver versions is longer. However, beta drivers containing minor changes are available at irregular intervals.
Logically, it’s clear some of the performance claims must be exaggerated. AMD and Nvidia release numerous driver builds every year. If each of these drivers were to increase 3D speed by 10 percent, the graphics cards would double their performance in a few months. But that’s not the case, as even new graphics chips are struggling to outshine their predecessors by up to 50 percent. If the claim that every graphics driver brings more speed were true, no one would ever buy new 3D hardware again because the driver updates would deliver greater benefits.
In practice, the first beta drivers are optimized for speed for the purpose of 3D tests and aren’t necessarily perfect. The first “official” versions are more stable, which, for some games, costs a little in terms of performance. The greatest speed increases for new products generally come within the next three months, when more errors are found and corrected, and adaptations are made to meet current game requirements, ensuring the basic level of 3D performance. The subsequent three months see additional optimizations for benchmark games to achieve better test results. Then adaptations are made in favor of new games, with the drivers additionally optimized for CrossFire (AMD) and SLI (Nvidia).
Over the entire product life cycle of a graphics card, we might be able to expect as much as a 30 percent overall performance increase due to driver updates. Greater individual results are possible, but these usually result from errors in memory adaptation or poorly optimized games—for example, Flight Simulator X with Nvidia cards that have less than 512 MB of graphics memory or Crysis, which remains a constant source of changes as frame rates yo-yo depending on the driver version used.
In this evaluation we aim to determine how much of a performance increase could be seen between the Catalyst 8.6 and the Catalyst 8.8. Tests were conducted using a Radeon HD 4870.
There’s another rumor tied to the Radeon HD 4870 running in CrossFire mode: only beginning with Catalyst 8.8 is the performance of two cards running together properly supported.. The GeForce GTX 280 with the ForceWare 177.39 driver is apparently not very well optimized either—a recent test with the GeForce 177.92 beta driver showed up the differences.
All tests also were carried out with an overclocked CPU. This is the only way to determine how much potential could be seen in the fast graphics chips. The GeForce 9600 GT was tested as a control group with both the ForceWare 175.16 and the GeForce 177.92 drivers. As a series chip, it has the longest possible period of driver optimization and serves as the lower performance limit for the CPU power test.
- Madness And Myth, Or Hidden Performance?
- Comparing Chips And Configurations
- What Should The Nvidia and AMD Drivers Be Able To Do?
- GeForce GTX 280: Driver Update from 177.39 to 177.92
- GeForce GTX 280: The Benefit Of CPU Overclocking
- GeForce 9600 GT: Driver Update From 175.16 to 177.92
- GeForce 9600 GT: The Benefit Of CPU Overclocking
- Radeon HD 4870: Driver Update From 8.6 To 8.8
- Radeon HD 4870: The Benefit Of CPU Overclocking
- Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire: Driver Update From 8.6 to 8.8
- Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire: The Benefit Of CPU Overclocking
- 3DMark06: 1280x1024
- Summary Of Performance Differences
- 3D Performance Sorted According To Resolution And Anti-Aliasing
- Results: Improved Performance, But Not For All Graphics Chips
This is observed in the piece and should not affect performance.
This is observed in the piece and should not affect performance.
Can you please translate this into english?
I have no idea what you mean to say with your comment, other than the obvious (that you disagree on some level with the article)
Having had experience with two failing xfx cards (both 8800gtx's actually), I've got to warn you though, that their warranty is a bit fictional. While they may actually cover broken products, you can easily risk waiting months for a replacement.
Proof of my claim in case someone unexpectedly doubts it : http://www.opel.cc/xfx8800gtx/xfx.htm
That was the first failing card. The second I haven't even bothered sending in, and just bought an 4870 instead of waiting months.
But it can lead to the conclusion that current drivers are irrelevant, or rather less relevant.
That's a good,true and useful conclusion, but it's not a general one, only specific to this particular set of drivers.
Where's it say drivers are irrelevant?
What the article states, is that you don't nessecarily gain performance by using current drivers. It doesn't mean the bug fixes and 'futureproofing' with regarding to unreleased games isn't relevant.
The article merely deals with the urban legend claiming new drivers unconditionally improve hardware performance.
ps. catalyst 8.6 is the version shipped with my 4870 - so it's not dated before the cards, it's merely the initial retail version.
Disclaimer: This is not a fault in the article, just speculation on one of the results.
Referring to the Crysis Very High setting on the Radeon 4870:
It appears 1280x1024 is cpu limited, as you see a fair FPS improvement at this resolution (and not others) when overclocking.
Moving to 1680x1050, you see more significant improvements as the burden has shifted back towards the GPU, allowing the enhancements to be seen.
At 1920x1200, we are simply reaching the limits of the hardware, so the enhancements are less relevant.
It seems one of the enhancements affect AA performance in Crysis as it seems to be improved across the board. I'll leave you to figure out the rest, as I'm short on time, but I'd wager the enhancements involve trading more efficient processing of data on the video card for more driver overhead. This would explain why more CPU limit settings are seeing lower rates, while more GPU intense settings are seeing benefits. The only real oddball is 1680x1050 at high, but I'll bet with a little time, it could be explained as well.
On another note: Did the Catalyst 8.8 improve performance over Catalyst 8.6 in CF mode when both were overclocked. I suspect the answer is no, but it seems there may be more CPU overhead in the newer drivers. Given more CPU cycles, an insignificant, but measurable improvement may be measured. (My interest in this is purely academic as I don't own a newer ATI card at the moment)
That said, I'd be interested in a similar article with mid/high end video cards and a mid/high end processor. What kind of real performance improvement (or lack there of) can someone with a GeForce 8800GT or Radeon 4850 expect with paired with an Athlon X2 6400+ or a Core 2 Quad Q6600 (without overclocking).
As the monthly graphics roundup has been telling us for the last past months, which highend card you should choose (4870, 260 or the dual gpu nvidia one) depends on the gaming titles you expect to use it on, as they're not delivering the same performance in all games. Some are sponsored by nvidia and more often than not those games run better on nvidia hardware, even if it's slower in a raw shader processing power value. The opposite is probably true with games where ati has had their hands on the graphics engine though I can't at the top of my head remember any.
of course, exception is crysis wherein additional of, like 5 frames can help in all resolutions and little fps difference there can be worth debating.
anyways, this an article many of us waiting for. high end crossfire/sli does have the least value. crysis is the only game could benefit from high end hardware video card to processor.
Some drivers do improve performance, just not nearly enough to make a noticeable difference.