AMD's Radeon HD 5870: Before And After A Year Of Driver Updates

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Are you dutiful about keeping your drivers up-to-date? AMD does a pretty fantastic job about maintaining a monthly release schedule, after all. Today we look at how much performance you can expect from an old card in new games using four driver packages.

Benchmark Results: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (DX11)

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Header Cell - Column 0 1680x1050No AA/No AF1680x10508x MSAA/16x AF1920x1080No AA/No AF1920x10808x MSAA/16x AF2560x1600No AA/No AF2560x16008x MSAA/16x AF
Percent Gainfrom 9.10 to 11.19.35%7.38%8.64%6.63%6.10%6.18%

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is one of two benchmarks in our suite that requires us to use Fraps. As a result of different reaction times, the average FPS score can have a one-half to one percent variance. With this in mind, small isolated differences can be discarded. However, that is not what we see here.

When we upgrade from Catalyst 10.3 to 10.8, half the time we experience a small drop in performance. With that said, overall, we don't see any performance gain after updating to 10.3. There is one exception to this trend. At 2560x1600 with 8x MSAA and 16x AF, we see a steady improvement from one driver to another.

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89 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dallaswits
    I run a 5850, have loved it, and always get the newest driver.
    Reply
  • sabot00
    Wow, someone is really pissy.
    Reply
  • cangelini
    More like someone has been really moderated ;-)
    Reply
  • Assmar
    hahahyoursowrong"The moral of the story: be sure your graphics card drivers are always up to date."I'd love to cept I get a blue screen every time and can't even get to windows going from 10.4 to the newest.Uninstall all drivers before installing new ones.
    Reply
  • opmopadop
    If that guy who created/posted his problem 5 times spent that much effort understanding why his rig BSOD'd when he used the latest set, he might have resolved his problem by now.
    Reply
  • slyphnier
    ever since 10.11 ... many user got "100% GPU usage" and "top right mouse lag" issue
    11.4 early preview still having the issue
    from what i know the issue above mostly effect radeon 5000series (5850 and 5970)
    for people having those issue forced to stick with 10.10e

    still no news when amd will fix those issue, as from what i heard amd can't replicate the issue on their lab, thus can't fix it
    Reply
  • Assmar
    I know you're terribly busy, but any way we can get the CF comparisons from then and now, even if it isn't as thorough?
    Reply
  • Zeh
    I'm eager for a new driver release. I've switched my old 4670 ddr2 for a 6850. In some games I'm having a few VSync problems, and the overall performance during video playback has decreased and I have no idea why, quality did not change, or at least I didn't see any changes.

    This 6850 just doesn't feel as rock solid as the good old 4670, which never gave me any trouble. Here's hoping new drivers will solve my issues. Else, I might even switch to a pair of GeForces instead of getting another 6850 for crossfire.
    Reply
  • cangelini
    assmarI know you're terribly busy, but any way we can get the CF comparisons from then and now, even if it isn't as thorough?
    Excellent story idea, assmar.
    Reply
  • howiejcee
    Andrew Ku forgot to mention that ATI's lousy drivers have and for the foreseeable future will always have problems.

    Not to say that Nvidia occasionally has driver issues, but at least they fix the problems. Only 10.9 and a couple versions before that don't give my 5870 any major problems.
    Reply