ATI /AMD Radeon Catalyst 11.8 drivers now available for download

AMD has released Radeon Catalyst 11.8 drivers. In particular the new drivers will bring significant performance improvements to Black Ops, Crysis 2 and FEAR 3.

[gw4k]

So guys, what's up?

[AKS]

Hmm, I am still not that impressed with with DX11 performance in Crysis 2. I could already get a good frame rate with everything max minus DX11. AMD cards still don't seem to be cooperating with DX11 in Crysis 2.

[Tachyon_Nova]

I'll have to try it out when I get home. I have a measily HD5870 graphics card, which was easily enough to max Crysis 2 pre DX11/HR textures but now ranges between 15 and 35 FPS (running 11.7 drivers)depending on the level of DX11 features on screen.

I knew I should have gone with an Nvidia card, but they are just so much more expensive (at least in Australia) than AMD cards for the same performance. Not sure if I should buy a second 5870 to x-fire it or get a 6970/580GTX for BF3... Just for comparisons sake, they both have similar performance yet the AMD is ~$340, and the Nvidia is ~$480.

[arjman]

The 6970 is more comparable to the 570

[AKS]

Don't make the mistake of thinking that AMD cards struggle with every game and that this disparity is typical. I think it's just the way Crysis 2 was programmed. If memory serves, they handle tessellation a bit differently, and Crytek coded Crysis 2 with Nvidia cards in mind. I don't have any problems in Crysis 2 with my dual 6950 setup unless DX11 is switched on.

Other games like Dirt 3 and Aliens v. Predator favor AMD cards. I got over 100 fps in the benchmark tool with DX11/Ultra/ 1080p with Dirt 3, which is a stunningly beautiful game.

I'll probably be attacked by the fanboy hordes for saying this, but in general, Nvidia's GTX 560Ti and other recent Fermi cards tend to perform a bit better with single card overclocking and AMD's 6950s and 6970s tend to have the advantage in multi-card CF setups. I decided to go with a dual card solution instead of a single 570 or 580, so I went with 2 6950s and usually get great results.

I like both AMD and Nvidia's cards. My last 3 card setups have been the 4850, the GTX 460, and now dual 6950s in CF.

[FGHFGHFGH]

i heard the 6970 does better with dx11

[iamgoatman]

Crytek's implementation of DX11 in Crysis 2 is sloppy at best. I saw an article a bit back that showed that sometimes massive amounts of tessellation are used on almost flat surfaces, with no noticeable improvement in visual quality. Also that tessellation is constantly being applied to an invisible ocean under each level, which just further reduces performance.

It's getting to the point now where it seems that because the game's DX11 features are so heavily based on Nvidia's tech theres not a lot AMD can do about it.

I'm running the 11.7 drivers with 2x 5850 CFX and although they were an improvement over the last driver set, the performance still leaves a lot to be desired even when not running in DX11. With the objects setting (which seems to handle all the tessellation) turned to extreme I can maintain a 60FPS minimum in most cases, but in pretty much every level theres points where I'll drop into the mid 40s for a while, and with objects on ultra I get frequent slow downs into single figure frame rates, so basically a slide show for a few seconds.

A temporary fix for running tessellation now on AMD cards with a slight image quality drop but with much better performance is to force 8x tess in the CCC. Bricks don't rendered properly, but most other things do.

I'll have to try out these new drivers, any performance increase is welcome.

[JDW]

Ok, downloaded and installed.....will test later.

[dirthurts]

I grabbed these yesterday. Seem pretty stable, and the performance is nice, but I still leave DX11 off in Crysis. 60fps > DX11 in my opinion.
Maybe if I had a faster card.

[AKS]

The DX11 update is the one thing that kills my frame rate in Crysis 2. Everything else runs quite well.

[iamgoatman]

Just out of interest what kind of hardware are you running? I've seen people with almost identical setups getting wildly different performance.

[dirthurts]

I'm Phenom 2x4 @ 3.8ghz,
ATI 5850 2gb
4gb ram
Win 7 64.

[iamgoatman]

So you get a pretty much constant 60FPS give or take the odd inevitable hiccup? I have 2 5850's and although Crossfire scaling isn't perfect I still get frequent drops below 60FPS in DX9 on Extreme settings in certain scenes.

It seems with Crysis 2 in particular it's hard to judge what kind of performance you should be getting. I've seen numerous people claim a steady 60FPS average with mid-range GPU's but when pushed you find they often experience slow downs into the mid 40s or even lower for entire portions of a level, which paints an entirely different picture to being able to manage a constant 60FPS. Often enough it's only afterwards you find they were also running half the settings on the equivalent of medium or low.

Of course I don't mean to call you out personally, but it can be confusing when you're trying to find out the performance you should be getting when one person is saying one thing and another something completely different. It's good to get a wide range of results for comparison.

[dirthurts]

Yeah I run DX9 and get a pretty solid 60fps.
I gave up on multiple cards a long time ago.
In my opinion they are far more trouble than they are worth.
I would take out one card and see what happens.
I run the high resolution texture pack too. Didn't really affect my performance at all.

[AKS]

I have 2 cards in CF and don't have any problems except when I turn on DX11. I get 60 fps with ease otherwise.

[iamgoatman]

Just did some benches running in DX9 mode with a single GPU, everything on extreme with no high res textures (causes stuttering, probably down to my GPU only having 1GB of VRAM) at the beginning of the 'Gate Keepers' level, basically walking until you fall down to the street area.

Get roughly 55FPS average, occasionally going above 60 but normally hovering in the mid 50's, which isn't great as this level tends to be pretty easy on performance, so on later levels I can see it dropping into the 40's no problem. For now it seems Crossfire is completely broken in DX9 mode, I get negative scaling knocking off about 20FPS on single GPU performance.

Also tested in DX11, everything still on extreme so no tessellation is being applied and I actually see a very slight increase in performance with a single GPU, but it's only 2-3FPS, but Crossfire does work properly now in DX11 and I average around 100FPS, sometimes up to around 120FPS and others times down to the mid 90's.

If you're getting a solid 60FPS with one GPU that means somethings wrong on my end, or maybe you're just one of lucky ones. But like I said above, performance in Crysis 2 seems to vary wildly with similar set ups, I just think the game is poorly coded, I've seen people claim a near 60FPS average with a 5770 with a few settings on VH and the rest on extreme, which sounds mad.

This is all with:

Intel i5 2500K @ 4.5Ghz
2x ASUS 5850 1GB @ 800/1150
4GB RAM
Win 7 64

Don't think my CPU is the problem either.

@AKS

In DX11 mode have you tried running everything on Ultra except 'objects', every other enhancement that comes with the Ultra config should be easy to run but the objects setting handles the tessellation, setting it to extreme disables it. Also on my game when running in Ultra I have to switch 'Post Processing' to Extreme then back to Ultra when I first load a level, and I gain a massive FPS boost afterwards.

[AKS]

@iamgoatman

I did some tests with FRAPS and got some strange results.

First, I have a 2600K @ around 4.3 GHz and 2 6950 1GB cards in CF.

All tests include high resolution textures.

OK. First, Objects at Extreme with DX11 on yielded 24 fps. Not good. I toggled Objects and Post Processing between Ultra and Extreme without much change.

Next, I tried turning everything to Ultra with DX11 off. I easily got a consistent 60 fps with vsync on. Very smooth.

Finally, I tried turning vsync off, and I got around 75 fps most of the time, although it ranged between 60 and 105 fps depending on whether I was in an open area with several enemies or in an enclosed areas with few/no enemies.

Crytek just didn't give much consideration to people with AMD cards. I rarely see such a huge disparity between AMD and Nvidia cards. My cards run like crap with DX11 on in this game.

I've got great benchmarks in other DX11 games like Dirt 3.

BTW, I don't think 1 GB of VRAM would be a problem most of the time if you are around 1080p in resolution. It's when you go to the really high resolutions that you begin to see big differences between 1 GB and cards with 2 GB or more. Benchmarks of the 6950 1GB and 2GB cards are usually almost identical unless you go to really high resolutions. Check the benchmarks in card reviews and you'll see they are usually the same unless you go to crazy high resolutions.

[FGHFGHFGH]

anything over 40 should be good.