AMD Catalyst 12.6 BETA Benchmark

AMD Catalyst Benchmark Logo

Crysis 2, Metro 2033 and Battlefield 3 perform aprox. the same with this 12.6 Beta as with any of the two remaining drivers. The only thing worth mentioning is that 12.6 Beta tends to dip a bit lower than the other two drivers, this can’t be good.

Now, take a look at the DiRT 3 graph and tell me if that looks right to you… I have no idea what is going on with this driver in this particular game. If you don’t know, DiRT 3 is one of the few games the bares the AMD logo and to see such a huge drop in performance, even if it’s just in DX11 is extremely disappointing. To be honest I didn’t believe the results at first but after testing in one other operating system (with the same 12.6 Beta driver) the results were exactly the same. Can someone that has DiRT 3 installed can confirm my results?

Despite the terrible downfall in DiRT 3, Skyrim performs better with this driver. About a 3.5% improvement in both minimum and average departments.

AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta Benchmark - Crysis 2
AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta Benchmark - Metro 2033
AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta Benchmark - Battlefield 3
AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta Benchmark - Battlefield 3
AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta Benchmark - DiRT 3
AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta Benchmark - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta Benchmark - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim


Page 2 – 3DMark06,3DMark11,Cinebench and Unigine
Page 4 – Conclusion

  • tomas

    i don’t get it… late and crappy?

  • Ricardo

    I not Upgrade this driver for my HD6950!

    what is happen AMD ???????????????????????????? :-(

    Late and Bad!

  • kn00tcn

    i dont understand everyone’s conclusion

    dropping a SCHEDULED WHQL has nothing to do with making features take longer, it means they will appear faster

    it means they’ll work on 1 branch at a time, add the things they want to add, maybe stick some fixes or schedule fixes for the next branch, then eventually decide to WHQL it as needed

    if you look at all the previous WHQLs, they’re almost exclusively based on a beta branch that a lot of times ends up leaking or is officially a preview release, so i dont see any problem at all…

    trinity had to launch, needed profiles, old game bugs were piling up since october, & planning ahead a month before a release to build a WHQL branch when the current internal branch is already ahead would be a good idea?

    come on, why be so negative without any evidence, let’s see how things are around july/august

    • kn00tcn

      almost forgot, consider how pointless the monthly WHQLs were, remember 12.3? 11.3? they released 12.4 & 11.4 previews the same day with performance boosts or fixes

      there’s a reason nvidia isnt on a monthly WHQL schedule, they’re on a per branch featureset schedule the way it should be

      think of it like firefox’s schedule without the 6 weeks part, they have an alpha branch with ultra new features, a beta that’s a little older with bug fixes, & a release version that many parts of it existed months in advance, that would be the WHQL one that eventually comes out

      • http://benchmark3d.com Johnny 3D

        The idea behind the change is good but I’m not certain things will go any better from now on, at least not for those with 1-2 years old graphic cards. But this remains to be seen.

  • Osjur

    These may be performing worse then the previous driverset but these actually fixed shitload of problems for us 7970 cf eyefinity users… finally a driver which doesn’t randomly hang the computer when in long idle, random bsod’s are also gone when starting a game etc. I’ll take little worse perfoming driver any day than being forced to use rc driver from january to get cf & eyefinity working.

    • http://benchmark3d.com Johnny 3D

      I have almost no issues with WHQL drivers so, for me, features and performance are more important. Of course, other people/cards have minor/major issues with these drivers so for them those things might not be as important. Nonetheless, hope AMD finds a balance between these two different categories.

  • Krist

    Is this driver better than AMD Catalyst 8.97 18 April ?
    Sould i update here ?
    Thanks

    • Trokala

      Absolutely No

  • Matt

    Here’s my setup

    Phenom II X4 975 + Gigabyte 7970

    I tried Dirt 3 on Ultra preset, v-sync on at 1920×1080 resolution and these drivers installed.

    Results were optimal, stayed at 60fps and rarely dropped at all.

  • Julien

    It would be nice to see some benchmarks with a hd 7000 card, maybe the results would be different.

  • RubyFTW

    @Benchmark3D:

    Crappy performance in Dirt3 or other games with HD6000 cards? Crappy 2D/Aero performance and other Windows 7 UI issues? Annoying bugs? Crashes and BSODs? Features that were promised for HD6000 cards since their release but still aren’t working even today (like UVD3 DXVA playback of 4K videos)?

    There is hope.

    Use the new and improved official AMD issue reporting form:
    http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx

    and *post a bug report* for every issue with bug description, steps to reproduce, a link to the article in your webpage or forum post (if available) and your e-mail address for contact.

  • tomas

    some things that i’ve noticed. mass effect 1, textures got even worse.

    with previous drivers darksiders looked out of focus and no motion blur at all. now stills without mb, but image quality improved drastically. now textures are more sharpen, even the hud looks better.

    these drivers are definitely to fix errors, not for performance. maybe they can finally clean his reputation of bad drivers. i don’t know what you think but i buy amd for performance, i’m a tweaker, so i got no problem modifying stuff to make things works.. if performance boost, even better ;)

  • Mark

    Helo guys, I’ve installed the AMD Catalyst 8.97 18 AprilI driver.My card is HD5730 but it display HD5000. Is there something wrong?

    Thaks in advance…………

  • JThomas

    I’ll confirm the poor Dirt 3 results as well. I usually get 65 fps on the benchmark, but with 12.6 I get only 46 fps, exact same settings. Same results with or without the CAP installed. Using a 6950 and 2500k.

  • tomas

    http://s19.postimage.org/6aenq7hur/123.png

    http://benchmark3d.com/amd-catalyst-12-6-beta-8-98-june-4

    what about this leaked beta? could you make some tests? i don’t have time nor soft to bench them. i just blindly install them if you say they are good. obviously if i notice extra stuttering i get back to previous drivers. most important game for me, bf3. the only one i play that fucks my gpu, so each fps extra is important.

    • http://benchmark3d.com Johnny 3D

      The benchmark will come tomorrow.

      • tomas

        thx, i love as far as it isn’t gay. you are the only one who bench’s bf3 online!

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