AMD Catalyst 12.6 WHQL & 12.7 Beta June 26 Benchmark

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Posted on June 29, 2012 at 10:46 AM in Benchmarks

Obviously, 12.7 Beta is faster than 12.6 WHQL; 12.7 Beta June 26 comes 4th and 12.6 WHQL 8th in our top drivers list.

Based on the release notes for 12.7 Beta you get the feeling that this driver would be awesome but after you test those “improvements” for yourself you see that things aren’t pink. We should have seen improvements with 3DMark 11, Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2 but unfortunately that didn’t happen (at least with a HD6950), performance was actually slightly lower…The only game that was indeed performing better is Skyrim but most people have game breaking issues that must be fixed ASAP.

I still have that feeling that nothing really changed since AMD made their announcement regarding drivers schedule modification and if you really want to feel a change (fixes, improvements etc) with each driver released you need to get a HD7900 card. After AMD made a compromise in dropping support for pre-HD5000 cards I expected better support for HD5000 and HD6000 cards, which isn’t happening at the moment…

I can’t refrain from saying that Shogun 2 is unplayable on HD7900 cards due too freezes and lock-ups yet AMD focuses on performance…

And if that isn’t enough rant, AMD still focuses on 2-3 year old games instead of addressing issues with earlier ones which should be in my opinion their top priority…but AMD likes to praise themselves: http://blogs.amd.com/play/2012/06/28/the-new-catalyst/

AMD Catalyst 12.6 WHQL & 12.7 Beta June 26 Benchmark - Total


Page 3 – Crysis 2, Metro2033, Battlefield 3, DiRT 3 and Skyrim

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  • Tsvetan

    Thanks man.

  • vinyl

    Your conclusions are always great man… :) Don’t see much for older gens… But at least QQ dancer was fixed… LOL I’m starting to think that’s STILL a joke/spoof!

  • vinyl

    And what the hell? Newer GL in 12.6? I now see the reason why you mashed… Probably more reasons that that, too. I’ve already installed, otherwise I probably would have done the same.

    Maybe just make the mod like that then? ;) Either way, thanks man…

  • Ex0ticViruS

    Good work, thanks!

  • EtaYorius

    Damn… not working either… i still get a black screen right after loading screen in Skyrim and the game just stops responding, the music keeps playing tho.

  • pesticide

    your conclusion is spot on, only thing we can do is make sure we shout on all social media platforms like twitter about all the isseus there still is with drivers and demand what we deserve, full driver support with fixes and optimizations for older cards to.

  • Nick

    Another great review, thanks! Is there any chance you could possibly run the benchmark suite with your own 7900 modded drivers to see if maybe it gets a larger boost from these driver ‘improvements’ supposedly for the 7xxx series?

  • Tame

    It would be very interesting to see the results if you actually tested these updates with a 7xxx series card.

  • Luke

    I have the same problem with HUD in Skyrim, but I fixed it. How? Just set shadows to HIGH not to ULTRA and all is good again!
    Thanks for tests, best drivers for HD7000 for sure.

  • Luke

    HUD problem in Skyrim is easy to fix – just set shadows to High, not to Ultra and all is good again!
    P.S. Sometimes my comments are not visible – I have to post 2 times or more, issue with firefox or your site?

  • Luke

    Oh gosh 2 post after 5 minutes… something is not right.

  • Denis

    How can I fix sound not working on my HDTV. When I rollback to 12.4 it works but it doesn’t work on 12.6 any suggestions?

  • bouuman

    8.97 18 April will never go down, best driver 4 ever!^^

  • Luke

    ^ Yes 8.97 18 April are the best, but sadly not for HD7000 series… (BSOD’s, GSOD etc..) The best drivers for HD7000 series is 12.7 beta released 28 June.

  • ea

    what is the best driver for HD 5000 series?

    • Muhammad

      i have ati sapphire 5450 512mb ddrs PCIE hdmi , and i’d like to know the same thing too , that’s a link to my graphic card

      http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?cid=1&gid=3&sgid=917&pid=315&psn&lid=1&leg=0

      please tell me wuts the best driver available , cuz after reinstalling windows with 12.7 beta driver i got major FPS drops in all of my games

    • krusty999

      Same here, I have 5470 on my laptop and want the best for games and I have a issue with flash full screen videos, they see choppy I think this start with flash 11 old videos of youtube don’t have this problem. I tried to disable hardware acceleration for flash but still the same issue.
      I’ll have win7 32bits I will go for 64 bits to try if fix this.

  • Juzer78

    7000 series card should test the driver.

    Sorry, my English is not too good.

  • Chris Wuyts

    Hey like always nice testing :)
    But i was wondering one thing here how do you run that BF3 test, i mean i see settings there but as there isnt a record/playback option how do you it?
    Reason i am asking is i wanna compare my systems fps cause i swear i got more fps on those settings on 1 card (usually run crossfire though so could be wrong).
    And my system is pretty much the same as yours otherwise.

  • Chinley

    Im just gonna stick with 8.97 18 april

    • Krist

      same here