AMD Catalyst 8.95 17 January Benchmark
Earlier today a new 8.95 driver leaked, two weeks newer than the previous one. And what I and probably most of you noticed is the big OpenGL version incrementation. If I’m not mistaken this is the first driver with a 6.14.10.115xx OpenGL string. A lot of improvements (performance and bugs) done by AMD in the OpenGL department, probably trying to fix those many issues with RAGE.
Some of you already commented that OpenGL is working better with this driver than with the previous one. Unfortunately I don’t know what “works better” means, so if you have any issues with any AMD drivers simply post a comment on the article for the respective driver and tell me and others what kind of issues are you encountering (what & how & when), this way I can test if the issues are fixed in releases to come. When it comes to AMD driver I’m pretty lucky, never had major issues with them in the last year, except for a few ones that were fixed pretty quick by AMD.
Regarding OpenGL: the increase in version doesn’t really means that the driver will perform better in OpenGL games/apps than other drivers. I’ve seen lot of drivers with lower version numbers beat the hell out of drivers with much newer ones. I can’t say the same thing about bugs and/or compatibility; newer versions will not necessarily perform better but stability would be greater and bugs fewer. But even with the newest drivers you will always encounter bugs in some obscure games or even in triple A titles. It’s all about trial and error.
Enough chit-chat, let’s see what this 17 January 8.95 driver performs compared to 11.12 WHQL and what AMD recommends (not officially, don’t quote me on this) for non HD7900 owners and that would be 12.1 Preview or in our case: 12.1a Preview. If you ask me, 12.1a or non a is a pretty crappy driver. But who the hell uses 12.1 anyways?
Prior to installing a driver, a sweep was done in safe-mode using Phyxion Driver Sweeper.
| Catalyst Version | 2D Driver | 3D Driver | OpenGL Driver | Driver Packaging Version | CCC Version | CCC |
| 11.12 WHQL | 8.01.01.1215 | 7.14.10.0879 | 6.14.10.11318 | 8.92-111109a-129966C-ATI | 2011.1109.2212.39826 | 11.12 |
| 12.1a Preview Driver | 8.01.01.1223 | 7.14.10.0887 | 6.14.10.11414 | 8.93.10-120102a-131070E-ATI | 2012.0102.2236.40378 | 12.1 |
| 8.95 17 January | 8.01.01.1234 | 7.14.10.0893 | 6.14.10.11543 | 8.95-120117a-131901E-ATI | 2012.0117.2009.36062 | N/A |
All 3 drivers are tested in 3 synthetic benchmarks and 6 games.
- 1. 3DMark06 1.02 Professional Edition - 1680×1050 – 2xAA – Anti Aliasing Quality = 0 – 4xAF – Shader Model 2.0 = Return to Proxycon + Firefly Forest – HDR/Shader Model 3.0 = Canyon Flight + Deep Freeze – 2 Runs.
- 2. Unigine – Heaven Benchmark 2.5 – 1680×1050 – High Shaders – Normal Tessellation(DirectX 11) – 2xAA – 4xAF – 2 Runs.
- 3. Cinebench 11.5 – 3 Runs.
- 4. Crysis 2 1.9 using Adrenaline Benchmark Tool – Extreme Preset – 1680×1050 – 4xAA – Hi-Res Textures – Central Park – 3 Runs.
- 5. Metro 2033 using Update 1.2 Benchmark Tool – Very High Settings – 1680×1050 – 16xAF – No AA for DirectX 9 and 4xMSAA for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 – 3 Runs.
- 6. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Call of Pripyat – 1680×1050 – Extreme Preset (DirectX 9) – Ultra Preset (DirectX 10 & 11)
- 7. DiRT 3 – Ultra Preset – 1680×1050 – 8xMSAA – 3 Runs
- 8. Battlefield 3 – Ultra Preset – 1680×1050 – 4xMSAA – 16xAF – Multiplayer @ Strike at Karkand (32p map, Large Conquest), main street: US Deployment -> B Flag – 3 Runs x 60s.
- 9. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim v1.3.10 – Ultra Preset – 1680×1050 – 8xAA – 16xAF – Tested in the area East of Rorikstead – 3 Runs x 60s.
All synthetic benchmarks were ran 2 times except Cinebench (3 runs), all games were ran 3 times.
| Test Hardware | AMD Catalyst 8.95 17 January Benchmark | |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core i5-2500K (Sandy Bridge)
4.5 GHz, 6 MB L3 Cache, power-saving settings disabled, Turbo Boost disabled. |
| Motherboard | MSI P67-C43-B3, Intel P67 Chipset |
| Memory | 2 x 2 GB DDR3 1600MHZ |
| Hard Drives |
WD 500 GB SATA III (OS) Samsung 750 GB Sata II (Game) |
| Graphics Card | Sapphire HD6950 1 GB |
| Power Supply | Corsair TX 650 W |
| System Software And Drivers | |
| Operating System | Windows 7 SP1 x64 |
Table of Contents:
Page 1 – Introduction
Page 2 – 3DMark06, Unigine and Cinebench
Page 3 – Crysis 2, Metro 2033 and Call of Pripyat
Page 4 – Battlefield 3, DiRT 3 and Skyrim
Page 5 – Image Quality
Page 6 – Conclusion
Page 2 – 3DMark06, Unigine and Cinebench
BM3D,
Great article I like the new format with the table of contents, very easy to understand information.
In response to your comment about the newest driver not being the best ( ecsp. for Open GL). I was using 12.1 Preview and it worked great for every title, but I updates to 12.1a and RAGE became unplayable with graphics and texture corruption. It also had some other problems such as not loading the display settings -gamma and color settings from the GPU. I reloaded the original 12.1 and all was fine again. Everything worked great
Thanks, personally I don’t like 12.1/12.1a drivers, I only play one game regularly and that is Battlefield 3, it works horribly on 12.1/12.1a drivers.
11.12 Beta 18 Nov was the best for me (BF3) than came 8.95 03 Jan and now 8.95 17 Jan.
Well I ended up uninstalling these cause I had a problems with the catalyst control center it would not open up to use. Also the driver had problems with detecting the resolution for skyrim so I couldn’t play. I checked the show all resolution box in options. So I re installed the 12.1 beta A drivers and they worked fine. I might re install these drivers again to retest it all. But yeah thanks for doing the benchmark
hopefully the official drivers come out soon.
Had one single CCC crash on the first reboot, but it worked afterwards. You could use CCC from 8.95 Jan 03 or from any other driver and the drivers from this one.
Skyrim worked like it should, no issues there, at least for me
I cought the culprit! its not ati driver.
When is set sound quality to 24bit 192bits in device panel, skyrim would crash on main menu, weird but true.
And for the drivers are working fine for
Nice benchmarks
Well I tried to reinstall these drivers again today but I got the Amd driver error X driver install : The INF file was not found so it didn’t install. The driver didn’t install but the catalyst installed. back to 12.1 a ahhaha. anyways the 12.1 a catalyst won’t work for me the driver is fine. When I tried to do a restart runtime I get “Could not load file or assembly ‘MOM.Implementation’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. Clicking on the catalyst control center icon to start it up I get Could not load file or assembly ‘ CLI. Implementation’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
Thanx man!
another new test drivers and this time bringing all the best!
ATI Tray Tools don’t work with this driver?
It is not working here and that can not boot ATIPDLXX library.
Any solution?
Working fine here!
Here is what i did:
Installed 12.1 drivers
Installed 8.95 drivers
Installed latest Ati tray tools beta version
Everything from catalyst to ATT working fine
This driver doesn’t work with Sapphire Trixx. At least not for me.
Sapphire trixx is the best f**k the rest….
http://www.filesonic.com/file/CDSNN5C/8.95-120117a.7z
filesoinc: all sharing is now disabled.
Plz upload it to other filehoster………
Moved ALL files back on the server, all links are working + no waiting time.
Well I installed the 8.95 drivers and I tried out BF3, I get way more FPS than I did with 11.12 WHQL however now the game stutters REALLY bad. Anyone else experiencing this?
One advice, if you really want a clean install you will need driver sweeper. First you have to uninstall the driver with the AMD software and then boot in safe mode. There you start the sweeper and clean everything AMD related. If you do not do this in safe mode there will always be data which is locked by usage of Windows in normal mode.
After this boot in normal mode and install the new driver.
Cheers
Please Can you test batman ac dx11 the next benchamark?.
so a trick i usually do is just drop .dll files in from new drivers instead of doing full installs
want to try a test like that for fun? with your known bf3 numbers, you could try the dll of a bad driver & the dll of a good driver to see if you’ll get similar numbers (while having a regular whql installed like say 12.1)
use atidxx32.dll & aticfx32.dll together in the folder where bf3.exe is
Well, I can imagine this method doesn’t work with every gameengine. But indeed it is a very quick way to test out some new drivers!
As far as I know this is also working with engines made by ID (since ID-tech 4). Pretty awesome since the desaster of BRINK some time ago.. or Rage.
But does someone know if this trick is also working with SW: The Old Republic? And where to copy the files?
Also I’m just seeing atidxx32.dl_ or atidxx64.dl_ in the newest driver package! Are those the right files I have to copy? Just rename them?
@Frevegas, no you have to ‘expand’ them in command prompt, that’s also the wrong file
dx9 – atiumdag.dll (isnt swtor a dx9 game?)
dx10/11 – aticfx32.dll & atidxx32.dll
these are 32bit cuz almost every game is 32bit
yes it works on ‘every game’ cuz windows searches driver files from the base exe folder, then the system folder
swtor is in the latest jan31 driver leak, but i wouldnt know if you also should have the latest CAP installed