Catalyst 5.7 Drivers: Memory Limited Performance Improvements
by Josh Venning on August 13, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
Overall, the new 5.7 drivers will please the majority of ATI users out there, but the performance hit (even if it is small) with the higher memory cards isn't acceptable and might annoy some people. We feel that ATI should have at least given users the option to turn off HyperMemory for the higher memory cards, which should have completely resolved the issue.Another not-so-great thing about the new drivers is that some of the performance increase claims in the driver release notes are slightly misleading. While we did see a lot of the gains that they mentioned in most of the games, we found many of these increases to be with cards so limited (performance-wise) that they didn't matter. ATI claims in the release notes that the greatest gains in performance will be on cards with 128MB and 64MB of RAM. We found this to be true, but as we saw on the x600 128MB card, almost all of the tests that saw gains still had framerates that were unplayable. Likely, you will see some performance increases on 64MB cards, but you won't be able to run the games at the high settings that ATI claims will produce the highest gains.
That being said, the good definitely out-weighs the bad here. As we mentioned, hardly anyone will notice any decrease in performance in their games with the catalyst 5.7 drivers, and many will notice an increase, especially those with older ATI gear.
Now, the question is, who will this latest driver make the most happy? Our tests showed performance gains with the 128MB cards, and of the games that we tested, FarCry seems to get the best improvements with the new driver. So, if you own a 128MB ATI card and you play FarCry, you should be very happy indeed. Half-Life 2 also sees a lot of improvement, which should please many people as well (especially as many current and future games will be using HL2's Source engine). Undoubtedly, some of you with higher-end ATI cards may have missed the small print in ATI's release notes, cranked up the settings and hoped to see phenomenal gains; but instead, were crestfallen with the results. To be sure, your performance won't (necessarily) be worse, but with what ATI has to look forward to seemingly so far beyond the horizon, more might have been expected from this driver update.
Any way that you look at it, driver updates are free, and, with the exception of the mostly-harmless data swapping performance loss issue, catalyst 5.7 will serve to help many ATI customers. It's nice to know that ATI is taking care of its patrons (both old and new), but with NVIDIA so far ahead of the game right now in the high-end, we can't help but wonder what's happening at ATI's camp to cause these delays. So, as we wait for Crossfire and R520, we hope for the sake of competition that the new releases from the Canadian company will be enough to live up to the high standard that NVIDIA has set with the G70.
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xtknight - Saturday, August 13, 2005 - link
No.bupkus - Saturday, August 13, 2005 - link
Where can I download the 5.6?I have a new ATI X800np w/ 256MB and I downloaded and installed this last Tuesday. I notice a small drop in 3DMarks2001 but just shrugged it off as the result of solar flares or whatever. It would be nice if ATI warehoused their older drivers and made them available.
nserra - Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - link
Did you look even look?At Ati site
Drivers and Software
+Windows XP
RADEON
Previous Drivers and Software
They are all there since Catalyst 2.1 or even older.
JarredWalton - Saturday, August 13, 2005 - link
Try http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=18">Guru3D - you can get practically every past driver version for ATI and NVIDIA cards there.JustAnAverageGuy - Saturday, August 13, 2005 - link
I'm still running the 4.6 drivers because 4.7 makes the textures in Battlefield 2 go crazy with my 9800 Pro.Gamingphreek - Saturday, August 13, 2005 - link
Where in the world are they pulling these framerate increases from??They have had 3 years to perfect these drivers, why all of a sudden are we seeing 0-10fps increases. Is ATI using shader replacement on more games? Did IQ suffer at all.
It just seems hard to believe that these drivers based on the exact same architecture since the 9700 still have gains of 10fps left in them.
-Kevin
Shadowmage - Sunday, August 14, 2005 - link
Did you even READ the article? ATI implements HyperMemory on ALL cards with 128MB and less of memory.ecvs85 - Saturday, August 13, 2005 - link
I have a question, since this hypermemory is a software based memory management software that makes use of the system ram, what about the AGP aperture settings in the bios? (well for agp boards)I got 1GB of ram and when I set the AGP aperture to 256MB I don't have much issue running games that need more that 128MB of video ram (which I have 9800pro). So is the hypermemory smooths things out, having less stuttering and results in higher overall framerates? If that is the case then I don't need to upgrade to this driver :P
MrSmurf - Saturday, August 13, 2005 - link
ATI's drivers have been going downhill lately. I don't care about gaining a few fps especially when they cause more bugs than they fix.I still use the 4.12's.
ElJefe - Saturday, August 13, 2005 - link
dang yo'z.i never had an issue this past year with ati's drivers.
besides my all in wonder not playing DVD correctly. no freakin idea why or how. reloaded all of it 2x and it stil doesnt work right. Cyberlink PowerDVD is what i use now, a shame though as ati's was very nice and integrated. I have a 9800 PRO AIW.
I dont knock ati, i mean, that whole intelligent CLI thing i have running actually works really well for games, i think everyone forgot about that. Works for new and old, i see lag on startup from it as it "thinks" for an older game, runs great though.
I still want to go nvidia myself for new system if I cant manage to run ATI allinwonder x800 XT on a linux system.
What's up with ati not putting out faster/better gaming Linux based drivers like nvidia does? that's a tad self defeating for such a giant in the industry.
I mean nvidia doesnt even make graphics cards! its not the big of a company! (only chips and chipsets and designs)