5.4 Catalyst Comparison

Vyrticl · May 11, 2005, 04:49 AM

I haven't seen a comparison of a lot of the 5.4 drivers out currently, so I decided to do a comparison myself. So I've decided to post my findings to help all those wondering about this as well. These tests were run on the following system...

AMD Athlon 3400+
1GB Corsair RAM (2-3-2-6)
Hercules Radeon 9800 XT

The settings in the control panel for each driver is as follows...

AA: (DirectX: Application Preference) (OpenGL: 2x)
AF: (DirectX: Application Preference) (OpenGL: 4x Quality)
Texture Preference: High Quality
Mipmap Quality: High Quality (DHzer0point used an undefined value that was kept)
Vertical Sync: Always Disabled
A.I: High (If A.I. was not present in the driver control panel it was not changed)
Geometry Instancing: Enabled
Triple Buffering: Disabled

The games were configured as follows:

Half-Life 2 - All settings to maximum.
Doom 3 - Video quality set to High, all other settings enabled.

Anyways, on to the results.

Half-Life 2 - AA: 0 AF: 0

1024 x 768
ATI w/ CCC: 52.04 fps
DHzer0point 054: 51.85 fps
NGO 2.4b: 50.65 fps
Omega 2.6.25a: 49.41 fps

1280x1024
ATI w/ CCC: 44.88 fps
DHzer0point 054: 44.94 fps
NGO 2.4b: 45.18 fps
Omega 2.6.25a: 45.24 fps

Half-Life 2 - AA: 4x AF 0

1024 x 768
ATI w/ CCC: 51.71 fps
DHzer0point: 51.61 fps
NGO 2.4b: 51.69 fps
Omega 2.6.25a: 52.19 fps

1280 x 1024
ATI w/ CCC: 41.50 fps
DHzer0point: 41.35 fps
NGO 2.4b: 41.67 fps
Omega 2.6.25a: 41.76 fps

Half-Life 2 - AA: 0 AF 8x

1024 x 768
ATI w/ CCC: 46.31 fps
DHzer0point: 47.28 fps
NGO 2.4b: 47.94 fps
Omega 2.6.25a: 50.49 fps

1280 x 1024
ATI w/ CCC: 32.05 fps
DHzer0point: 33.05 fps
NGO 2.4b: 33.94 fps
Omega 2.6.25a: 38.06 fps

Half-Life 2 - AA: 4x AF 8x

1024 x 768
ATI w/ CCC: 42.68 fps
DHzer0point: 43.67 fps
NGO 2.4b: 44.66 fps
Omega 2.6.25a: 47.85 fps

1280 x 1024
ATI w/ CCC: 28.51 fps
DHzer0point: 29.12 fps
NGO 2.4b: 30.14 fps
Omega 2.6.25a: 33.65 fps

Doom 3 - AA: 2x AF: 4x

1024 x 768
ATI w/ CCC: 44.3 fps
DHzer0point: 51.5 fps
NGO 2.4b: 40.1 fps
Omega 2.6.25a: 44.3 fps

1280 x 1024
ATI w/ CCC: 29.3 fps
DHzer0point: 34.2 fps
NGO 2.4b: 27.7 fps
Omega 2.6.25a: 29.3 fps

So there you have it. I know this isn't tested using a very large selection of games but it will give you a general idea of how the drivers perform. Also you will notice I didn't test the DNA drivers. I forgot about them until after the comparison and I'm too tired to do another install of drivers. Maybe another day. On to the verdict:

Best Half-Life 2 (DirectX) driver: Omega

Best Doom 3 (OpenGL) driver: DHzer0point

As for image quality, you'll have to decide that for yourselves. I didn't compare that very closely.

IvanV · May 11, 2005, 01:52 PM

Thumbs up for the DHzer0point crew! Can anyone tell me how these perform in other new OpenGL games, like Chronicles of Riddick?

pr0digal jenius · May 11, 2005, 02:10 PM

very nice comparison vyrticl, thanks. Did you use the autoexec.cfg files for Hl2 and Doom3 that come with our drivers, or not? (just curious)

And as for Riddick, I'm not sure, to be honest....worth lookign into though

We do msot fo oru testing in HL2/CSS, Doom 3, Far Cry, UT2004, and occassionally Quake 3 engine stuff

Vyrticl · May 11, 2005, 10:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pr0digal jenius

very nice comparison vyrticl, thanks. Did you use the autoexec.cfg files for Hl2 and Doom3 that come with our drivers, or not? (just curious)

And as for Riddick, I'm not sure, to be honest....worth lookign into though

We do msot fo oru testing in HL2/CSS, Doom 3, Far Cry, UT2004, and occassionally Quake 3 engine stuff

Nope I didn't use any of the autoexec.cfg's provided with your drivers. I wanted to keep everything as similar as possible. I was thinking about benching all the drivers with the special autoexec.cfg's but it seems like it reduces in-game options as well. I'm not sure if that was on purpose or not. So I just figured that even with the autoexec.cfg's used the conclusion would still be the same.

As for benchmarking CoR, maybe I can work something out to get the game...

Also, very nice work on the driver prodigal. Apparently that super special mipmap tweak makes your drivers own in OpenGL. Now you just need to get the DirectX portion of the driver up :P

daRk_heLmet · May 12, 2005, 08:56 AM

Good, I needed a comparison like that for those are the two games that I care about most.

For Doom3 are you using mods...like HUMUS....as they tend to increase performance...for Ati

[color=black]Make these changes in your interaction.vpf file located in \doom 3\base\pak000.pk4\glprogs
[/color]
[color=red]# Original code:
# perform a dependent table read for the specular falloff
TEX R1, specular, texture[6], 2D;[/color]

[color=orange]# New code:
#rename this old HUMUS change below and add the other lines
#MAD_SAT R1, specular, 5.0, -4.0;

MAD_SAT R1.w, specular.w, 4.0, -3.0;
MUL R1.w, R1.w, R1.w;

# He adds this too, replace the original with
# modulate by the constant specular factor
MUL R1, R1.w, program.env[1];[/color]

[color=black]more tweaks -[/color]
[color=#ffa500]http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...m+enhancements[/color]

[color=#ffa500]EDIT: with zer0point I got[/color]
[color=#ffa500]51.6 FPS[/color]
[color=#ffa500]X800Xt PE[/color]
[color=#ffa500]1280*1024[/color]
[color=#ffa500]Vsync off[/color]
[color=#ffa500]Ultra Q[/color]
[color=#ffa500]AA/AF = 4/8[/color]

[color=#ffa500][/color]
[color=#ffa500]but IQ was messed up a bit, texture corruption. "Can" be bcos I have modded the doom files a lot...[/color][color=#ffa500]I will be formatting my sys and then lets see. Most likely I will be going in for omegas.[/color]

~~ut2k4wikichici~~ · May 12, 2005, 09:59 AM

yo dark helmet kickass pic LOL! hehehe

now about these drivers Omega defenitly kicks ass when it comes to pushing your card to the limit allthough Catalist seems to have a allround good FPS you guys decide!

Btw. Riddick on my mechine seems to run like a Dream on Omega 5.1 at 1154x876x32 no aa or af SM 2.0 at 32 fps high 28avg. and 20 lowest! not to bad.

I like Omega the best my fav feature is the Custom settings Its brilliant you can go into old games like NFS HP2 which has good Poly cars and put the AA and AF up to 4x at 1200x960 with no probs!

both nfshp2 and riddick are at max detail

Vyrticl · May 12, 2005, 06:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daRk_heLmet

Good, I needed a comparison like that for those are the two games that I care about most.

For Doom3 are you using mods...like HUMUS....as they tend to increase performance...for Ati

[color=black]Make these changes in your interaction.vpf file located in \doom 3\base\pak000.pk4\glprogs
[/color]
[color=red]# Original code:
# perform a dependent table read for the specular falloff
TEX R1, specular, texture[6], 2D;[/color]

[color=orange]# New code:
#rename this old HUMUS change below and add the other lines
#MAD_SAT R1, specular, 5.0, -4.0;

MAD_SAT R1.w, specular.w, 4.0, -3.0;
MUL R1.w, R1.w, R1.w;

# He adds this too, replace the original with
# modulate by the constant specular factor
MUL R1, R1.w, program.env[1];[/color]

[color=black]more tweaks -[/color]
[color=#ffa500]http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...m+enhancements[/color]

[color=#ffa500]EDIT: with zer0point I got[/color]
[color=#ffa500]51.6 FPS[/color]
[color=#ffa500]X800Xt PE[/color]
[color=#ffa500]1280*1024[/color]
[color=#ffa500]Vsync off[/color]
[color=#ffa500]Ultra Q[/color]
[color=#ffa500]AA/AF = 4/8[/color]

[color=#ffa500]but IQ was messed up a bit, texture corruption. "Can" be bcos I have modded the doom files a lot...[/color][color=#ffa500]I will be formatting my sys and then lets see. Most likely I will be going in for omegas.[/color]

No, I didn't use the HUMUS tweak or any of the others listed on that page. I had originally used the HUMUS tweak but when I did the benchmarks I re-installed Doom 3 and forgot to use it. I'll try using the tweaks listed on that page with the drivers I have installed now and let you know the outcome.

PoopyTheJ · May 19, 2005, 06:41 PM

Good comparison thanks I'm a bit late on this I guess but been pretty busy

We're still playing and DX performance across the board is up, Source is a particularly hard game to satisfy....

>GSXR<mrbusa · May 19, 2005, 06:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PoopyTheJ

Good comparison thanks I'm a bit late on this I guess but been pretty busy

We're still playing and DX performance across the board is up, Source is a particularly hard game to satisfy....

i am going to try the new set of dhzp when it comes out.
i think us driver freaks are harder to please than the actual games you are trying to optomize.

peace out

Zardon · May 19, 2005, 07:50 PM

Nice to see some comparisons.

petri1 · May 19, 2005, 08:19 PM

THese are with ATI CAT 5.4

3DMARK03 8811
3DMARK05 3936
AQUAMARK3 53673

DOOM3 57.1 FPS strange 56.5 with cat 5.5

The benchmark started at 2005-05-17 23:56:53

Resolution: 1024×768
Demo: HardwareOC - d3c171
Detail: Maximum quality
Antialising mode: 8×
Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16×
Hardware DirectX level: DirectX 9
Heapsize: 512 MB
[color=#990000]Score = 58.1 FPS

[/color]Resolution: 1280×1024
Demo: HardwareOC - d3c171
Detail: Maximum quality
Antialising mode: 8×
Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16×
Hardware DirectX level: DirectX 9
Heapsize: 512 MB
[color=#990000]Score = 56.5 FPS

[/color]

Any bug, etc: [color=#0000ff]Roadside[/color]The HardwareOC Half-Life 2 Benchmarking Tool is FREE!

Copyright 2004 Roadside & HardwareOC.hu

these with ATI CAT 5.5
.................................................. ..........................................

well now they are tested and these results was what i got

and since yopu guuys know more about these things you be the judges:

3DMARK03 8839
3DMARK05 3984
AQUAMRK3 54909
DOOM3 timedemo Highq 1280x1024 56.6FPS

Resolution: 1024×768
Demo: HardwareOC - d3c171
Detail: Maximum quality
Antialising mode: 8×
Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16×
Hardware DirectX level: DirectX 9
Heapsize: 512 MB
[color=#990000]Score = 59.1 FPS

[/color]Resolution: 1280×1024
Demo: HardwareOC - d3c171
Detail: Maximum quality
Antialising mode: 8×
Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16×
Hardware DirectX level: DirectX 9
Heapsize: 512 MB
[color=#990000]Score = 57.3 FPS[/color]

so i can´t say if DHzeropoints Doom3 Half Life 2 config files does any difference but anyway
these are using no MoDiFieD drivers!!!!!

May 11, 2005, 04:49 AM	#1
Vyrticl DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Utah, USA Posts: 43 Rep Power: 0	5.4 Catalyst Comparison I haven't seen a comparison of a lot of the 5.4 drivers out currently, so I decided to do a comparison myself. So I've decided to post my findings to help all those wondering about this as well. These tests were run on the following system... AMD Athlon 3400+ 1GB Corsair RAM (2-3-2-6) Hercules Radeon 9800 XT The settings in the control panel for each driver is as follows... AA: (DirectX: Application Preference) (OpenGL: 2x) AF: (DirectX: Application Preference) (OpenGL: 4x Quality) Texture Preference: High Quality Mipmap Quality: High Quality (DHzer0point used an undefined value that was kept) Vertical Sync: Always Disabled A.I: High (If A.I. was not present in the driver control panel it was not changed) Geometry Instancing: Enabled Triple Buffering: Disabled The games were configured as follows: Half-Life 2 - All settings to maximum. Doom 3 - Video quality set to High, all other settings enabled. Anyways, on to the results. Half-Life 2 - AA: 0 AF: 0 1024 x 768 ATI w/ CCC: 52.04 fps DHzer0point 054: 51.85 fps NGO 2.4b: 50.65 fps Omega 2.6.25a: 49.41 fps 1280x1024 ATI w/ CCC: 44.88 fps DHzer0point 054: 44.94 fps NGO 2.4b: 45.18 fps Omega 2.6.25a: 45.24 fps Half-Life 2 - AA: 4x AF 0 1024 x 768 ATI w/ CCC: 51.71 fps DHzer0point: 51.61 fps NGO 2.4b: 51.69 fps Omega 2.6.25a: 52.19 fps 1280 x 1024 ATI w/ CCC: 41.50 fps DHzer0point: 41.35 fps NGO 2.4b: 41.67 fps Omega 2.6.25a: 41.76 fps Half-Life 2 - AA: 0 AF 8x 1024 x 768 ATI w/ CCC: 46.31 fps DHzer0point: 47.28 fps NGO 2.4b: 47.94 fps Omega 2.6.25a: 50.49 fps 1280 x 1024 ATI w/ CCC: 32.05 fps DHzer0point: 33.05 fps NGO 2.4b: 33.94 fps Omega 2.6.25a: 38.06 fps Half-Life 2 - AA: 4x AF 8x 1024 x 768 ATI w/ CCC: 42.68 fps DHzer0point: 43.67 fps NGO 2.4b: 44.66 fps Omega 2.6.25a: 47.85 fps 1280 x 1024 ATI w/ CCC: 28.51 fps DHzer0point: 29.12 fps NGO 2.4b: 30.14 fps Omega 2.6.25a: 33.65 fps Doom 3 - AA: 2x AF: 4x 1024 x 768 ATI w/ CCC: 44.3 fps DHzer0point: 51.5 fps NGO 2.4b: 40.1 fps Omega 2.6.25a: 44.3 fps 1280 x 1024 ATI w/ CCC: 29.3 fps DHzer0point: 34.2 fps NGO 2.4b: 27.7 fps Omega 2.6.25a: 29.3 fps So there you have it. I know this isn't tested using a very large selection of games but it will give you a general idea of how the drivers perform. Also you will notice I didn't test the DNA drivers. I forgot about them until after the comparison and I'm too tired to do another install of drivers. Maybe another day. On to the verdict: Best Half-Life 2 (DirectX) driver: Omega Best Doom 3 (OpenGL) driver: DHzer0point As for image quality, you'll have to decide that for yourselves. I didn't compare that very closely. __________________ The Whistling Cricket Tweaking Restaurant If it ain't broke, tweak it!

May 12, 2005, 08:56 AM	#5
daRk_heLmet Keep firing, assholes! Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Death Star Posts: 1,072 Rep Power: 0	Good, I needed a comparison like that for those are the two games that I care about most. For Doom3 are you using mods...like HUMUS....as they tend to increase performance...for Ati [color=black]Make these changes in your interaction.vpf file located in \doom 3\base\pak000.pk4\glprogs [/color] [color=red]# Original code: # perform a dependent table read for the specular falloff TEX R1, specular, texture[6], 2D;[/color] [color=orange]# New code: #rename this old HUMUS change below and add the other lines #MAD_SAT R1, specular, 5.0, -4.0; MAD_SAT R1.w, specular.w, 4.0, -3.0; MUL R1.w, R1.w, R1.w; # He adds this too, replace the original with # modulate by the constant specular factor MUL R1, R1.w, program.env[1];[/color] [color=black]more tweaks -[/color] [color=#ffa500]http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...m+enhancements[/color] [color=#ffa500]EDIT: with zer0point I got[/color] [color=#ffa500]51.6 FPS[/color] [color=#ffa500]X800Xt PE[/color] [color=#ffa500]12801024[/color] [color=#ffa500]Vsync off[/color] [color=#ffa500]Ultra Q[/color] [color=#ffa500]AA/AF = 4/8[/color] [color=#ffa500][/color] [color=#ffa500]but IQ was messed up a bit, texture corruption. "Can" be bcos I have modded the doom files a lot...[/color][color=#ffa500]I will be formatting my sys and then lets see. Most likely I will be going in for omegas.[/color] __________________ [color=white]My Blog[/color]* Last edited by daRk_heLmet; May 12, 2005 at 09:10 AM.

May 19, 2005, 06:41 PM	#8
PoopyTheJ DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Ohio Posts: 1,588 Rep Power: 66	Good comparison thanks I'm a bit late on this I guess but been pretty busy We're still playing and DX performance across the board is up, Source is a particularly hard game to satisfy.... __________________ [COLOR=Blue]“Alright boys, let’s start her up and see why she doesn’t work.” - John Fritz "I aim to misbehave" Malcolm Reynolds ATI Catalyst Beta Tester[/COLOR]

May 19, 2005, 08:19 PM	#11
petri1 DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 746 Rep Power: 0	THese are with ATI CAT 5.4 3DMARK03 8811 3DMARK05 3936 AQUAMARK3 53673 DOOM3 57.1 FPS strange 56.5 with cat 5.5 The benchmark started at 2005-05-17 23:56:53 Resolution: 1024×768 Demo: HardwareOC - d3c171 Detail: Maximum quality Antialising mode: 8× Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16× Hardware DirectX level: DirectX 9 Heapsize: 512 MB [color=#990000]Score = 58.1 FPS [/color]Resolution: 1280×1024 Demo: HardwareOC - d3c171 Detail: Maximum quality Antialising mode: 8× Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16× Hardware DirectX level: DirectX 9 Heapsize: 512 MB [color=#990000]Score = 56.5 FPS [/color] Any bug, etc: [color=#0000ff]Roadside[/color]The HardwareOC Half-Life 2 Benchmarking Tool is FREE! Copyright 2004 Roadside & HardwareOC.hu these with ATI CAT 5.5 .................................................. .......................................... well now they are tested and these results was what i got and since yopu guuys know more about these things you be the judges: 3DMARK03 8839 3DMARK05 3984 AQUAMRK3 54909 DOOM3 timedemo Highq 1280x1024 56.6FPS Resolution: 1024×768 Demo: HardwareOC - d3c171 Detail: Maximum quality Antialising mode: 8× Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16× Hardware DirectX level: DirectX 9 Heapsize: 512 MB [color=#990000]Score = 59.1 FPS [/color]Resolution: 1280×1024 Demo: HardwareOC - d3c171 Detail: Maximum quality Antialising mode: 8× Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16× Hardware DirectX level: DirectX 9 Heapsize: 512 MB [color=#990000]Score = 57.3 FPS[/color] so i can´t say if DHzeropoints Doom3 Half Life 2 config files does any difference but anyway these are using no MoDiFieD drivers!!!!! __________________ [COLOR=#232d35] [COLOR=Red]Intel Core 2 Quad 9450@2,66GHZ PowerColor Ati Radeon HD4870 512mb Gigabyte GaE-X38 4GB Kingston Hyper X [/COLOR] [/COLOR]

May 11, 2005, 01:52 PM	#2
IvanV HH Assassin Guild Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 5,917 Rep Power: 336 System Specs	Thumbs up for the DHzer0point crew! Can anyone tell me how these perform in other new OpenGL games, like Chronicles of Riddick?

May 11, 2005, 02:10 PM	#3
pr0digal jenius Delete Me Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 14,648 Rep Power: 0	very nice comparison vyrticl, thanks. Did you use the autoexec.cfg files for Hl2 and Doom3 that come with our drivers, or not? (just curious) And as for Riddick, I'm not sure, to be honest....worth lookign into though We do msot fo oru testing in HL2/CSS, Doom 3, Far Cry, UT2004, and occassionally Quake 3 engine stuff

May 12, 2005, 09:59 AM	#6
~~ut2k4wikichici~~ Banned Join Date: May 2005 Location: Australia AKA. Kangaroo country Posts: 340 Rep Power: 0	yo dark helmet kickass pic LOL! hehehe now about these drivers Omega defenitly kicks ass when it comes to pushing your card to the limit allthough Catalist seems to have a allround good FPS you guys decide! Btw. Riddick on my mechine seems to run like a Dream on Omega 5.1 at 1154x876x32 no aa or af SM 2.0 at 32 fps high 28avg. and 20 lowest! not to bad. I like Omega the best my fav feature is the Custom settings Its brilliant you can go into old games like NFS HP2 which has good Poly cars and put the AA and AF up to 4x at 1200x960 with no probs! both nfshp2 and riddick are at max detail

May 19, 2005, 07:50 PM	#10
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 179	Nice to see some comparisons.