AMD Rolls Out New Radeon HD 7900 Graphics Driver

[Cristian_25H]

Sunnyvale-based heterogeneous computing promoter AMD has today made available an updated driver for its recently-released Radeon HD 7970 graphics card. Dubbed 8.921.2 RC11, this fresh driver brings the following:

Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing and Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Preview support for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications

- AMD Radeon HD 7900 users can now enable Super Sample Anti-Aliasing and Adaptive Anti-Aliasing through the AMD Catalyst Control Center for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications.
- Applications must support in game Anti-Aliasing for the feature to work (Forced on Anti-Aliasing through the Catalyst Control Center is not supported for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications).



Performance highlights of the 8.921.2 RC11 AMD Radeon HD 7900 driver

- 8% (up to) performance improvement in Aliens vs. Predator
- 15% (up to) performance improvement in Battleforge with Anti-Aliasing enabled
- 3% (up to) performance improvement in Battlefield 3
- 3% (up to) performance improvement in Crysis 2
- 6% (up to) performance improvement in Crysis Warhead
- 10% (up to) performance improvement in F1 2010
- 5% (up to) performance improvement in Unigine with Anti-Aliasing enabled
- 250% (up to) performance improvement in TessMark (OpenGL) when set to "insane" levels

Resolved issues: highlights of the 8.921.2 RC11 AMD Radeon HD 7900 driver

- Folding@Home: intermittent stability issues have been resolved for the OpenCL version of Folding@Home
- Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 no longer experiences minor flickering with Tri CrossFireX configurations
- Dragon Age 2 no longer experiences minor flickering with Tri CrossFireX configurations
- StarCraft 2 no longer encounters issues when quitting campaign with Tri and Quad CrossFireX configurations
- BattleForge stability has been improved with Tri CrossFireX configurations
- Improved stability when enabling / disabling CrossFireX and installing the AMD graphics driver on AMD CrossfireX configurations

The 8.921.2 RC11 driver is available here for Windows 7 and Windows Vista

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Some nice increases there.

 

[djisas]

Suppose this is an 7900 exclusive, right??

 

[EastCoasthandle]

Yes, it appears so.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Wait what? Where the hell is the new catalyst?! This new driver team at AMD is starting to piss me off. First they bork the Open GL now this?

 

[dj-electric]

Yesyes.avi

 

[Steevo]

Waits for review request for W1zz......

 

[imitation]

So now all the benchmarks need to be redone? Nice job. Many reviewers will use the old numbers when comparing GK104 to Tahiti, and i can see which one they will favor with a 10% performance lead.
AMD should focus on releasing finished products when the time is right instead of dozing out half-baked, non-available hardware and software.

 

[TheMailMan78]

So now all the benchmarks need to be redone? Nice job. Many reviewers will use the old numbers when comparing GK104 to Tahiti, and i can see which one they will favor with a 10% performance lead.
AMD should focus on releasing finished products when the time is right instead of dozing out half-baked, non-available hardware and software.

I doubt W1zz will waste his time doing new reviews. He did that once before because of all the bitching coming from the community and it turned out to be fruitless.

 

[razaron]

I thought W1zzard re-reviews old cards when reviewing new ones?
Also, wasn't the bitching debacle due to new drivers being released during/after the review?

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

I doubt W1zz will waste his time doing new reviews. He did that once before because of all the bitching coming from the community and it turned out to be fruitless.

Hah I remember that brouhaha. Wasn't it GTX 480? Or was it 580?

 

[djisas]

He will do it soon when he gets his 7950...

 

[TheMailMan78]

I thought W1zzard re-reviews old cards when reviewing new ones?
Also, wasn't the bitching debacle due to new drivers being released during/after the review?

I dont belive he does. I could be mistaken.

Hah I remember that brouhaha. Wasn't it GTX 480? Or was it 580?

Man I don't remember. I thought it was an ATI card however. Everyone thinks drivers are pixie dust or something.

 

[erocker]

Everyone thinks drivers are pixie dust or something.

...and you think they'll release a driver that improves the 5 series? Good luck with that. Use a driver that works, that's been what I have been doing since I started using computers. Over at Guru3d they have a lot of different driver builds that might just work awesome with your card.

 

[Kaynar]

Actually I must congratulate AMD for providing stable drivers from day 1. Any games I happen to play - and have used to test - on my 7970 run smooth. There is surely improvements to be made to gain FPS performance increases but this is a perfect launch for AMD compared to the first drivers for the HD5000 series few years ago,

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

Yeah you're right it was an ATI card but it was compared to the 480 I think...

 

[TheMailMan78]

...and you think they'll release a driver that improves the 5 series? Good luck with that. Use a driver that works, that's been what I have been doing since I started using computers. Over at Guru3d they have a lot of different driver builds that might just work awesome with your card.

Um I was getting BF3 improvements with the 5XXX series (small and not worth a rebench EVERY TIME) with each driver release. However when they changed the OpenGL it bombs Photoshop constantly. So no its not worth it for W1zz to rebench but it is worth it for specific reasons.

11.9 vs 11.12 is day and night for BF3 with the 58xx series cards.

 

[radrok]

Yeah but now that series 7xxx is coming out, the 6xxx becomes the new 5xxx and thus who owns a 5xxx card will likely see less support.
It has already happened in the recent past with 4xxx, it got almost screwed on the driver side.

 

[RejZoR]

How can this be a performance driver when all the "gains" are negative?

 

[repman244]

Yeah but now that series 7xxx is coming out, the 6xxx becomes the new 5xxx and thus who owns a 5xxx card will likely see less support.
It has already happened in the recent past with 4xxx, it got almost screwed on the driver side.

Just because older cards aren't mentioned doesn't mean there are no improvements for them. I quite often saw improvements with my card even if it wasn't mentioned...

 

[Super XP]

If Wizz does another review with new drivers, I recommend he cuts the review in half re-benchmark everthing with new drivers.