Looking Back Pt. 2: X800 & Catalyst Under The Knife
by Ryan Smith on February 22, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
9700 Pro vs. X800 Pro
Now that we’ve seen what the X800 Pro has been through in its lifespan, what about the 9700 Pro? One of the biggest requests for inclusion in this series is a direct comparison between the two cards, which we have set up here. Along with the request to use newer games on the 9700 Pro, we have gone ahead and run the 9700 Pro through the same paces on some of the more promising games that we’ve run the X800 Pro through, and recorded the results as a performance factor for each card over its performance on the previous driver revision. For the sake of time and minimizing any impact that a CPU-limited scenario would have, all tests were run with 4x anti-aliasing and 8x anisotropic filtering. We have also included a performance summary, showing the performance factor between the first 4.05 drivers, and the latest 6.01 drivers on these games.
Of course, at around half the framerate of an X800 Pro, the 9700 Pro is measuring some of its performance changes in fractions of a frame per second, so a 17% improvement in Battlefield 2 performance may not change playability at all, but nonetheless, this is a stark reminder of the power of drivers that comes in to play well after the launch of a product. Although this may be a rare scenario due to the architectural similarities between the 9700 Pro and the X800 Pro, it’s good to see that the 9700 series was not forgotten about at ATI when it was replaced by the X800. Hopefully, this isn’t a trend that will be forgotten with the X800 series either, now that the X1000 series is ATI’s high-end product line.
Now that we’ve seen what the X800 Pro has been through in its lifespan, what about the 9700 Pro? One of the biggest requests for inclusion in this series is a direct comparison between the two cards, which we have set up here. Along with the request to use newer games on the 9700 Pro, we have gone ahead and run the 9700 Pro through the same paces on some of the more promising games that we’ve run the X800 Pro through, and recorded the results as a performance factor for each card over its performance on the previous driver revision. For the sake of time and minimizing any impact that a CPU-limited scenario would have, all tests were run with 4x anti-aliasing and 8x anisotropic filtering. We have also included a performance summary, showing the performance factor between the first 4.05 drivers, and the latest 6.01 drivers on these games.
Of course, at around half the framerate of an X800 Pro, the 9700 Pro is measuring some of its performance changes in fractions of a frame per second, so a 17% improvement in Battlefield 2 performance may not change playability at all, but nonetheless, this is a stark reminder of the power of drivers that comes in to play well after the launch of a product. Although this may be a rare scenario due to the architectural similarities between the 9700 Pro and the X800 Pro, it’s good to see that the 9700 series was not forgotten about at ATI when it was replaced by the X800. Hopefully, this isn’t a trend that will be forgotten with the X800 series either, now that the X1000 series is ATI’s high-end product line.
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breethon - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
I never download the "FULL" package drivers from ATI. I always use the option "dial up - driver only"(the first of three options under the dial up links). I use atitool for any tweaking. I don't have the CCC (atleast I don't believe I do). Don't let the dial-up words trick you. I pull from ati.com just as fast as the broadband links. Hopefully this helps.archcommus - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
I'll admit the CCC takes a long time to load and is bloated, but if you disable it from startup and don't mess with the settings much, it's really not that bad.microAmp - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
If you search the Far Cry forums, there is a way to do a quick save, through the console, IIRC.archcommus - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
Yes, I wouldn't even bother playing the game without doing that, don't care for repeating things endlessly.wing0 - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
from all the comparison for 9700Pro, it seems to me that I should stick with my 5.7 cat?Cybercat - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
I do see a change in the shadows under the dock. I don't know if you could say it's better or worse though.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
That's actually fog. We couldn't get an exactly perfect screenshot because of the rolling fog(though we kept the scene because it does a good job showing everything), so there is a slight difference due to that. There are no differences however due to driver IQ changes.tfranzese - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
But is the CCC the cause of the increased boot time or is it the .NET Framework in general? I've never given CCC any use personally, just want to be sure that the distinction was made when you took the measurements.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
It was the CCC, the machine already had the .NET framework on it.Scrogneugneu - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
Yeah, but is the slowdown caused by the CCC itself, or by the .NET components loading because there was a .NET application launched?I believe the Framework won't load itself until one application requires it. If the CCC happens to be that application, then there's not much ATI can do about it. However, if it isn't... then they should definitively take a look at that (I'd rater have a better CCC than a "half-a-fps" faster driver).