[Tested] Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix (Jan26): Gains up to 18% in OpenGL Tessellation (TessMark)

2011/01/24 JeGX

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6970 running TessMark

I just finished to test the new Catalyst 11.1a hotfix (January 26 2011!!!) to verify the gains in OpenGL tessellation claimed by AMD HERE. My friends, this new hotfix (you can download it here) brings some nice improvements in TessMark, especially in Moderate and Normal tessellation levels (moderate: X8, normal: X16, extreme: X32 and insane: X64).

Testbed:
– Graphics card: SAPPHIRE HD 6970
– CPU: Core i7 960 @ 3.2GHz
– RAM: 4GB DDR3 Corsair Dominator
– Motherboard: GIGABYTE X58-A UD5
– Windows 7 64-bit
– PSU: Corsair AX1200

TessMark settings: 1920×1080 fullscreen, no AA, no PostFX, map set 1.

Scores with Cat 11.1a Jan26 and the last WHQL Cat 10.12:

Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix Jan26_2011:

Moderate: 31562 points (526 FPS): +14.9%
Normal: 9781 points (163 FPS): +18.86%
Extreme: 2201 points (37 FPS): +3.7%
Insane: 541 points (9 FPS): +0.37%

Catalyst 10.12:

Moderate: 27469 points (458 FPS)
Normal: 8229 points (137 FPS)
Extreme: 2122 points (35 FPS)
Insane: 539 points (9 FPS)

More scores are available here: SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6970 OpenGL performances.

I did the test with a freshly compiled version of TessMark (I will release it this week) because I noticed some crashes with the current TessMark 0.2.2 and Catalyst hotfix.

I also tested the OpenGL tessellation with Unigine Heaven 2.1.

Settings: 1920×1080 fullscreen, OpenGL rendering, tessellation: normal, shaders: high, AA: 4X, 16X anisotropic filtering.

Catalyst 10.12:
– 24.7 FPS, Scores: 622

Catalyst 11.1a hotfix Jan26:
– 25.9 FPS, Scores: 654: +5%

And here is the DX11 score with the same settings and Cat 11.1a hotfix:
– 42.0 FPS, Scores: 1057

There is still an important bottleneck somewhere in AMD’s OpenGL driver…

11 thoughts on “[Tested] Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix (Jan26): Gains up to 18% in OpenGL Tessellation (TessMark)”

Leith Bade 2011/01/24 at 21:12

Have you tried the new tessellation level slider to see how well it works?

JeGX Post Author2011/01/24 at 21:56

The tess level slider has no effect, at least on TessMark.

Leith Bade 2011/01/25 at 00:21

Well thats typical of AMD. (Announcing new features that are broken)

A Keenan 2011/01/25 at 13:12

The tesselation slider does work as ive got it up and running on a lowly 5870 and have it working perfectly in unigine etc, But surely it shouldnt be used in benches as its CHEATING

Komar 2011/01/25 at 16:33

Ok just installed on hd 5970 hardware , I ve got the new tessellation slider like other 6xxx radeon , i’m able to say that the slider has strictly no effect in term of fps during the benchmark in dx 11session- Tess and dof enabled obviously …. Same avg fps with slider toggled to x2 or maxed out to x64…

Ça marche pas visiblement ..,,

45 fps avg max 133 min 13
1920×1080 AAA hfx16 dx11 Tess on dof on
Maxed out without msaa option.
5970 (960/1260) -q9550 @ 3.93ghz- 4 go pc 8500 cas5
Win 7 x64 up to date.

Komar 2011/01/25 at 16:35

Sry I’ve forgotten one thing : I’m talking about the metro 2033 dx 11 game benchmark.

JeGX Post Author2011/01/25 at 16:37

@Komar: avec AMD ça marche rarement du premier coup 😀

komar 2011/01/25 at 21:19

Lol JeGX ;D … je connais la musique
on se refait pas je suis chez ati depuis ma rage 128 …. je commence a connaitre leur drivers maison ;D fanboy rouge que je suis …

Ah sinon … depuis le temps …

Félicitations et bonne continuation pour le site qui est un must… ca fait un moment… que je passe quotidiennemt car c ‘est pour moi une mine d’infos en bon geek que je suis … MERCI pour les infos de qualité …au top !

PS : et ca me fait réviser mon anglais … I apreciate .

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