Slow IE9 performance with Latest radeon drivers.

I've been noticing slow 2D Performance with my PC, and the only thing I can find to illustrate it is IE9, so here goes.

First, I use IE9 and IE Speed Reading for this benchmark

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/SpeedReading/Default.html

When I run it on my PC, a Phenom II X6 1090t with 8GB of Ram and 2x5970 cards running 12.4 WHQL Drivers and the Latest CAP, I score 41-47 Secs. on the test.

On an Athlon II X4 640 PC with 4GB of Ram and ATI Radeon 3000 Integrated Graphics running 11.7 WHQL Drivers, I score 10 Secs. on the test.

Other 2D items seems to be problamatic as well. Flash Video Skips (Regardless of browser) moving windows seem to not be as snappy. ETC. 3D Games work fine. Other browsers (such as chrome) finish the IE test fine (Chrome does it in 6 Secs, on par with the slow PC) I also remember the Test running much faster on my PC, but noticed this drop in the IE Score around Catalyst 12.2. It may have been slowed down with a few older drivers since I don't use IE as my main browser, but it scored much faster using past 11 drivers.

Is this a bug with the new drivers, should I return to the older 11 series drivers? Is anyone else running into this issue with the current drivers?

Just for the follow-up,

I decided to uninstall and rollback the drivers to see when this exactly occurs. From what I found, the 11.12 drivers are the last drivers that do not stall IE9. From my testing, everything is running as it should. Videos look fine without any stutter, and certain games seem to perform better.

As soon as I install 12.1 or higher, IE9 Speed drops like a stone, Video Stutters, ETC.

Deathlizard said:

Just for the follow-up,

I decided to uninstall and rollback the drivers to see when this exactly occurs. From what I found, the 11.12 drivers are the last drivers that do not stall IE9. From my testing, everything is running as it should. Videos look fine without any stutter, and certain games seem to perform better.

As soon as I install 12.1 or higher, IE9 Speed drops like a stone, Video Stutters, ETC.

Click to expand...

With new major driver versions, the engine typically gets rewritten from the ground up to benefit the new cards 3D capabilities.

An article at another site stated how 2D performance was Abysmal with the initial 11.0 driver release. The official response was that they emphasize optimizing 3D performance, then aim for the 2D. (Which is when someone at the review sites starts to yell.)

Interesting, I've had some quirks the last couple of weeks with IE9, but only at this site. Everytime I want to post to a thread when I'm not logged in, I log in, and see the welcome screen, but I am immediatly greeted by the log in screen. I have to manualy clear the IE cache through IE, then it let's me post.

For a reference point, using IE9 on the SB system in my sig, with 5 tabs open and no o-clock on the v-card, the result is 6 seconds. I'm not sure if your issue is a result of our cpu differences, or the Quad CFX overhead ? I'm usin the 12.3 driver

Deathlizard said:

should I return to the older 11 series drivers?

Click to expand...

DigitalGriffin said:

An article at another site stated how 2D performance was Abysmal with the initial 11.0 driver release.

Click to expand...

There was no "initial 11.0 driver release" nor does the first number in the catalyst version refer to a "series".

The only thing a catalyst version number refers to is the date. 12.4 = April 2012, 11.7 = July 2011, etc.

FragMagnet said:

For a reference point, using IE9 on the SB system in my sig, with 5 tabs open and no o-clock on the v-card, the result is 6 seconds. I'm not sure if your issue is a result of our cpu differences, or the Quad CFX overhead ? I'm usin the 12.3 driver

Click to expand...

You're also using a 7970 according to your sig. I wonder if it's a bug in the 12 series that affects older cards only.

I had terrible terrible lag with any website that uses Flash. Including this website due to the banner ads at the top using any platform. The standalone flash player, IE9, chrome, etc. New driver + flash + 5870 = terrible lag for me. I rolled back my driver and things quickly went back to normal.

6sec for my 7870 (2D clocks are 300/600) with the latest 12.4's and i5-2500k

Could try turning off hardware acceleration (Internet Options > Advanced Tab > Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering*) and see what kind of a difference that makes.