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AMD Never Settle Catalyst 12.11 Driver Update

saw this in anand and i have to say i regret not buying a 7950... (got a 670) nvidia better come up with some good drivers, the drivers they've been releasing the past couple months arent good at all
 
The 7970 GHz Edition is 4% faster than a GTX 680 according to that review, correct?

So, is the 680 tested in that review reference clocks or OC'd?

Eh, regardless, both are killer cards. Flip a coin if you have a hard time choosing.
 
The Hardware Canucks link isn't working but the 7970 GHZ edition went from 2 % slower then the GTX 680 on 12.7 drivers, to 4% faster then the 680 on 12.11 drivers at 1920x1200 4xAA..
 
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the performance improvement in BF3 is astounding . different sites have different results. But the gist is the sites which showed the GTX 680 leading significantly previously like guru3d, anandtech, hardwarecanucks, hexus are now showing the HD 7970 Ghz ahead and in some cases by huge margins.

Nvidia's pricing needs correction. the GTX 680/GTX 670/ GTX 660 Ti are not worth anything more than 400/330/270 bucks given the amazing game bundle for the HD 7900 cards - Sleeping Dogs, Farcry 3, Hitman Absolution and 20% off on MOH warfighter. The performance difference at higher resolutions and higher settings is quite frankly high enough that GTX 680 does not figure as competition to HD 7970 Ghz at 1440p or higher.

hardwarecanucks says

"The 12.11 drivers represent a new beginning for the HD 7970 GHz Edition and while we haven’t tested the rest of AMD’s lineup, we’re sure the situation above will repeat itself throughout their product stack. This is not a selective performance bump in a few AMD-friendly titles either. Rather, the 12.11s offer an across-the-board performance increase that pushes the HD 7970 GHz Edition right past the GTX 680. From a price / performance standpoint, there are actually very few reasons to recommend the GTX 680 at this point and at higher detail settings there’s just no competition."

"To head AMD off before the lucrative Christmas shopping season, the 600-series needs price drops and a continuation of the Borderlands 2 and Assassin's Creed bundles to remain competitive"
 
Wow, very nice! I still don't regret buying my 7970 reference on launch day. It's a little crazy they are still eeking out more performance many months later...
 
Haste266 said:
Wow, very nice! I still don't regret buying my 7970 reference on launch day. It's a little crazy they are still eeking out more performance many months later...
Click to expand...

people who bought a HD 7970 on launch day have nothing to complain. in fact they have made best use of HD 7970. for 2.5 months they had the fastest GPU without a question. For the next 3 months it was a contest. stock performance on GTX 680 was better but when both cards were overclocked the HD 7970 was on par with GTX 680. With 12.7 beta AMD edged ahead and now particularly with 12.11 beta AMD has clearly established the HD 7970 as the fastest GPU without a doubt.
 
yea, new tech arc, they get massive improvements out.-
it all benefit the next 8000 serie also.
 
dinlee23 said:
saw this in anand and i have to say i regret not buying a 7950... (got a 670) nvidia better come up with some good drivers, the drivers they've been releasing the past couple months arent good at all
Click to expand...

I've had a 670 for months now and not a single issue with the drivers.
 
raghu78 said:
people who bought a HD 7970 on launch day have nothing to complain. in fact they have made best use of HD 7970. for 2.5 months they had the fastest GPU without a question. For the next 3 months it was a contest. stock performance on GTX 680 was better but when both cards were overclocked the HD 7970 was on par with GTX 680. With 12.7 beta AMD edged ahead and now particularly with 12.11 beta AMD has clearly established the HD 7970 as the fastest GPU without a doubt.
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Pretty shitty to have a high end card almost a year only to have good performance out of it for a few months out of that time. AMD needs to work harder on their drivers, much much harder. Much rather have a card that's 5% slower but works consistently.
 
Blkout said:
Pretty shitty to have a high end card almost a year only to have good performance out of it for a few months out of that time. AMD needs to work harder on their drivers, much much harder. Much rather have a card that's 5% slower but works consistently.
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AMD's drivers have been good. RC11 in late Jan was considered a very good driver. From late june with 12.7 beta AMD was on top. Now with 12.11 there is no contest. It might be difficult for you to accept but not everybody buys a GPU every year. Many keep it for 2 -3 years and AMD's HD 7970 is just 10 months old.

GCN being a completely new architecture like Nvidia's Fermi has its own learning curve. Over the life span of GTX 480 it gained tremendously with drivers. At lauch HD 5870 vs GTX 480 was not so bad. Two years later HD 5870 gets whacked by 30 - 40% in games like BF3, Crysis 2, Batman AC. Fermi was criticised on launch but has proved to be one of the best architectures ever built by Nvidia. In fact Kepler is not much of a deviation from Fermi except for a unified clock which allows for much better perf/watt. The scheduler for Kepler is now completely in driver and not in hardware which allows even better perf/watt because everybody knows Nvidia knows how to write world class GPU software and to extract the best out of their hardware.

Your hostility over the HD 7900 cards is just plain silly. If there are any price drops on GTX 670 and GTX 680 understand that it has AMD which has changed the competitive dynamics. Are you going to curse AMD for that too..
 
No hostility over the 7900 cards, you're delusional. It seems as if anyone says anything that doesn't paint a beautiful picture of the 7900 series, you quickly come to defend and start saying anyone must be hating on AMD. Criticism is just that, whether you agree with it or not. Your unwavering love for the 7900 series is just plain silly.

For the record, if you look at all my posts since the 79xx series was released you'll see that I've said many positive things as well. Its not all good though, AMD has made many missteps with this product and deserves some criticism.
 
Blkout said:
No hostility over the 7900 cards, you're delusional. It seems as if anyone says anything that doesn't paint a beautiful picture of the 7900 series, you quickly come to defend and start saying anyone must be hating on AMD. Criticism is just that, whether you agree with it or not. Your unwavering love for the 7900 series is just plain silly.

For the record, if you look at all my posts since the 79xx series was released you'll see that I've said many positive things as well. Its not all good though, AMD has made many missteps with this product and deserves some criticism.
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criticism is fine. but for a driver update which bring significant improvements you did not even talk about the driver. You just had to pass some comment about AMD 's drivers being less consistent than Nvidia's.

Who doesn't have mis-steps. Nvidia's GTX 680 or GTX 670 is by no means perfect. there are users who have had issues with GTX 600 cards too. so save your "My Nvidia drivers are better than AMD drivers". its just a case of sour grapes now that the GTX 680 and GTX 670 look quite bad in terms of price performance and even more worse when you look at the holiday game bundle.
 
Blkout said:
No hostility over the 7900 cards, you're delusional. It seems as if anyone says anything that doesn't paint a beautiful picture of the 7900 series, you quickly come to defend and start saying anyone must be hating on AMD. Criticism is just that, whether you agree with it or not. Your unwavering love for the 7900 series is just plain silly.

For the record, if you look at all my posts since the 79xx series was released you'll see that I've said many positive things as well. Its not all good though, AMD has made many missteps with this product and deserves some criticism.
Click to expand...

im not sure why you would criticize free driver improvments, specially one where its such a huge leap over the competition, that they need to lower there prices now.

Prices wars and driver improvement its a win/win for the consumer (us).

And when it comes to drivers, Nvidia drivers are just as bad as the AMD ones. I'm still waiting for proper Guild wars 2 drivers from Nvidia. How about the people who have the Red screen of death bug, or the Bios EVGA had to send out to fix 670's.

Both companies suck when it comes to drivers if you ask me.
 
people bought 2 580gtx, and couldnt run sli for a year.
Got to love people who complain.

I will build a shrine to my 7970 as it just is the best card in the world.
and 12.11 seems to fit with it as a glove.
 
DASHlT said:
im not sure why you would criticize free driver improvments, specially one where its such a huge leap over the competition, that they need to lower there prices now.

Prices wars and driver improvement its a win/win for the consumer (us).

And when it comes to drivers, Nvidia drivers are just as bad as the AMD ones. I'm still waiting for proper Guild wars 2 drivers from Nvidia. How about the people who have the Red screen of death bug, or the Bios EVGA had to send out to fix 670's.

Both companies suck when it comes to drivers if you ask me.
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Not criticising improvement, if you see where I did please quote it. I did reply to Raghu about having decent drivers only some of the months out of the product cycle. Its nice to see improvements, but just as the 7900 series is about to be on the way out really sucks for a high end product.
 
Flopper said:
people bought 2 580gtx, and couldnt run sli for a year.
Got to love people who complain.

I will build a shrine to my 7970 as it just is the best card in the world.
and 12.11 seems to fit with it as a glove.
Click to expand...

Just FYI, the 7900 series had major issues with crossfire until just recently as well so I wouldn't say that's hardly any better than the 580's.
 
Blkout said:
Not criticising improvement, if you see where I did please quote it. I did reply to Raghu about having decent drivers only some of the months out of the product cycle. Its nice to see improvements, but just as the 7900 series is about to be on the way out really sucks for a high end product.
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On the way out? Rumors are March for new video cards? thats 5 months away, maybe 6 it they delay them. (and those a rumors who knows when they will come out with AMD having all sorts of problems right now)

I dont see how that sucks since the 7900 series is such a great value as it is?
 
DASHlT said:
On the way out? Rumors are March for new video cards? thats 5 months away, maybe 6 it they delay them. (and those a rumors who knows when they will come out with AMD having all sorts of problems right now)

I dont see how that sucks since the 7900 series is such a great value as it is?
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Here's the thing, it has JUST NOW became a good value, it wasn't through most of the product cycle. It took about 4 price drops to get it here.
 
Blkout said:
Here's the thing, it has JUST NOW became a good value, it wasn't through most of the product cycle. It took about 4 price drops to get it here.
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Uhhh thats a matter of opinion. I personally think it was great value before the driver update.

Now there is no reason not to get a 7970 or 7970GE over a 680 GTX, unless you want physx.
 
To be honest, I am a little weary about AMD's new drivers. I have heard the same thing over and over again from 12.3, 12.4, 12.5, 12.6, 12.7...12.9.... Let's just sit comfortably and see how AMD does this time around with the new driver 12.11.
 
The AMD cards I have were the fastest video cards money could buy as of Fall 2009. I guess for AMD, 3 years is a long time, because my 4870x2 cards can't use these drivers and are stuck on the legacy driver.

I wonder if you 7970 owners will also be abandoned, stuck on the legacy driver a mere 3 years from now?

On a related note, I just put together and old system using an AGP 6800 Ultra, installed it using the 306.97 drivers, the exact same driver I used for my GTX680s. Geforce 6 series came out April 2004. Interesting how that works out.
 
I'd like to never settle for having an under utilized GPU because they can't make Enduro work right. I'm hoping these fix it, but I'm not holding my breath. 7970Ms are still on 12.4 and there has been nothing in the way of fixes to make them work better so far.
 
Sycraft said:
I'd like to never settle for having an under utilized GPU because they can't make Enduro work right. I'm hoping these fix it, but I'm not holding my breath. 7970Ms are still on 12.4 and there has been nothing in the way of fixes to make them work better so far.
Click to expand...

Your not looking very hard at all.

caveman-jim said:
Catalyst 12.11 will be released at 3pm ET tomorrow afternoon, it is a new performance driver for all GCN cards and will include new fixes for Enduro.
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Gibbo said:
Hi there

The biggest improvement within these drivers is for 7970M on AMD Enduro platform, upto 40% performance increase in games.

I shall post some benchmarks showing the percentage improvement of the new drivers over the older platform on the laptops once were fully upto speed in our new offices. :)
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TrantaLocked said:
Yes! It is here! And the general GCN improvements I am seeing are great indeed.
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7970M Enduro Issue
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33993055&page=10
 
Looks like I'm buying an oc 120mhz 1440p IPS and another 7970 for myself this holiday season, thank you AMD!!!
 
No, I didn't go looking on the Rage3D forums. I don't believe I should have any reason to scour the net for information related to my laptop. If these drivers will work with it, and fix the issues, I'll be pleased. However so far their updated drivers refuse to install, they claim my laptop (a Clevo) is not supported.
 
Sycraft said:
No, I didn't go looking on the Rage3D forums. I don't believe I should have any reason to scour the net for information related to my laptop. If these drivers will work with it, and fix the issues, I'll be pleased. However so far their updated drivers refuse to install, they claim my laptop (a Clevo) is not supported.
Click to expand...

Right! you never use google or search forums to find resolves to issues,
 
Well given that there is no resolution to this issue, and won't be until later today potentially, I fail to see what you are on about.
 
Blkout said:
Here's the thing, it has JUST NOW became a good value, it wasn't through most of the product cycle. It took about 4 price drops to get it here.
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this is ridiculous. Even before the driver improvements and Never Settle game bundle HD 7900 cards were the better value. With the latest driver updates and game bundle actually the GTX 600 series needs a price cut. Not just my opinion. read the web for what tech sites are saying. hardwarecanucks bluntly said the GTX 600 series needs price cuts and better bundles across the entire product stack. :)
 
Sycraft said:
Well given that there is no resolution to this issue, and won't be until later today potentially, I fail to see what you are on about.
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You may need to wait for the official version from the manufacturer with the inf included.
 
Blkout said:
Pretty shitty to have a high end card almost a year only to have good performance out of it for a few months out of that time. AMD needs to work harder on their drivers, much much harder. Much rather have a card that's 5% slower but works consistently.
Click to expand...

How about 4 months no performance driver? Nvidia is not brilliant either, but they got generally more stable drivers, that's a fact.

The biggest issue i have with AMD cards is the damned 2D timeouts and freezes (powertune fuck things up)
 
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Flopper said:
people bought 2 580gtx, and couldnt run sli for a year.
Got to love people who complain.

I will build a shrine to my 7970 as it just is the best card in the world.
and 12.11 seems to fit with it as a glove.
Click to expand...
What? I had 580 SLI on launch day and never had a problem. I think for single GPU solutions AMD is just as good as NVIDIA with drivers, and I'm not trying to shit up the thread here because I think it's great they are still getting these improvements from GCN. But you are kidding yourself if you think AMD's CrossFireX support has been as good as NVIDIA's SLI support. That's just not true.
 
GotNoRice said:
The AMD cards I have were the fastest video cards money could buy as of Fall 2009. I guess for AMD, 3 years is a long time, because my 4870x2 cards can't use these drivers and are stuck on the legacy driver.

I wonder if you 7970 owners will also be abandoned, stuck on the legacy driver a mere 3 years from now?

On a related note, I just put together and old system using an AGP 6800 Ultra, installed it using the 306.97 drivers, the exact same driver I used for my GTX680s. Geforce 6 series came out April 2004. Interesting how that works out.
Click to expand...
The 4870X2 was released in 2008. It's nearly 2013. No, I don't think you should continue to expect driver updates. And they have done two entirely new architectures since then. If they need to branch out the older architectures to make the new drivers leaner, so be it. 4870X2s are old now.
 
Rizen said:
What? I had 580 SLI on launch day and never had a problem. I think for single GPU solutions AMD is just as good as NVIDIA with drivers, and I'm not trying to shit up the thread here because I think it's great they are still getting these improvements from GCN. But you are kidding yourself if you think AMD's CrossFireX support has been as good as NVIDIA's SLI support. That's just not true.
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This man speaks the truth. Crossfire drivers sucked royal balls for so damn long.

Why I sold my 6990+6970 trifire....
 
This sounds good for single cards, but Xfire is still a buggy situation. I liked my 7970s, but the Xfire issues caused me to sell them and upgrade to 680s.....it was an upgrade because the 680s worked and the 7979s didn't.
 
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