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Significant Performance Drop w/Catalyst 10.2

A

andrewa

n00b
Joined
Jan 1, 2010
Messages
24
Hey all -

Just upgraded my new system to Catalyst 10.2, and I immediately noticed that the Win 7 desktop felt sluggish. Sure enough, after testing with Windows Experience, the scores for graphics system (both gaming and desktop) fell from the 7.4 they had been with Catalyst 9.12 and 10.1 to a 6.0!

Has anyone else had this experience? I've reinstalled the driver twice - doing my usual diligence in terms of cleaning out the old driver - to no avail.

More details on my setup (everything is @ stock clocks):

Core i7 860
Gigabyte P55M UD4
8GB Crucial DDR3 1333 RAM
Sapphire Radeon 5770 Vapor-x
Windows 7 Pro x64
DWM Enabled, with Aero effects and transparency on
Previously using Catalyst 9.12 and 10.1 without issues!

Thanks all!
 
This happened a family member of mine, The desktop didn't "feel" slugish but the score dropped to 6.0, it's running crossfire 5850's.
 
Did you install the drivers over the top of the older ones or do a clean install?
 
A clean install - as always. This is now the second driver update I've done since building this machine - 9.12 to 10.1, and 10.1 to this one - and only this update exhibited this issue.
 
Well for what its worth my number didn't change. It was 6.0 before 10.2 and still is.
 
It's probably running at extremely low clocks on desktop. See if the GPU clocks increase as you're running the index...

And uh, try it in a game as well... because that's what matters ultimately.
 
Yeah, games seems fine, but I do much more than just game with my PC - 2D intensive desktop applications, like Photoshop and Illustrator, seem to be a little more unresponsive. Applications that mix 2D/3D commands - like iTunes - demonstrate similar sluggishness.

I know Toms Hardware had a big writeup on this issue. My ugly suspicion is that ATI is delivering enthusiast-related performance tweaks ahead of basic stability and desktop performance needs.
 
well i just reran mine since i installed the 10.2 drivers and they're all the same.
processor 7.4
ram 7.5
graphics 7.8
gaming graphics 7.8
hard disk 5.9 ***

*** by the way does anyone have an ssd im curious about what numbers they give off compared to a sata drive.
 
Hmm. Strange and stranger.

(Incidentally, I do have an SSD - a 60gb OCZ Vertex - and it scores 7.2. That said, the benchmark belies the really insane performance increase you will feel when doing desktop/productivity work... things just pop open, multi-tasking is effortless... its like going from dial-up to broadband.)
 
Windows Experience Index is almost an arbitrary number generator. Check FPS in your games, I wouldn't rely on WEI for anything tangible.
 
Yeah, you're probably right, I'm not going to sweat it. The 2D performance issue on ATI 5000 series cards is a real thing - ask the google and some articles will come up - but ATI evidently has a working fix for that in house, and they're integrating it into the 10.3 or 10.4 driver.

Which is good news, ultimately, since it looks like - according to those same articles - Aero performance in Windows 7 will be as fast as Windows XP was with hardware 2D acceleration (the 7800GTX in my previous machine was the last nvidia card to feature a dedicated 2D hardware accelerator). And that's pretty damn fast and crispy, considering all the visual flair.

The bad news is that I'm going to own this half 'tarded expensive device for several months without it working right in the applications I need it for the most (ie, stuff that makes me money).
 
arcanetripwire said:
Does anyone have a link to AMD site for the 9.12 drivers?
Click to expand...

You can't find them on AMD's site, but here's a link to a page filled with about a year's worth of driver releases.
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Videocards---ATI-Catalyst-Vista---Win-7_c31.html

Now to the main topic. My Asus 5870 has been wonderful. It's from the first batch sold, and I've had no hardware issues and only an isolated software issue(10.1 Beta). It's more than enough for running every game I play on the highest settings with at least 2xAA, and the majority of games are playable with 8XAA. And just to be clear, I'm not talking about Crysis. Never was fond of that game, seemed to be more of a tech demo to me. Even the new Stalker game can be played with every option to the highest with 2xAA. AMD did a fine job of designing and engineering with this series.
 
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andrewa said:
Hmm. Strange and stranger.

(Incidentally, I do have an SSD - a 60gb OCZ Vertex - and it scores 7.2. That said, the benchmark belies the really insane performance increase you will feel when doing desktop/productivity work... things just pop open, multi-tasking is effortless... its like going from dial-up to broadband.)
Click to expand...

thanks for the info. after i do crossfire i might get one.
 
I went from 4850s in crossfire to dual 4870x2s and my score went from 7.4 to 7.1.
 
Since noone said anything I would like people who test WEI and who gets new software/drivers, and can't understand why it's dropping or staying the same...

Did you remember to reset the WEI score? It's pretty simple ..

Go to C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore and remove all the files ... now run WEI again, and hopefully you will get some better numbers :)

If this fixes your problem I don't know - just thougt I would mention it :)
 
Rogue71 said:
totally agree. i was just curious about the ssd vs sata numbers.
Click to expand...


because windows numbers are completely wrong and dont stress the SSD's enough to show the performance difference.. it could also be that the advantages of the SSD's over the sata drives are not tested by windows..

Checkemdown said:
My WEI went down to 6.0 w/ 2 5850's in Crossfire :confused:
Click to expand...

if everything is feeling sluggish and you overclock the gpu by 1mhz in rivatuner it will lock the card in 3d mode.. this is also why your numbers look off in the windows experience due to the card being in 2D mode then transitioning to 3D there is a delay and the windows test doesnt compensate for the delay which you dont see in games since it happens during the loading of the game usually.. in crossfire this is even more drastic since the ATI drivers are now shutting off the second card when in 2D mode..
 
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