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Looking Back: ATI's Catalyst Drivers Exposed

 by Ryan Smith on December 11, 2005 3:22 PM EST
58 Comments | Add A Comment
58 Comments
Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne

Leaving the realm of FPS's for a bit, we take a look at Blizzard's massively popular RTS Warcraft 3, and its expansion pack, The Frozen Throne. As we have mentioned in the past, even for its superb image quality, WC3 is not a terribly performance-intensive game, so we aren't expecting any surprises here. Because WC3 does not have a benchmarking mode, all frame rates are approximate using a custom replay and FRAPS.

Warcraft 3

Warcraft 3 HQ

With only a marginal blip with the 3.04 drivers, you could practically set a watch to the 9700 Pro's performance on WC3 without AA/AF. Turning on these features causes a little more variance in results, but even here, there is ultimately no significant change in performance in the end. Though, we are curious about the overall lower frame rates compared to the high mark of 58.9fps with the 3.06 drivers.



Catalyst 5.11 versus 3.00 (mouse over to see 3.00)

Like with UT2004, there's not much of a story here with image quality. Although the nature of how we benchmarked and screenshot WC3 means that it's never exactly the same twice, there is no appreciable difference in IQ between the first and the last drivers, or anything in between.

Even more than with UT2004, Warcraft 3 is a no-story. ATI did not make any driver changes that significantly impacted either IQ or performance.

Unreal Tournament 2004 Halo
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  • Ryan Smith - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link

    You should see the cooler attached, it sure sounds like a 757.

    Anyhow, good catch, thanks.

  • ss284 - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link

    I think this article might have been a bit more meaningful if some newer generation games were tested, like half life 2 and far cry.

  • ElJefe - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link

    lol yes I thought the same.

    I was like eh? bf2 and half-life2 and doom3. Or quake 4 maybe. ( even though most gamers are not on that bandwagon yet, bf2 for first person is kinda king still)

  • Cygni - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link

    Older drivers are going to have issues with newer games. Thats whats talked about in the article. If you are running Cat 1.0's with FEAR, its going to go ape shit... FEAR wasnt even around when those drivers came out. By using older games, they can limit this factor and make it a pure perforamnce comparison.

  • ksherman - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link

    :(

  • vshah - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link

    Mouseover makes the first image dissapear for me in firefox and ie.

    Will there be an nvidia version of this?

  • kerynitian - Monday, December 12, 2005 - link

    I would definitely be interested in seeing how nvidida and their driver improvements in the nv40 line related to the marks put up by ati in this article...

  • coldpower27 - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link

    Yes it might be interesting to do one with a 6800 GT/Ultra, to see if there have been improvements of extracting performance out of NV40 technology over the past now 18 months of life.

    I think we were in the early 61.xx when NV40 came out?

  • nts - Monday, December 12, 2005 - link

    With this article testing on the R300 they would probably test NVIDIA NV30 (FX) cards.

  • coldpower27 - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link

    Actually I beleive that is ~ 20 months instead of 18.
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