Adapting to Parallelism: Catalyst 5.12 More Dual Core Friendly?
by Derek Wilson on December 4, 2005 10:45 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Performance Comparison: Dual Core vs. Single Core
The next step in our performance analysis is to look at the improvement we get when moving to dual core from single core. These will likely be the numbers ATI quotes in their marketing literature, as they will show the gain in performance with a particular driver when moving from a single core environment to a dual core. These numbers have the potential to be large because the games themselves could benefit from dual core processors (though not many do).
We will be able to spot games that already get a performance boost from dual core due to our Catalyst 5.11 data. The 5.11 driver doesn't have multiprocessing optimizations, so games that show a performance boost under this driver are getting that performance boost from the way the game is written. Combining this knowledge with what we learned in the previous section should help us understand where ATI has succeeded and where they still need some work.
Dual core processing lends a hand to the 5.11 driver at 10x7, and has a bigger effect at 1600x1200 than it does on the 5.12 driver. But at 800x600 the 5.12 driver performs much better when running on a dual core system, especially when compared to the performance drop on the 5.11 drivers.
Enabling 4xAA takes away any real advanage in scaling the 5.12 driver had over the 5.11 catalyst. Combine this with the fact that the 5.12 just performs worse than the 5.11 driver with 4xAA, and anyone who plays BF2 with AA on will not be to pleased.
We can plainly see that dual core helps the 5.12 driver and not the 5.11 driver under Day of Defeat with no AA. These are some good gains, especialy in light of how well the 5.12 does compared to the 5.11 (as seen on the previous page).
Even with 4xAA on the 5.12 driver scales well with CPU power. most impressive is the nearly 3% gain at 1600x1200.
The table for FarCry lets us know that both drivers seem to benefit from dual core processing. The 5.12 driver certainly improves the leap over single core performance, but not all the glory should go to the new dirver. The larger percent increase can be attributed to the game itself benefiting from dual core systesm
The returns are a little diminshed with 4xAA enabled, but its easy to see that there is still more of a benefit under the 5.12 drivers.
These two tests again show no performance difference or issue.
The next step in our performance analysis is to look at the improvement we get when moving to dual core from single core. These will likely be the numbers ATI quotes in their marketing literature, as they will show the gain in performance with a particular driver when moving from a single core environment to a dual core. These numbers have the potential to be large because the games themselves could benefit from dual core processors (though not many do).
We will be able to spot games that already get a performance boost from dual core due to our Catalyst 5.11 data. The 5.11 driver doesn't have multiprocessing optimizations, so games that show a performance boost under this driver are getting that performance boost from the way the game is written. Combining this knowledge with what we learned in the previous section should help us understand where ATI has succeeded and where they still need some work.
Dual core processing lends a hand to the 5.11 driver at 10x7, and has a bigger effect at 1600x1200 than it does on the 5.12 driver. But at 800x600 the 5.12 driver performs much better when running on a dual core system, especially when compared to the performance drop on the 5.11 drivers.
| Battlefield 2 Percent Increase (Single core to Dual) | |||
| 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1600x1200 | |
| Catalyst 5.11 | -2.98 | 3.45 | 1.9 |
| Catalyst 5.12 (Beta) | 18.19 | 6.66 | 0.84 |
Enabling 4xAA takes away any real advanage in scaling the 5.12 driver had over the 5.11 catalyst. Combine this with the fact that the 5.12 just performs worse than the 5.11 driver with 4xAA, and anyone who plays BF2 with AA on will not be to pleased.
| Battlefield 2 4xAA Percent Increase (Single core to Dual) | |||
| 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1600x1200 | |
| Catalyst 5.11 | 2.12 | -0.91 | 1.49 |
| Catalyst 5.12 (Beta) | 2.8 | 1.87 | 1.2 |
We can plainly see that dual core helps the 5.12 driver and not the 5.11 driver under Day of Defeat with no AA. These are some good gains, especialy in light of how well the 5.12 does compared to the 5.11 (as seen on the previous page).
| Day of Defeat Percent Increase (Single core to Dual) | |||
| 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1600x1200 | |
| Catalyst 5.11 | 0.37 | 0.37 | 0.22 |
| Catalyst 5.12 (Beta) | 6.51 | 6.54 | 1.52 |
Even with 4xAA on the 5.12 driver scales well with CPU power. most impressive is the nearly 3% gain at 1600x1200.
| Day of Defeat 4xAA Percent Increase (Single core to Dual) | |||
| 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1600x1200 | |
| Catalyst 5.11 | 0.56 | 0.38 | 0 |
| Catalyst 5.12 (Beta) | 6.89 | 4.5 | 2.93 |
The table for FarCry lets us know that both drivers seem to benefit from dual core processing. The 5.12 driver certainly improves the leap over single core performance, but not all the glory should go to the new dirver. The larger percent increase can be attributed to the game itself benefiting from dual core systesm
| FarCry Percent Increase (Single core to Dual) | |||
| 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1600x1200 | |
| Catalyst 5.11 | 4.64 | 3.35 | 0.74 |
| Catalyst 5.12 (Beta) | 12.44 | 6.95 | 3.99 |
The returns are a little diminshed with 4xAA enabled, but its easy to see that there is still more of a benefit under the 5.12 drivers.
| FarCry 4xAA Percent Increase (Single core to Dual) | |||
| 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1600x1200 | |
| Catalyst 5.11 | 3.04 | 2.26 | -0.19 |
| Catalyst 5.12 (Beta) | 7.5 | 5.7 | 0.57 |
These two tests again show no performance difference or issue.
| Quake 4 Percent Increase (Single core to Dual) | |||
| 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1600x1200 | |
| Catalyst 5.11 | 0.27 | 0 | -0.47 |
| Catalyst 5.12 (Beta) | 0.27 | 0 | -0.16 |
| Quake 4 4xAA Percent Increase (Single core to Dual) | |||
| 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1600x1200 | |
| Catalyst 5.11 | 0.21 | 0.17 | 0 |
| Catalyst 5.12 (Beta) | -0.21 | 0 | 0 |
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huges84 - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
How much RAM did the test system have?Furen - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
Since integrated graphics cards are the ones that (currently) lack things like vertex shaders, they probably will get a much more "dramatic" performance increase from dual-core drivers.Cybercat - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
amazing improvements! At 800x600...Pannenkoek - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
Indeed, I guess this article has only been posted because someone at Anandtech has worked on it, and didn't want to have wasted his time entirely for some beta drivers no one cares about.Cygni - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
Ya, im sure all those people with Dual Core rigs, and all the people that will have Dual Core rigs by the end of this year (probably everybody on this board), doesnt care about Dual Core driver improvements.In other news, i hope that post was a joke...
Pannenkoek - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
This is a _beta_ driver, not a released driver. Anandtech could have waited for the actual release. Now we won't be seeing any article on the real thing when it will come out is my guess.Yeah, I'm sure all those people with bleeding edge dual core processors and newest generation ATi cards will rejoice at their 5 extra frames per second at the lowest humanly tolarable screen resolution in this age.
Besides, it can only be pathetic if they actually get real performance improvements. On higher resolutions it would only show how lousy their drivers would be if they use that much CPU power to make an impact in benchmarks if the driver is off-loaded to another core. And on lower resolutions they apparently stall their rendering pipeline with current drivers. Thumbs up.
Andyvan - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
Are you seriously saying that it would be better to not know this? I was also under the impression that they were going to post a followup with more tests.-- Andyvan
Pannenkoek - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
I never said it would be better to not know this, whatever this may be. The article states explicitely that there'll be a follow up, I was a bit too cynic perhaps. ;-)The point is, there's a lot of fluff about some beta driver which "takes advantage of dual core". Earthshattering. It's the least any graphic card driver developer could do. And I welcome any comprehensive tests and article by Anandtech on real products. I just don't see any point in this article, especially not in the light of an upcoming "complete" article. (I see one: self-advertisement). Good effort by the Anandtech crowd, but it annoys me after all the other prerelease & beta & exclusive vapourware reviews.
Ryan Smith - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
Keep in mind that ATI's drivers seldom change once they hit beta. Once they're in beta, ATI is usually done with any coding and internal testing, and they're simply handing these drivers out to their partners for testing to see if in the unlikely event a problem crops up. So I certainly wouldn't consider these drivers vaporware, since they will be in everyones hands in another week or so.As for why we did this article instead of waiting for the complete article, we felt it was more important for you to be able to see what ATI's dual-core changes are capable of now on the best of hardware, rather than wait longer for a full-comparison article. With the need to swap CPUs on top of everything else, it's going to take us some time to finish the full article. We can certainly wait until we have every last benchmark done, but we'd rather show what we have now and get feedback from you guys, rather than keep you in the dark any longer.=)
bob661 - Monday, December 5, 2005 - link
Don't mind him Ryan. Some people won't shop for a Ferrari until they can afford one.