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ATI CATALYST v6.8 DRIVER REVIEW

"ATI CATALYST v6.8 DRIVER REVIEW WE ARE INVESTIGATING THE PERFORMANCE CLAIMS BY ATI FOR DOOM 3, QUAKE 4 AND PREY WHEN USED WITH X1800 VIDEO CARD. ATI CLAIMS THAT THE CATALYST v6.8 DRIVER DELIVERS A PERFORMANCE INCREASE OF 6.5% WITH DOOM 3, 18% WITH QUAKE 4 AND 16% WITH PREY."

"As with most Catalyst® releases, performance has increased in various situations.
Improved shader compiler and transform engine optimizations have led to many significant performance gains in OpenGL applications across the entire Radeon® X1000 series of products.

Doom 3 performance improves as much as 6.5%.

Quake 4 (v1.2 or higher) performance improves as much as 18%.

Chronicles of Riddick performance improves as much as 20%. Average improvements of 5-10% are commonly seen.

Prey performance improves as much as 16%.

Optimizations made to ATI's graphics memory manager have led to significant gains in DirectX applications that make heavy use of graphics memory on 256MB ATI graphics cards.

3DMark06 performance improves as much as 22% on single ATI Radeon® X1000 series cards with 256MB of graphics memory at 1280x1024 and higher when anti-aliasing is enabled. The largest gains are found on the ATI Radeon® X1800 series and ATI Radeon® X1900 series of products.
Call of Duty 2 performance improves as much as 30% on single ATI Radeon® X550 cards or higher with 256MB of video memory at 1280x1024 and higher when anti-aliasing enabled. The largest gains are found on the ATI Radeon® X1800 series and ATI Radeon® X1900 series of products."

CHIP	GPU	CORE CLOCK MHZ	MEMORY CLOCK MHZ	MEMORY INTERFACE	PIXELS PER CLOCK	DIRECTX
SAPPHIRE RADEON X1800 GTO	R520	500	1000	256	12	9.0C
CHIP	GPU	CORE CLOCK MHZ	MEMORY CLOCK MHZ	MEMORY INTERFACE	PIXELS PER CLOCK	DIRECTX

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

VIDEO CARD	SAPPHIRE X1800 GTO
ATI DRIVER	ATI CATALYST v6.8
	ATI CATALYST v6.7
PROCESSOR	AMD ATHLON64 3500
MOTHERBOARD	ASROCK 939 DUAL SATA 2 (BIOS v2.20)
MEMORY	2 x 512MB OCZ GOLD XTC PC3200 DDR
OPERATING SYSTEM	WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 2
DIRECTX VERSION	v9.0C

BENCHMARK SETTINGS:- We use three different image quality and resolution settings when we benchmark computer hardware for review. Medium quality setting uses a resolution of 1280x1024 (unless otherwise stated) and all of the game settings are set to medium, this setting will test both the processor and video performance. High quality setting uses a resolution of 1600x1200 (unless otherwise stated) and all of the game settings are set to high, this setting is a demanding test for video rather processor performance. Ultra High quality setting uses a resolution of 1600x1200 (unless otherwise stated) and all of the game settings are set to the very highest level, this setting is a very demanding test for the video card.

DOOM 3

MEDIUM QUALITY

	96
	94

HIGH QUALITY

	61
	58

ULTRA HIGH QUALITY

	38
	36

ATI CATALYST v6.8 DRIVER ATI CATALYST v6.7 DRIVER

COMMENT - "The Catalyst v6.8 driver delivers a solid performance increase of between 3% to 5% over the previous Catalyst v6.7 driver."

PREY

MEDIUM QUALITY

	85
	65

HIGH QUALITY

	41
	34

ULTRA HIGH QUALITY

	31
	27

ATI CATALYST v6.8 DRIVER ATI CATALYST v6.7 DRIVER

COMMENT - "The Catalyst v6.8 driver delivers an impressive increase in performance over the Catalyst v6.7 driver of between 13% to 24%. The Sapphire Radeon x1800 GTO was struggling to provide playable performance using high quality settings with the older Catalyst v6.7 driver. Using the Catalyst v6.8 driver the Sapphire Radeon x1800 GTO is now playable when using high quality and almost playable when using ultra high quality."

QUAKE 4

MEDIUM QUALITY

	120
	89

HIGH QUALITY

	103
	70

ULTRA HIGH QUALITY

	87
	56

ATI CATALYST v6.8 DRIVER ATI CATALYST v6.7 DRIVER

COMMENT - "I thought the performance increase with Prey was impressive but the increase with Quake 4 is much better. The Catalyst v6.8 driver delivers a breathtaking increase of between 26% to 36% when compared to the Catalyst v6.7 driver. I couldn't believe the performance increase with the Catalyst v6.8 driver so I reinstalled both of the drivers but the result was the same."

FINAL RESULT

	673
	540 (-20%)

ATI CATALYST v6.8 DRIVER ATI CATALYST v6.7 DRIVER

COMMENT - "Claims by ATI of a performance increase with the Catalyst v6.8 driver for Doom 3, Prey and Quake 4 have been proven. The Catalyst v6.8 driver delivered 20% extra performance compared to the older Catalyst v6.7 driver which is impressive. Good work ATI!"

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