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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mbhame - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
Who wrote this article?stephenbrooks - Monday, December 5, 2005 - link
Derek WilsonPrinceGaz - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
I have an X2 4400+ and like many other people have been forced to revert to the 7x.xx Forceware drivers because the new dual-core drivers cause certain well known OpenGL applications (3DS Max and PaintShop Pro for instance) to hang when trying to start them. If you haven't heard of this problem, just try googling and you'll get plenty of hits.I'd rather have nVidia fix bugs before adding new performance enhancing features, but sadly it is all about getting a few extra pecent over ATI in the latest games it seems.
hondaman - Monday, December 5, 2005 - link
Nvidia claims that their drivers have DC optimisations, although i havent seen any review that shows one way or the other if it really does.I personally found this "review" to be quite interesting, and hope anandtech does the same for nvidia and their newest drivers.
mmp121 - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
Derek,Do the drivers show any improvement while using a single core CPU w/HT enabled? Is it supposed to? How does it affect previous generation hardware? Are the tweaks only good for the X1000 hardware? You asked for suggestions, I gave some. Hope to see some of em answered.
stephenbrooks - Monday, December 5, 2005 - link
^^^ above are good questionsjohnsonx - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
Seems to me ATI had best get to the bottom of the single-core performance deficit in these 5.12 drivers before they come out of beta. All the fanbois would get their panties in a wad if the new driver hurts performance in the top-end FX-57 gaming rigs. If nothing else, they could include regular and DC-optimized versions of the key driver files and install them based on detecting 1 or 2(+) cores.Actually, what might be even better from a marketing point of view is if they have a 'regular' driver that works fine for all systems, and a separate 'dual-core optimized' driver. Nothing gives users the warm fuzzies like being told 'oh, for YOU we have a special, better driver. Later on, once dual-core is almost universal in new systems, they could just unify the driver again.
wien - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
Though a good idea, I fear the changes they have made to the driver to "parallellize" it can't be plugged in and out that easily. And if they can't, ATI would have to keep two separate code-trees (single and dual core) for their drivers, and update them both every time they come up with an improvement. What would probably end up happening is that the single core version would be more of less stagnant in terms of development (but with version numbers increasing of course), and the DC version getting the actual improvements. (Or the other way around... for now at least.)Pannenkoek - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
The effort to optimize their dual core drivers to mitigate the single core performance loss is far less than keeping two parallel branches of their drivers in development. This is beta software, it's not as tuned as it can be. We won't know how the performance will be when the driver gets actually released.mlittl3 - Sunday, December 4, 2005 - link
That's a good idead.