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CATALYST 4.1 Driver Report January 26, 2004 |
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Summary: ATI's CATALYST 3.10 drivers brought increased stability to the platform so what's ATI to do for CATALSYT 4.1? How about adding built-in hardware monitoring to OVERDRIVE! In our CATALYST 4.1 report, we discuss its implementation and what we can expect in the future in this regard from upcoming CATALYST drivers. And of course, it wouldn't be a driver report without compatibility and performance discussion. Read all the details inside!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 12 ) |
As expected, ATI rang in the new year with another CATALYST driver release, version 4.1 to be exact. If you don’t recall, ATI’s CATALYST driver team has committed itself to releasing a new driver every month, so we expect to see twelve driver releases this calendar year. As ATI’s first driver release for 2004, last week’s driver was dubbed 4.1, with the “4” signifying the year the driver was released and the one designating it as the first driver released this year. More than a few of you have commented about this naming system in the news comments, but it looks like ATI is sticking to their guns on this one so everyone will have to get used to it by the time October 2004 hits.
OVERDRIVE: Now with built-in hardware monitoring
One of the biggest additions in CATALYST 4.1 for RADEON 9800 XT/9600 XT users is that ATI has integrated the built-in hardware monitoring functionality we first mentioned as an upcoming feature in our CATALYST 3.8 report. This support comes in the form of temperature and clock speed, both of which can now be viewed in the OVERDRIVE control panel.
Its capability is limited in the sense that it only presents the current clock speed and temperature of the graphics core, there is no histogram present that would allow you to monitor temperature/clock speed fluctuations over time. This is a capability Tyan has had in their cards for some time, and more recently, ASUS with their Smart Doctor utility.
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Confusion over OVERDRIVE erupted however when RADEON 9800 XT users noticed that their cards were operating at temperatures above the guidelines ATI had stated for OVERDRIVE. Namely, that at core temperatures above 60 degrees Celsius, ATI had stated that the graphics core was supposed to always operate at its stock clock speed of 412MHz. Many card owners were running at 419MHz (the intermediate OVERDRIVE setting), despite the fact that the core (as measured by OVERDRIVE) was operating above 60 degrees.
ATI clarified things with Rage3D, stating that the temperature reported by the OVERDRIVE control panel is actually an approximation, twenty degrees are added to the temperature reported by the onboard thermistor, which is located close to the die. This explains why OVERDRIVE still kicks in despite the appearance of a high core temperature.
OVERDRIVE memory tuning
One other aspect we reported on in our CATALYST 3.8 report was that ATI would add dynamic memory adjustment to OVERDRIVE’s repertoire in a future CATALYST release. Fortunately, this is no longer the case, ATI has no plans to add this feature.
In our opinion, this is good for enthusiasts, as we discovered in our RADEON 9800 XT/9600 XT overclocked article, the memory’s clock frequency can be adjusted by a third-party utility such as Rage3D Tweak or Powerstrip with OVERDRIVE protection running in the background. If the core temperature gets too high, OVERDRIVE can kick the clock frequency down, but the memory’s clock speed remains untouched. With today’s modern graphics cards, memory overclocking has a larger impact on performance than overclocking the graphics core, so as a result of this method you get most of the performance benefits of traditional overclocking (in the pre-OVERDRIVE days) but with the added protection of OVERDRIVE.
Basically, this loophole can give you good performance benefits while at the same time protecting your graphics core from overheating. And based on what we’ve seen from ATI’s stock OVERDRIVE clocks for the graphics core, if ATI were to add memory adjustment support to OVERDRIVE, chances are the clock speeds ATI would select would be too conservative for enthusiasts, especially those of you with cards with high-speed DDR memory such as the RADEON 9600 XT cards from ASUS, Sapphire, and Powercolor, who all have XT variants with memory modules good for 650MHz or more.
Bug report
After ATI’s stellar CATALYST 3.10 release, CAT 4.1 was meant to address more compatibility issues but unfortunately missed the Madden AA issues we mentioned previously. Some RADEON owners have also reported that the Call of Duty stability issues are back with CAT 4.1, but try as we might we couldn’t corroborate those findings. Even with fast writes enabled CoD ran flawlessly.
ATI notes a significant performance decrease in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory that’s introduced by CAT 4.1, so we were curious to see if it affected other games based on the Quake 3 engine. In Quake 3, we actually found a slight performance increase at low resolutions but we did find a slim performance decline in Call of Duty at low res in some conditions. ATI will have the issue fixed for Wolf:ET in the next CATALYST driver.
SIDEBAR: CATALYST 4.1 release notes
| Test Systems | Page:: ( 2 / 12 ) |
System Setup
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz
ASUS P4C800 Deluxe
512MB OCZ EL PC3200 (DDR400) SDRAM
ATI RADEON 9800 XT – 256MB
ATI RADEON 9800 PRO – 128MB
ATI RADEON 9700 PRO
ATI RADEON 9600 PRO
ATI RADEON 9600 XT
ATI RADEON 9500 PRO
Sapphire RADEON 9500
ATI RADEON 8500
Driver version CATALYST 4.1
Driver version CATALYST 3.10
30GB IBM Deskstar DTLA 307030 ATA/100 Hard Drive
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0b
Benchmarks
Lock On: Modern Air Combat (Mig-29 custom demo)
Call of Duty (demo0032 custom demo)
NASCAR Racing 2003 Season (Bristol custom demo)
Quake III: Arena version 1.32 (fscrusher demo)
Unreal Tournament 2003 (T2 custom demo)
IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles (The Black Death track)
Splinter Cell (FS custom demo)
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (paris demo)
SIDEBAR: You can download CATALYST 4.1 from ATI’s driver page
| NASCAR Racing 2003 Season | Page:: ( 3 / 12 ) |
Nascar 2003 – Direct3D
Notes
Admittedly, NASCAR 2003 has never been the greatest benchmark for highlighting some of the subtle differences in graphics performance, so it was no surprise to see so little changes with CATALYST 4.1. Basically, performance is unchanged.
SIDEBAR: ATI will be holding its shareholders meeting later this week.
| IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles | Page:: ( 4 / 12 ) |
IL-2 Sturmovik: FB - OpenGL
Notes
Like NASCAR 2003, IL-2 is another title that stresses the entire platform rather that one subsystem like graphics. With the complicated physics calculations that must be performed not only for your aircraft, but all planes in the scene, IL-2 really stresses the CPU and other parts within your PC such as memory. This is why we see so little variation between the various video cards, even at 1600x1200 the RADEON 9700 PRO and RADEON 9800 XT are only separated by a handful of frames per second.
SIDEBAR: It’s a little surprising that there haven’t been any WW1 flight sims released recently.
| Quake III 4xAA 8xAF | Page:: ( 5 / 12 ) |
Quake III - OpenGL
Notes
Woah, as we mentioned in the intro, we actually see some slight performance gains in Quake 3 for the high-end 256-bit cards at low resolutions. The RADEON 9800 PRO in particular sees a nice 3% performance gain at 800x600. Of course, at the resolutions that count (where you’re most likely to be playing unless you have a very small monitor), 1280x1024 and up, performance is unchanged.
SIDEBAR: The CATALYST drivers just keep getting bigger. CAT 3.10 was 22MB, now 4.1 is 25MB.
| Unreal Tournament 2003 | Page:: ( 6 / 12 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003 – Direct3D
Notes
ATI has steadily improved its performance in UT 2003, but unfortunately that’s not the case for CATALYST 4.1. As you can see, performance is largely unchanged from CATALYST 3.10.
SIDEBAR: ATI’s GL Quake demo on IMAGEON was pretty cool, I wonder how long before UT 2003-level graphics makes the transition to cell phones.
| Splinter Cell | Page:: ( 7 / 12 ) |
Splinter Cell – Direct3D
Notes
We haven’t seen much of a change in Splinter Cell in quite some time. In fact, it’s probably been at least four driver revisions. Therefore, no surprises here.
SIDEBAR: Only a few more months until Pandora Tomorrow comes out, can’t wait!
| Tomb Raider | Page:: ( 8 / 12 ) |
Tomb Raider – Direct3D
SIDEBAR: We enabled depth of field for Tomb Raider testing (V49).
| CoD 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 9 / 12 ) |
Call of Duty
Notes
In Call of Duty, we actually saw a performance decline for the high-end cards with 256-bit memory interfaces at low resolutions. The RADEON 9800 PRO and 9800 XT in particular see decreases of 7 and 8% respectively at 800x600. Fortunately, we don’t see this at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200, the resolutions you’ll most likely be playing in.
SIDEBAR: Did you check out the Far Cry demo from last week?
| Lock On: Modern Air Combat | Page:: ( 10 / 12 ) |
Lock On: Modern Air Combat – Direct3D
Notes
Lock On: Modern Air Combat is the most recent addition to our testing suite, and boy does it look good, but bring our testbed system to its knees! All aspects of the system are very heavily taxed, including the hard drive and memory. And as you can see, performance with both drivers is roughly the same.
SIDEBAR: We tried testing with the RADEON 8500, but the water wasn’t rendered properly and the frame rates were below 10fps, even at 800x600. Graphics are set to high although heat blur is disabled.
| UT 2003 4xAA | Page:: ( 11 / 12 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003
SIDEBAR: Epic’s Tim Sweeney recently made some comments concerning the next Unreal engine.
| Final Thoughts | Page:: ( 12 / 12 ) |
With built-in hardware monitoring functionality integrated into the driver’s control panel, CATALYST 4.1 definitely seems as if it’s geared towards the RADEON 9800 XT and RADEON 9600 XT users. But even then, in light of what we’ve seen with this driver, we’re not quite sure if it’s worth it.
CATALYST 3.10 did an excellent job of resolving some of the nagging issues that have plagued previous CATALYST drivers, including the very annoying Call of Duty stability problems. As far as we can see, CATALYST 4.1 doesn’t really build much on top of that, and adds a performance decrease with Enemy Territory.
Because of this, we have a hard time recommending this driver to those of you with non-XT cards that are satisfied with CATALYST 3.10. Chances are good that you won’t find anything new with CATALYST 4.1 that makes it worth the upgrade. And even if you do own an XT board, we’re still not certain if the limited hardware monitoring ATI provides with CATALYST 4.1 is really worth the potential risk of compromising the stability of your system, which is always a risk when you install any new driver.
The bottom line is that ATI did such a good job with CATALYST 3.10 that this driver is one that you should probably skip. CATALYST 4.2 is merely weeks away, so keep your eyes peeled out for that one!
SIDEBAR: What do you think of ATI’s latest display driver, have you taken the plunge with CAT 4.1 and found some significant benefits? Speak up in the news comments!