DataX

I had been wanting to do a comparison between several ATI driver sets, and since I was at it I wrote a review for them.
Something I'd like to note is that drivers can work differently between systems, so you might not get same results; just take this as a baseline. Anyways, hope you guys like the review.


Driver sets tested:
ATI Catalyst v6.5 Beta
ATI Catalyst v6.4
zer0point v0.64 (v6.4)
DNA 4.5.6.1 (v6.1)
Omega v3.8.231 (v6.3)
XG WarCat v6.3
NGO v1.6.4 (v6.4)

ONLY the display driver was installed, nothing else. The only other program I used was Ati Tray Tools v1.0.5.880 for the vcard overclock.

Benchmarks:
Aquamark3
3DMark01SE
3DMark03
3DMark05
3DMark06
Doom3 ("timedemo demo1 use cache")
F.E.A.R.

Both F.E.A.R. and Doom 3 were ran at 1024x768, High Quality. AM3 and 3DMark benchmarks were ran at standard settings. Settings were identical for all tests at 0xAA and 0xAF.

System Specs:
P4 530 @ 3595Mhz (240x15)
2x256Mb DDR2-533 (240Mhz)
x700Pro 468/522
Abit Fatality AA8XE
1024x768 LCD Screen

Results:

Basically I reduced 42 benchmarks to this:


Details of each test can be found below:

ATI Catalyst v6.5 Beta
AM3 - 60147
3DMark01SE - 20710
3DMark03 - 8856
3DMark05 - 3877
3DMark06 - 1433
Doom 3 - 35.1 seconds, 61.2 FPS
F.E.A.R.

ATI Catalyst v6.4
AM3 - 59473
3DMark01SE - 19730
3DMark03 - 8446
3DMark05 - 3785
3DMark06 - 1383
Doom 3 - 35.8 seconds, 60.0 FPS
F.E.A.R.

zer0point v0.64 (v6.4)
AM3 - 59479
3DMark01SE - 19822
3DMark03 - 8563
3DMark05 - 3779
3DMark06 - 1154
Doom 3 - 35.6 seconds, 60.4 FPS
F.E.A.R.

Omega v3.8.231 (v6.3)
AM3 - 59546
3DMark01SE - 19774
3DMark03 - 8520
3DMark05 - 3808
3DMark06 - 1453
Doom 3 - 34.9 seconds, 61.5 FPS
F.E.A.R.

XG WarCat v6.3
AM3 - 60383
3DMark01SE - 20789
3DMark03 - 8890
3DMark05 - 3903
3DMark06 - 1504
Doom 3 - 34.9 seconds, 61.6 FPS
F.E.A.R.

NGO v1.6.4 (v6.4)
AM3 - 59363
3DMark01SE - 19697
3DMark03 - 8528
3DMark05 - 3787
3DMark06 - 1429
Doom 3 - 35.6 seconds, 60.4 FPS
F.E.A.R.


Comments:

ATI Catalyst v6.5 Beta
Performed quite well and had good image quality; didn't see any problems for being beta.

ATI Catalyst v6.4
Much lower scores than 6.5b, but other than that it was pretty much the same.

zer0point v0.64 (v6.4)
First thing I noticed from this was how much better image quality was; everything look much more clear and sharp. Con of this is that scores dropped quite a bit. Good if you care more about image quality than fps. Another thing that I'd like to mention is that it will runs at higher resolutions than screen supports if needed(only a part of the screen is visible). This is the reason why the 3DMark06 score is much lower; it ran at 1280x1024 instead of 1024x768.

Omega v3.8.231 (v6.3)
Performed quite decently, and image quality looks slightly better than the ATI Catalyst drivers.

XG WarCat v6.3
Best performing driver set, although this one does sacrifice image quality. However it runs much smoother at higher quality settings than other drivers.

NGO v1.6.4 (v6.4)
Kinda disappointed... I expected more from them, but they just didn't perform as good. Plus image quality was somewhat blurry.

DNA 4.5.6.1 (v6.1)
Stay away from these. It has a crappy installer, just to put like 30 game/graphic preset shortcuts in your start menu. Ironically you can't use them because the drivers don't even work.


Conclusion:

Best performing drivers are the XG WarCat's, image quality loss is noticeable, but not that bad. If you want image quality just go for the zer0point drivers.
The Catalyst 6.5b would probably the best balance between image quality and performance. Omega's would still be good for slightly better quality without a great performance loss.



Comments are appreciated.

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The Fury

WOW, nice detail, you put a lot of work in that! Brilliant.

Fury

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Q6600 @ 3.5ghz
We are teh Green Machine

British Overclockers Club

Pacman

You sure had a lot of work... some reputation as my gratitude
thx

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Intel oC'ing @
3.4Ghz 3.5Ghz 3.6Ghz!

AMD oC'ing @
2.42Ghz 2.5Ghz 2.6Ghz 2.7Ghz

DataX

Thanks, now I think I should get some sleep.. XD

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Ste

Wow, this is really excellent. I'm going to give the Zeropoints a try

Xavier1421

Stickied and 5-star rated. X-cellent work DataX!!

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Retirement isn't all it's cracked up to be

bgbop15

now my question... which would allow an 1800xt OC?

DataX

I don't see why any of them shouldn't. My x700Pro was oc'd to 468/522 from 425/432 in all tests; never had a problem.

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bgbop15

well my prob is that ati tray tools dowsnt allow x1000 series OC'ing, x64 doesn't like omega, ati tool and powerstrip all freeze on me, and ccc (6.4) only allows me to OC to 690/800... any ideas?

DataX

Well, best you can do is try a different driver set and try with AtiTool again. But that sounds like a hardware problem, so if your not lucky, it might not make a difference.

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