Update: DX10 Gaming Performance Review - Catalyst 7.10

Jumping Right To It
AMD Brings Catalyst 7.10
Just a few short days ago, I posted another article that looked at the DX10 performance of the top graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA using up-to-date drivers and patches for all titles. Just 6 days later, that's all crap. Gee, thanks.
Seriously though, after the publication of our review, AMD contacted me about an updated Catalyst driver, version 7.10, that I was told would dramatically change the results of our testing. Of course, I could have told them to go stick it, as the review reflected the status of AMD's GPU performance as of that date, and it did. But I knew that AMD deserved another chance at it, just as I constantly am getting new drivers from the green team (brighter green at least) throughout product launches and lifespans.
So, after receiving an early copy of the 7.10 "Shoot-em-up" driver as it somehow seems to have been named, I set out to spend my weekend doing some MORE graphics testing.
System Setup and Benchmarks
In my previous article, I spent a lot of time describing the various games that we were going to be using, what features they added with DX10 that didn't exist in DX9 and other interesting notes that I am going to leave out here for fear of sound a little too repetitive. If you haven't seen the previous review, I suggest you hop on over and read this page of it so you can get up to speed on what we are testing, and why.
DirectX 10 Test System Setup |
|
CPU |
|
Motherboards |
EVGA nForce 680i Motherboard - Review |
Memory |
Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C4 |
Hard Drive |
|
Sound Card |
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value |
Video Card |
AMD ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT - Review NVIDIA Reference GeForce 8800 GTX - Review |
Video Drivers |
AMD Catalyst 7.10 Beta AMD Catalyst - 7.9 + Hotfix NVIDIA Forceware 163.69 |
Power Supply | PC Power and Cooling 1000 watt |
DirectX Version |
DX10 |
Operating System |
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit |
- Bioshock
- Company of Heroes 1.7.1
- Call of Juarez
- Lost Planet
- World in Conflict
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