Adapting to Parallelism: Catalyst 5.12 More Dual Core Friendly?
by Derek Wilson on December 4, 2005 10:45 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Test
For our test setup, the only thing that's really changed is our use of the AMD Athlon 4600+ in the system. In order to compare dual core and single core numbers, we setup a multiboot by adding another option to our boot.ini file. Microsoft provides quite a few convenient boot options, including the ability to specify exactly which kernel and HAL to load. We opted to use the easier /ONECPU option which forces multiprocessor systems to ignore all but a single processor. This should give us essentially the same result as testing a 3800+ single core when used on our 4600+ system (2.4GHz with 512kb cache).
ATI singled out Battlefield 2 and FarCry as games that got the best boost from the driver, so we absolutely wanted to include those in our first look at this new driver. To try to get a balanced view, we also included the two other games: Day of Defeat Source and Quake 4. As the driver gets nearer to release we will work on looking at more cards, more games, and more settings, but hopefully this quick test will answer the most pressing questions.
For our test setup, the only thing that's really changed is our use of the AMD Athlon 4600+ in the system. In order to compare dual core and single core numbers, we setup a multiboot by adding another option to our boot.ini file. Microsoft provides quite a few convenient boot options, including the ability to specify exactly which kernel and HAL to load. We opted to use the easier /ONECPU option which forces multiprocessor systems to ignore all but a single processor. This should give us essentially the same result as testing a 3800+ single core when used on our 4600+ system (2.4GHz with 512kb cache).
| CPU: | AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2.4GHz/512kb) |
| Motherboard: | ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe |
| Chipset: | NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 |
| Chipset Drivers: | nForce4 6.82 |
| Memory: | 2x 512MB OCZ PC3500 DDR 2-2-2-7 |
| Video Card: | ATI Radeon X1800 XL |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 5.11 (WHQL) ATI Catalyst 5.12 (Beta) |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1280x960 - 32-bit @ 85Hz |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Power Supply: | OCZ PowerStream 600W PSU |
ATI singled out Battlefield 2 and FarCry as games that got the best boost from the driver, so we absolutely wanted to include those in our first look at this new driver. To try to get a balanced view, we also included the two other games: Day of Defeat Source and Quake 4. As the driver gets nearer to release we will work on looking at more cards, more games, and more settings, but hopefully this quick test will answer the most pressing questions.
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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.