Huge Performance Gain with Catalyst 4.6

[mehoo462]

I just downloaded Cat. 4.6 drivers. I notcied an enormous performance improvement in the Theif 3 engine.

The sad part is that the wierd shadows and textures are still there. However the performance improvement may be significant enough for these to be overlooked.

There are still some issues with flickering shadows in 4.6, but for me at least the performance boost is too significant, i used to have to play on 800x600 with 2x multisampling. Now i can play 1024x with 3x multisampling and get the same FPS. For this, i will accept a few flickering shadows.

Anybody else notice the same improved performance of the thief engine with Cat. 4.6?

[ringo380]

I've been using Cat 4.5 with a Radeon 9000 and I've yet to see any problems. Must be the newer models.

[MrWynd]

im still using 4.4's and havent seen a flicker. if i had a performance problem i'd try upgrading, but I dont want to start seeing screwy shadows. (AIW 9800 pro)

[van_HellSing PL]

MrWynd - the 4.4 drivers are the "safe ones", it's the newer ones that have the flickering problems (not with me though, I'm using the 4.5 drivers on a 9200se with no problems)

[Sweedenhouse]

THe performance is improved with the 4.6's (as far as enabling multisampling, and not skipping), but the shadow flicker is unbareable for me, it sucks giant donkey balls, and to me is not worht the perfoamnce increase. ATi knows about the this issue, and is working on it. So hrmmm by the time ATi fixes the flicker, I figure Ion will have the AI bug fixed then it can be played for real. I haven't even tried to get past the first mission yet. Waiting for the game to run how its supposed to. Oh and I have a 9800 pro with a 2.8Ghz P4.
But if the AI bug is fixed first I'll reinstall the 4.4's.

[LeMartin]

Originally posted by van_HellSing PL
MrWynd - the 4.4 drivers are the "safe ones", it's the newer ones that have the flickering problems (not with me though, I'm using the 4.5 drivers on a 9200se with no problems)

How's the game runnig for you VH?? I;m asking cose I've got a friend with the same type of video card and he's been wondering if the game will run on his card. He's got a pretty decent spec system around it.

[Kheldin]

Maybe its just coincidence, but the last 3 games i've played, all had issues with ATI cards.. Here they are in order..

Star Wars Galaxies
Horizons
Thief 3

Why is it that if ATI cards being as great as they are, and supposedly this new Catalyst driver stuff being better than before, then why is there still so many new games with ATI problems..? Seriously tho, all my friends tell me I should have an ATI card, that they are "better" and have better faster newer specs. But yet the last 3 games I've played, the forums are all talking about ATI problems / driver issues. I have a friend that plays Thief 3 and Battlefield Vietnam.. Now in order to get best performace in BFV, he uses the latest drivers, 4.6... But when he wants to play Thief, he has to revert back to 4.4. ...?? yeah great card/drivers...

Talk about irritating... seriously tho, ATI makes great cards, they benchmark higher and better then most nvidia.

What am I missing here, because I'm about to upgrade my vid card, and looking at the posts here and on the forums of the last few games I've played, tons of ATI issues, with not even 1 thread anywhere about Nvidia issues.. Seems like no matter what to just be safe I should go with an Nvidia card.

Any input..? Im not the type of gamer that cares about how great my pixel shaders blah blah blah are.. i just want my video to look nice, and work problem free...

[Quillan]

PURE SPECULATION HERE!

With that disclaimer out of the way, I know nVidia pays developers a lot of money. That's why you see "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" on so many games. I suspect these developers do most of their work on systems with nVidia graphics cards. I think they only go to ATI cards when they are in the testing stage, and a lot of stuff doesn't get noticed there. They spend much more time on nVidia than they do on ATI systems.

[KlynnGrey]

Nvidea has driver problems too, optimizations than ruin things as well. But ATI has always been tagged as having driver issuses so people hear about it more and it may just be a place of blame.
Nividia has always had a solid driver base but you don't hear about it as much, do a search and you'll be surprised how many come up. their 53.81 were horrible from what i read, hope i have the right dev # there.
So the point here is that both have driver issues both produce good cards with different techniques which result in diferent outcomes and Ati has a more solid response to drivers than they ever did and if your looking for perfect.... do your research read tons, look at config systems in stores, dont buy mx or se in either version of Nvidia or ATI, cheap won't always get you good.
Also most companies don't rcommond driver updates just because they release them but to fix something that an issue of hardware compatability caused or changed when they wrote code.
And code ain't always easy by itself it interconnects every peice of equipment in your machine and a thousand others and not every one rights code the same way between gamer developers and video card drivers. imagine how a city interconnects thousands of businesses and people and drivers and food and ...get the point...its complicated.

[zoomy942]

Originally posted by Kheldin
Maybe its just coincidence, but the last 3 games i've played, all had issues with ATI cards.. Here they are in order..

Star Wars Galaxies
Horizons
Thief 3

Why is it that if ATI cards being as great as they are, and supposedly this new Catalyst driver stuff being better than before, then why is there still so many new games with ATI problems..? Seriously tho, all my friends tell me I should have an ATI card, that they are "better" and have better faster newer specs. But yet the last 3 games I've played, the forums are all talking about ATI problems / driver issues. I have a friend that plays Thief 3 and Battlefield Vietnam.. Now in order to get best performace in BFV, he uses the latest drivers, 4.6... But when he wants to play Thief, he has to revert back to 4.4. ...?? yeah great card/drivers...

Talk about irritating... seriously tho, ATI makes great cards, they benchmark higher and better then most nvidia.

What am I missing here, because I'm about to upgrade my vid card, and looking at the posts here and on the forums of the last few games I've played, tons of ATI issues, with not even 1 thread anywhere about Nvidia issues.. Seems like no matter what to just be safe I should go with an Nvidia card.

Any input..? Im not the type of gamer that cares about how great my pixel shaders blah blah blah are.. i just want my video to look nice, and work problem free...

as a rule, ati has breat hardware, but not so great drivers.. and in reference to the geforcefx series of nvidia, the cards are flawed, but the drivers from nvidia have always been great.