ATI Driver Roundup

2nd Quarter 2005

Article by Harry

  Through out my years using an ATI based video card, I've always looked for new ways to get more performance out of my card.  Last year I switched from the standard Catalyst Drivers to the Omega Drivers, and found that they indeed lived up to their hype and performed better than the Cats.  This got me thinking.  Are there other moded driver sets out there? I knew there was, I'd heard of the DNA's.   If so, then how well do they perform?

As soon as NBS was born, I immediately went on the hunt for all the ATI driver sets I could find.  I found seven.  Here's your competitors.

ATI Catalyst  --  www.ati.com

Omega drivers  --  www.omegadrivers.net

DNA Drivers  --  www.dna-drivers.nl

NGO Drivers  --  www.ngohq.com

Zeropoint Drivers  --  www.dhzeropoint.net

Forsage Drivers  --  www.hardwarelab.ru

UnIAN Drivers  --  www.atimania.com/unian

I know some of you will have heard of only a couple of these, and be unawares of the rest.  Trust me they do exist, and they do perform pretty good in some cases.

With out further ado, here's the testing.

*Test system*

Athlon 64 3200 - Stock 10x200 = 2000MHz

Radeon 9800XT (No OC)

1 (2x512) Gig Infineon 3200 CL 2.5/3/3/6

MSI K8T NEO2 (Rev.1 / VIA K8T800)

Seagate 80 Gig 6mb Cache 7200RPM

Direct X 9.0c

I apologize for this test only being run on a 9800XT and an AGP card but the performance is meant as a relative difference, not an end all fact.

There will be a second roundup done this fall after the release of the R520

All drivers sets tested are based on the ATI 5.4 drivers.  The reason being, the moded driver community needs time to mod each new driver set.  Some groups are faster than others.  The newest set available by all, was the 5.4's.

All drivers were uninstalled through the Add/Remove programs menu. Then we used Driver Cleaner 3 before installing the next set to be tested.

Benchmarks

Our benchmark suite for this roundup consisted of:

3DMark 2005

Aquamark 3

Far Cry 1.3

Doom 3 1.0

Half Life 2

If none of that matters to you, just jump right to our Conclusion.

3DMark 05

For our first test we chose a wholly synthetic bench, to see how well each driver was tuned for benchmarking.  3DMark is a test we are all quite familiar with, I hope.  Its latest iteration is designed for Direct X 9 benchmarking.  All driver sets were tested with the default test.

Its relatively easy to see that the Omega Drivers destroy the other sets.  Granted is only around a 90 point difference, but that can be a greater boost if tweaked.

Aquamark 3

Our second test is a little more on the real world side of things.  Aquamark, from Massive Development, is a favorite here at NBS.  Particularly for the fact that it has a strong amount of particle matter, which tends to work out a card quite well.

Here we see a different picture.  A very tight victory by the DNA drivers with the NGO's tight on their heels.  The Omega's have fallen off.  The really odd score is the ATI Catalysts. They are way off the pack, down my more than 2000 points.  It makes you wonder what sort of safety or governance is removed by the moded driver sets.

Far Cry

Now its time for a real life benchmark.  We decide to let the oldest go first, thus Far Cry got the call.  Our Far Cry testing was done with version 1.3, using the HardwareOC FarCry Benchmark V1.4.1.  Tests were performed at 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200 on the Regulator map.  We performed 2 sets of tests, one with out any bells and whistles.  No AA or AF.  One with 4xAF and 4xAA.

At 1024 we see the NGO Drivers squeezing out a narrow victory over the Forsage drivers.

At 1280 its extremely tight, with the Zeropoint's narrowly winning over the Catalysts with the fluff turned off.  With the fluff on, the NGO's eek out a victory.

At 1600, the ATI Catalysts win their first victory with the fluff off.  However once the fluff is turned on they get destroyed.  The Zeropoint's again win once the fluff is turned on.

Through out our Far Cry testing the NGO, Zeropoint and the Forsage drivers were the most consistently on top  Where as the ATI Catalysts were way to weak in their use of AA and AF.

Doom 3

Now we turn things up a notch.  Doom 3 tends to be tough on all cards due to its dark and shadowy nature.  Its hard to render.

Our Doom 3 tests were run using the Demo 1 consol command.  It was time consuming but well worth the effort.  All quality settings in game were set for High, not Ultra.  Shadows and V-sync were enabled.  For the no fluff tests AA was disabled in game and Control Panel, as well as AF.  For the AA / AF test, 4x AA was enabled in game and 4x AF was forced in the control panel

In the OpenGL based Doom 3 we start to see serious discrepancies.  At 1024, the Omega's stand out in both tests.

At 1280 the numbers are pitiful.  Only one set of drivers can manage to keep my 9800xt in a playable range.  The Omega's are able to keep above the coveted 28 FPS easily, with the fluff off.  Once its turned on they're still the highest but not at all playable.

At 1600 its plain to see that the Omegas are your solid choice for OpenGL based games.

Half Life 2

There's no point in doing a graphics based roundup these days unless your going to include Half Life 2.  The current king of graphics.

All tests were done using HardwareOC's Half Life 2 Benchmark V1.3.

The numbers here in HL2 are very close.  The Zeropoint's take both tests.

At 1280 there's very little difference, except that the NGO's have been able to pull ahead.

1600x1200 again shows very little difference in performance.

Seeing such close performance in Half Life 2 leads us to believe that what driver is used will have much less of an affect than what card is used.

Conclusions

Its hard for me to give a clear conclusion.  All these driver sets, with the exception of the ATI Catalysts performed fabulous.   In some areas there were clear winners. Such as the Omega's clearly winning in 3DMark and Doom3.  In other areas it gets kind of muttled.  I've decided to put in a top three for each category.

Some people have asked why we included stability in our conclusion.  This is because a lot of people fail to take it into account.   We however do.  During the course of our testing all the driver sets crashed at least once, except for the NGO's.  We didn't see a single peep out of them.  All we got was "yes boss, whatever you say boss".

Not even the venerated Omega's were faultless.  They crashed on us once, forcing a driver reinstall.

Overall

Our overall decision for best driver, is the NGO Drivers.  Reason being this.  They benchmark decent.  They win 7 out of 10 Direct 3D based tests.  Even though none of the other drivers can keep up with the Omegas in OpenGL, the NGO's are the closest.  They were the most stable.  That pretty much sums it up.

Thanks for reading, and keep your eyes open for our 3rd Quarter roundup in late September and our 4th Quarter roundup in the last week in December.