AMD ‘cheating’ GPU benchmarks and degrading game quality, says NVIDIA
It's been a while since we've had one of these stories - haven't you missed them? Hmmm, me neither. Anyhow, recent NVIDIA reviewer's guides have been suggesting that AMD have been reducing image quality in the name of increased performance in benchmarks, more specifically when it comes to the choice of floating point formats utilised for render targets in some titles.
However, when Atomic received the recent NVIDIA GTS450 card, press release and included reviewer's guide, we noticed that it came with a page that implied certain unfavourable things about their competition, ATI.
We discovered that this page had been included in every reviewer's guide sent to hardware reviewers since the launch of the GF100 'Fermi' family: the GTX480, GTX470, GTX465, and both GTX460 cards. It had been included with the GTS450 and five other cards, but it seems no-one has paid it much attention, dismissing it offhandedly - as we admittedly dismiss most guides that attempt to dictate our testing methodology.
This page, as it appears below, claims many things. Prime among these is an assertion that ATI were utilising a technique in their drivers called 'FP16 Demotion' to boost their graphical performance at the cost of image quality. It names a number of older gaming titles as the only ones affected by this so-called hack, and welcomes reviewers to work it out for themselves. So, that's what we did.
Atomic PC has a full investigation, complete with additional comments from both AMD and NVIDIA on the issue.We discovered that this page had been included in every reviewer's guide sent to hardware reviewers since the launch of the GF100 'Fermi' family: the GTX480, GTX470, GTX465, and both GTX460 cards. It had been included with the GTS450 and five other cards, but it seems no-one has paid it much attention, dismissing it offhandedly - as we admittedly dismiss most guides that attempt to dictate our testing methodology.
This page, as it appears below, claims many things. Prime among these is an assertion that ATI were utilising a technique in their drivers called 'FP16 Demotion' to boost their graphical performance at the cost of image quality. It names a number of older gaming titles as the only ones affected by this so-called hack, and welcomes reviewers to work it out for themselves. So, that's what we did.
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FIFA 11 and Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 demos now available
If you're a football fan then you'll doubtless have welcomed the start of the new season - an event which also means that new iterations of the top football gaming titles are also inevitably on the way. If you're wondering whether the FIFA or Pro Evolution Soccer franchise will come out on top this time around, you can now decide for yourself, with demos of both FIFA 11 and Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 being made available for the PC and consoles.
You can find all of the information and links you need to download the FIFA 11 demo for your preferred platform on the EA Sports Football web site, while Konami's PES 2011 web site has all the links you need for that particular title.
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AMD Catalyst 10.9 released
We're half-way through the month, and it's time for another AMD graphics driver release - here's what's new this time around.
Performance improvements
o   Performance increases up to 12% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations with Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX11) and anti-aliasing enabled
o   Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations
o   Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations
o   Performance increases up to 6% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations
Catalystâ„¢ Application Profiles
Support for the Internet Explorer 9 Beta release
Resolved issue highlights:
Highlights of the Linux ATI Catalystâ„¢ 10.9 release include:
New Features
Support for new Linux operating systems
As always, you can download the latest Catalyst driver for your Operating System of choice at the AMD Game web site.- STALKER: Call of Pripyat Benchmark
o   Performance increases up to 12% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations with Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX11) and anti-aliasing enabled
- The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
o   Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations
o   Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations
o   Performance increases up to 6% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 Series single and CrossFire™ configurations
Catalystâ„¢ Application Profiles
- Aliens Vs. Predator – Profile update
- Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – Profile update
- F1 2010 – Profile update
- Kane & Lynch 2 – New profile
Support for the Internet Explorer 9 Beta release
- AMD’s graphics processors deliver graphics acceleration through Direct2D and HTML 5 for the Internet Explorer 9 beta release
- Be sure to check out AMD’s website for an example of GPU acceleration within Internet Explorer 9 (http://www.amd.com/direct2d-html5)
Resolved issue highlights:
- UVD clocks will now return to normal speeds after switching from HD to SD content
- Flickering no longer visible while running 3D games on HDMI displays with Quad CrossFireâ„¢ enabled
- Mesh corruption is no longer visible in "The Chronicles of Riddick 2: Assault on Dark Athena" when SSAO in-game setting is set to high
- CrossFireâ„¢ now functions properly and in-game Anti-Aliasing can now be enabled in "StarCraft II"
- Adobe Flash Player will no longer display green screen after resume from sleep
- Negative CrossFireâ„¢ scaling on "Final Fantasy-XIV" no longer occurs
- Intermittent perfomance drops no longer observed with harware cursor enabled in"World of Warcraft" game in extended mode
Highlights of the Linux ATI Catalystâ„¢ 10.9 release include:
New Features
Support for new Linux operating systems
- This release of ATI Catalystâ„¢ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:Â
- RHEL 6 support (early look)
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