Looking Back: ATI's Catalyst Drivers Exposed
by Ryan Smith on December 11, 2005 3:22 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne
Leaving the realm of FPS's for a bit, we take a look at Blizzard's massively popular RTS Warcraft 3, and its expansion pack, The Frozen Throne. As we have mentioned in the past, even for its superb image quality, WC3 is not a terribly performance-intensive game, so we aren't expecting any surprises here. Because WC3 does not have a benchmarking mode, all frame rates are approximate using a custom replay and FRAPS.
Even more than with UT2004, Warcraft 3 is a no-story. ATI did not make any driver changes that significantly impacted either IQ or performance.
Leaving the realm of FPS's for a bit, we take a look at Blizzard's massively popular RTS Warcraft 3, and its expansion pack, The Frozen Throne. As we have mentioned in the past, even for its superb image quality, WC3 is not a terribly performance-intensive game, so we aren't expecting any surprises here. Because WC3 does not have a benchmarking mode, all frame rates are approximate using a custom replay and FRAPS.
With only a marginal blip with the 3.04 drivers, you could practically set a watch to the 9700 Pro's performance on WC3 without AA/AF. Turning on these features causes a little more variance in results, but even here, there is ultimately no significant change in performance in the end. Though, we are curious about the overall lower frame rates compared to the high mark of 58.9fps with the 3.06 drivers.
Catalyst 5.11 versus 3.00 (mouse over to see 3.00)
Even more than with UT2004, Warcraft 3 is a no-story. ATI did not make any driver changes that significantly impacted either IQ or performance.
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n7 - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link
Yeah the mouseover is borked.Interesting review.
JayHu - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link
In the article you refer to driver revisions 3.4 and 3.6, but the labelling on your axis reads 3.04, 3.06. Took me a couple glances to figure out what you meant.Ryan Smith - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link
Fixed, we had to improvise on the graphing engine(which has to sort by something) so the 0's were thrown in without thinking to change the article. Thanks.microAmp - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link
Mouseover ain't workin' with IE & FF.:(
Howard - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link
Doesn't work with Opera, either.BigLan - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link
Broken here as well w/ IERyan Smith - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link
It should be working now guys, our managing editor was puting it up earlier and it somehow went live a bit early.reactor - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link
same thing going on here, picture disappears when i try to mouseover. interesting article though, good stuff :)