Tipping the balance?
We wanted to see if the extra performance increased system-wide power-draw. The answer seems to be no, going by our near-on identical figures derived from Batman: Arkham City.
Battlefield 3, on the other hand, shows substantial performanceg gains when running the new driver. Here, AMD pulls more watts than NVIDIA, and the new driver adds a further 12W to overall power-draw.
Concluding thoughts
Though we do sincerely mean it each and every time but tend to repeat ad nauseam, now's a great time to purchase an enthusiast-grade graphics card. Enough time has passed since the introduction of AMD and NVIDIA's latest GPU architectures - Radeon HD 7000 and GeForce GTX 600-series, respectively - to enable their software teams to eke out considerably more performance than exhibited by launch-day drivers.
Illustrating the potential performance advancements available through a well-tuned driver, AMD's Catalyst 12.11, available today, provides wholesome gains over the already-robust Catalyst 12.8, right up to an improbable 33 per cent in our Battlefield 3 test. AMD says ongoing research and optimisation for its GCN architecture has resulted in across-the-board improvements in DX10/11 games, and our testing does back this assertion up.
We're absolutely fans of gaining more gaming speed without recoursing to purchasing dearer hardware, but, arguably, the extra bundling effort, under the Never Settle banner, is just as important.
The premier Never Settle bundle, available on Radeon HD 7900-series cards, provides access to three well-known titles - Far Cry 3, Sleeping Dogs, and Hitman Absolution - for free. There's little point in purchasing an expensive video card and then baulking at the cost of buying games, so any company-led initiative, at no obvious extra cost to the consumer, is a good idea.
Doling out pragmatic advice, if it was our money on the line, we'd invest in a £220 Radeon HD 7950 3GB card, flash it to the latest BIOS that provides PowerTune With Boost functionality, and then take advantage of the three-game Never Settle bundle.
Being even-handed, NVIDIA, too, isn't sitting still. Using a slightly different tack, whereby games are bundled with partners' cards on a case-by-case basis, higher-end GPUs - GeForce GTX 660 Ti and above - are bundled with the presently-available, excellent Borderlands 2, while the GTX 650 Ti is set to get Assassin's Creed 3 in a month's time.
AMD promises more performance and better bundled games, so has it done enough for you to switch allegiance for your next graphics-card upgrade? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the HEXUS Community.
