ATI's Release Note Claims Examined cont.
Finally, ATI have also made mention of improvements to Half-Life 2 in certain areas of the game. Again, we'll be checking up on our default 'Prison' timedemo later on, but to track down these improvements we ran a variety of custom-made timedemos across various levels, to see if we can hunt down any obvious benefits. All tests were run at 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200, without AA or AF.
Firstly, we can see some improvements on the largely shader-limited Canal level - Indeed, each driver shown has improved upon the last, but CATALYST 4.12 undoubtedly makes the biggest jump thus far.
The game's 'Train Station' level is largely CPU limited, but again we see small performance improvements, which tends to be indicative of the improved driver efficiency mentioned by ATI.
Next up is the lighting and flashlight fest that is 'Ravenholm', and our largest performance boost so far, particularly at high resolution.
Finally, the very busy 'City 17' level is something of a mixed bag with this latest driver release, showing a big improvement at 1280x1024, but no noticeable change at other resolutions.
