Part 2 update:
As you can see, the performance in Catalyst 10.1 (our hotfixed version,
not the publicly-available driver <#>) is substantially better than
Catalyst 9.12 with Aero enabled, in the case of polygons, even
surpassing the performance of 9.12 in Windows XP. This is the fix we've
been looking for.
You'll also notice that, with the latest version of the benchmark <#>
(linked on the previous page), we're also showing a performance drop
with the Desktop Window Manager disabled. We've tested, retested, tested
on multiple machines, and found the same results. ATI has done the same
in its lab and not been able to reproduce our results.
However, this is of less consequence to us, as there's little reason to
disable Aero if the experience with it on is superior. Our numbers (and
the ones ATI has run) agree in this regard. At the end of the day, the
issue we originally reported has been addressed and tentatively fixed,
with significant performance speed-ups in Windows 7 on the Radeon HD
5000-series cards with Aero enabled.
Now, as mentioned, this driver isn't available yet. ATI says it will be
integrating its fixes into a future release, but we wouldn't expect them
until Catalyst 10.3 or 10.4; we'll post a news update when ATI confirms
that the Catalyst driver has officially been
updated with the fixes.
Special thanks to ATI's software engineering team for quickly addressing
the Windows 7-based issues we presented, implementing a quick (albeit
not yet public) fix, and working with us to ensure that the folks buying
these cards get the user experience they expect, regardless of whether
they're gamers, artists, or engineers!
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2d-windows-gdi,2547-15.html
On 2/17/2010 9:53 AM, Stan Zaske wrote:
2D acceleration is another area that has problems with the latest
video cards/drivers. Ati is mostly affected but Nvidia also has it's
share of problems. There is a part 2 to this article that I'm reading
next. Still going to be a few months before AMD gets mature drivers
out to us but at this point in my gaming experience I still recommend
the 5000 series.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2d-windows-gdi,2539-11.html
