ATI Catalyst Beta 1 AMD64 Driver Performance

[Spinner]

Following up from the recent release of ATI's first 64-bit supporting drivers, Chris Tom over at AMDZone has done a short performance benchmark of the new betas.

Nvidia had beaten them to the punch, and only Windows drivers are available, but it is progress. Having tested the 64 bit UT2004 Linux demo with 64 bit Nvidia drivers we decided to see how well 32 bit games performed under the 64 bit OS and drivers. Armed with my eMachines M6805 laptop with Windows XP and Windows XP 64 loaded we were off.
Source: AMDZone (http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=26&page=1)

[qparadox]

Heh they ran 32bit appz on a 64 bit os. So basically they just tested the 32bit compatibility mode of the drivers. If I were writing a driver I'd get the intended mode (64 bit mode, 64 bit os) optimized before I worried about legacy modes ... but then most appz will be legacy for quite a while ... meh.

[Shorty]

Not screaming superior performance? Didn't expect it to be in realistic terms.

It's a beta 64bit driver for a beta operating system with zero optimization, emulating a 32bit system. Overhead++

Give it time, needs more compiled 64bit games.