Introduction

As we roll into the end of September which marks a few things like the end of the third quarter, the start of the new HD 6000 series coming, a new Catalyst driver suite and what could be an end to NVIDIAs very short reign on the mid range video card market, we find ourselves excited about October.

From next month onward we should begin to see what we really only know at this point as "Bart", being offered from AMD. I've been practicing the whole AMD thing, trying to get ATI out of my vocabulary, as no doubt the release of the HD 6000 series will almost mean the end of the ATI name, a name we've grown to love (and sometimes hate).

That's next month, though, which will mark the release of the always weird sounding .10 driver; in this case, the 10.10. For now we've got the new 10.9 driver. Let's see what AMD are offering us and then get straight into the benchmarks.

Performance Improvements

STALKER: Call of Pripyat Benchmark
- Performance increases up to 20% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and
CrossFire configurations with Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX11) and
anti-aliasing enabled
- Performance increases up to 12% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and
CrossFire configurations with Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX11) and
anti-aliasing enabled

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
- Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series single and
CrossFire configurations
- Performance increases up to 4% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series single and
CrossFire configurations
- Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series single and
CrossFire configurations
- Performance increases up to 6% on ATI Radeon HD 5970 Series single and
CrossFire configurations