We would like to thank the following companies for supplying and supporting us with our test system hardware and equipment: Intel, ASRock, Kingston, Mittoni, Noctua and Corsair.

Nothing has changed since the last time we looked at the Catalyst drivers, so there's really not much that has to be said. So let's just get into the performance side of things and see how the new 11.6s compare against the 11.5s we looked at last month.

Let's get started!

3DMark 11

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.0
Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com
Product Homepage: http://www.3dmark.com/3dmark11/
Buy It Here

3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world's most popular benchmark. Designed to measure your PC's gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

HD 6970 - Here we see no real change.

HD 6870 - You can see a clear boost in performance with the new 11.6 release from AMD. Hopefully these gains translate into some extra performance in games as well.

HD 5870 - Here we see no real change.