ATi releases new software – Holy grail of OpenGl-performance!

ATi has since the beginning of time had various problems with performance with OpenGL-based applications and why one might wonder. A clear indication for this was when ATi recently launched its Radeon X1000-family where the only test Radeon X1800 XT didn’t win over GeForce 7800 GTX was Doom3. Doom3 gas since its launch worked best with nVidia’s graphic cards for some reason and the fact that the engine uses OpenGL might just be it. Now ATi has released a small tool  that seems to be a real miracle for games such as Doom3 and other OpenGL-games in general. At Hexus they’ve published a test with the new tool in action and the figures are astonishing.

The new tool increases performance in Doom3 with Radeon X1800 XT up to 35%!, with antialiasing. The benchamrks in Doom3 with and without antialiasing was something we racted upon when we tested X1800 XT as performance more or less was cut in half, with both ATi and nVidia’s graphic card. This should mean that there is a lot of room here as we did not see the same drop with other games. Interestingly enough ATi’s software seems to be ab optimization of the X1000-series advanced memory controller. We wrote in our review that it is programmable and that it’s function could be optimized for each individual game.

“ATi has also increased the flexibility of the programming which makes it easier to fine adjust the controllers depending on the purpose. E.g. Catalyst AI now has direct control over the memory controller and can apply different optimizations for the controller depending on what you’re playing.”

This seems to be the first time we see the fruits of such an optimization and we wouldn’t mind seeing more of those… Except for a 35% increase in Doom3 which makes X1800 XT run past 7800 GTX in performance with antialiasing, we see increases up to 16% in Chronicles of Riddick, another OpenGL-based games. We surely hope that this tool offers the increases it seems to do as it then would mean we, the consumers, would have a lot of free performance to collect from ATi and its cards.

:: Read on about ATi’s software tool and its effects at Hexus