Testing AMD’s May Preview Driver: DX11 Performance Breakthrough

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Kicking off with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, straight away we can see a tidy improvement for AMD when using the Preview driver – yes, the average frame rate goes up by almost 10FPS, but the 1% lows are much more impressive – jumping up from 80FPS to over 100FPS, which is a 26% improvement.

Up at 1440p, we still see very decent improvements, they’re just not as large as we saw at 1080p. The average frame rate has come up by 5% with the Preview driver, but once again the 1% lows see the most benefit, improving by 13% compared to the 22.5.1 driver.

Rounding out with 4K, here the difference in the average frame rate is getting very close to our margin of error, but we can still see a tangible gain to the 1% lows, with an 8% boost thanks to the Preview driver.

Battlefield V

Next up is Battlefield V, and starting at 1440p it is another clear case of improvements with the Preview driver. Both the average FPS and 1% lows improve by 7% and 10% respectively. That brings the 6800 XT level with the RTX 3080 in this title, when previously the AMD GPU was that bit slower.

At 4K too, we actually see even bigger gains for the 6800 XT with the Preview driver – this time with a sizeable 13% boost to the average frame rate, and a 17% improvement to the 1% lows. So far so good for the new driver, this is impressive stuff.

Days Gone

There’s more good news when looking at Days Gone, too. Focusing on 1440p here, we can see a small improvement of 6FPS to the average frame rate. Once more though, it’s the difference made to the 1% lows which I think is the bigger deal – here we are looking at a 10% gain for the 6800 XT with the Preview driver. Considering Days Gone uses Unreal Engine 4, an engine AMD has historically struggled with, this could be very good news indeed. On the next page we test Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, another UE4 title, to see if the trends are similar.

Dying Light 2

Next up then is Dying Light 2, where at 1440p we see next to no difference in the average frame rate between either the Preview or 22.5.1 drivers. The key is the 1% lows though, as with the Preview driver, the 6800 XT runs that bit smoother, with a 15% increase to the 1% lows. That’s especially important considering the RTX 3080 initially had the upper hand for 1% low performance in this title, but that lead evaporates when testing with the AMD Preview driver.

Far Cry 5

As for Far Cry 5, we saw very consistent performance across each resolution tested – the Preview driver nets consistent gains of between 3-4% compared to 22.5.1, and that includes the 1% low performance . A 3% difference is just outside margin for error, so it is an improvement, it’s just nothing to really get excited about.

God of War

The same goes for God of War too –  across every resolution I saw no difference between either AMD driver for the 6800 XT, the numbers just vary ever so slightly due to the margin of error.

Grand Theft Auto V

Next up we have a big one – GTA V, still one of the most popular games on steam almost a decade after it’s release. Here we again see next to no chance in the average frame rate for the 6800 XT when using the Preview driver. The 1% lows do improve by 5% at 1440p, but it’s not exactly a game changer, particularly as the RTX 3080 has a clear lead to begin with.

At 4K too, we see exactly the same thing, the frame rates are now just lower across the board. It is also worthing noting that I did test with 8x MSAA to try and keep the system as GPU limited as possible, which can reduce the framerate significantly.

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