In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we saw newer AMD Catalyst drivers mysteriously lowering performance in games on Windows XP. Those test were done on a no frills Core2 Duo system, resembling what many people ran when those games were new. But now we’ll set up a monster overkill XP gaming system with LGA 2011, a 3.6GHz six-core Sandy Bridge-E Xeon E5-1660 processor, quad channel DDR3-1600 memory, PCI-e 3.0, an SSD, and see if that changes things.
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In Part 1 of this series, we saw newer AMD Catalyst drivers slowing down the Radeon HD4000, HD5000 and HD6000 graphics cards under Windows XP. This time, we will look at how the Radeon HD7970 with the newer GCN architecture is affected by this problem.
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If you’re looking to build a Windows XP gaming system using a relatively overkill DX10 or DX11 AMD graphics card, you might want to avoid the latest official drivers. Read on to find out why.
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The Radeon HD 5870 was the first DX11 card, released back in 2009, and as shocking as it may seem, it’s been over 10 years since that date. I still remember buying Continue reading
AMD FX processors often get laughed at as AMD’s “Netburst moment” based on their inferior performance and efficiency compared to the competition from Intel. But unlike Intel’s Netburst abomination, Continue reading
What is it like to play latest games in 2018 on a Phenom II x6 CPU from 2010? Continue reading
It was late summer 2002 when I finally decided to build my own gaming PC. Up to that point, I had to suffer with a Dell Inspiron 3800 laptop, where I learned the hard way that laptops make crappy gaming machines. Armed with my new-found knowledge, I poured over hardware reviews until I finally settled on components that would give me the most bang for my limited buck. Continue reading