Having tested the performance on Catalyst 5.10 drivers with and without the SMP patch on all notable combinations, let’s move on to the “OpenGL hack” Catalyst 5.11 drivers.

The first test will be just like before, showing the performance increase of the SMP patch on low quality settings.



The first thing you’ll notice is the slightly more consistent readouts, a testament to both the stability/performance of the Catalyst 5.11 drivers, and CPU limiting that takes place in Quake 4, but more on that later. The results this time indicate that, again, the SMP patch has generated a substantial performance increase. This time the average increase through all four resolutions was 12.63%, a bit less than before. However, notice if you will that the general frame rates themselves are all quite a bit higher than they were before. It seems as though the effectiveness of the SMP patch is dampened slightly when used in conjunction with high performing drivers like the Catalyst 5.11.

Following the trend, the next test will have the same settings as the previous one, but this time the in-game settings in Quake 4 will all be set to the highest possible quality. Again, this will give us an idea of the effectiveness of the SMP patch when playing Quake 4 on high settings.


Here we have some interesting results. With the settings cranked, the SMP patch on the Catalyst 5.11 drivers rendered an average performance increase of 12.8%, slightly higher than the 12.63% received on low settings. This is probably the result of the native Anisotropic Filtering and Anti-Aliasing that the X800 series cards afford. We assume this also has something to do with the tremendous ability of the Catalyst 5.11 drivers.

SMP Results
The average performance increase from the SMP patch throughout all 4 tests was 13.8%, which is not the 25% claimed by id’s initial statement. However, 13.8% increase on a game like Quake 4 can mean up to about an 8.7 FPS boost. I don’t know about you, but I think I speak for most gamers when I say that I will take an extra 8.7 FPS any day.

Catalyst 5.11 Results
According to the results of the tests, the Catalyst 5.11 drivers provided a bigger increase in performance than the SMP patch. For tests run on high settings, the Catalyst 5.11 drivers gave a performance increase of 22.8%. This is amazingly high, and in fact is higher than what we even expected. A 22.8% increase in Quake 4 can mean a boost of well over 14 FPS – big number there. For tests run with low quality settings, the performance increase was a bit smaller, at 15.6%. This is more around the number we expected, and can mean an increase of almost 10 FPS.