Since the release of Thief a couple of weeks ago, I have had the enjoyment of playing for a few hours. However, what I have not enjoyed is the poorly optimized AMD Drivers for the game. Trying to use Crossfire cards at this point in time is the WORSE thing one can do. Also, the recommended Beta 14.2 drivers aren’t as great as they are said to be.
I ran the in-game benchmarks and was appalled at the results. The test setup used was as follows:
CPU – AMD Fx 8350 @ 4GHz
Motherboard – Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5
Memory – 16GB Kingston 2133 MHz CL11
Storage – 250GB Samsung 840 EVO
Graphics – 2 x MSI R9 280X Gaming OC Edition @ Stock
I also noticed with Crossfire disabled that the game even loads faster. I was so worried something was wrong that I ran other benchmarks with various programs to see if maybe my settings where wrong, or if Crossfire was disabled and reading it was enabled but nope, the problem was just with Thief!
AMD Catalyst 13.12 drivers with Crossfire enabled my FPS were; MIN 11.4, MAX, 41.9, AVG 30.3
AMD Catalyst 13.12 drivers with Crossfire disabled; MIN 27.3, MAX 55.8, AVG 41.9
AMD Catalyst beta 14.2 drivers with Crossfire enabled; MIN 23.8, MAX 43.7, AVG 33.9
AMD Catalyst 14.2 beta Drivers with Crossfire disabled; MIN 32, MAX 52.6, AVG 43.1
As you can see the highest FPS I had were on the 13.12 official drivers with Crossfire disabled. This is pretty upsetting to me as the 14.2 drivers were released to aid in the graphical detail of Thief. Also the loss of FPS when Crossfire is enabled is a bit disappointing.
** Please note that these are my personal findings on my own PC and results will vary depending on overall specifications of the PC being used to run the benchmark. **
