The new beta version of AMD’s GPU driver can provide significant improvements in the performance of OpenGL applications. Users of the Guru3D forum discovered this while testing the driver.
It is the driver with version number 31.0.12000.20010 that can be found in the latest Windows 11 Insider build. Number 31 will be here for WDDM 3.1. WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) is the core architecture of the graphical interface of Windows, and version 3.1 is part of the new Windows 11 22H2 (although it is still unclear whether there are improvements over version 3.0). Of course, that doesn’t mean that OpenGL improvements aren’t coming to other versions of Windows, either.
Forum member “The Creator” compared the beta driver to the latest stable driver in the Unigine Valley Benchmark benchmarking program. The score is clearly higher at 6679 compared to 4328 for the beta driver. The same test with Direct3D 11 gave a score of around 6400 for both driver versions.
Strangely, in another Unigine comparison, Creator got the opposite results. In the Heaven Benchmark test, the beta driver scored 2688, while the ‘old’ driver reached 3628. With the beta driver, the min and max fps were higher.
It looks like AMD is working hard on their drivers. Exactly a month ago, another update brought performance gains in Direct3D 11.
Source: Guru3D Forum
Source: Hardware Info
