Please, help me get my performance back PC gurus

[Fisher]

I know this is a long winded question/problem, but I wanted to make sure you knew exactly what I did, to ensure that you might ascertain any fault easily. Please spare your time to read this.

I decided to get the 11.9 drivers. I un-installed the previous drivers using the control panel, then used CCleaner to clean the registry. I then rebooted in safe mode and used DriverSweeper to clean AMD display etc. After doing this, I rebooted, and cleaned the registry again. I then installed the 11.9 drivers and found it came up with some warning messages, which I only saw after it had finished and wasn't able to see the warning message(s). I then tested the Dirt 3 benchmark. Before updating my average fps was 73 and my minimum, 61, all on ultra. After updating it was average 62 and minimum 53.

So I decided to roll back. I did exactly the same process except I installed the 11.8 drivers instead. There was an fps increase, from average 62 to 65 and minimum 53 to 58, but not as good as previously. I have checked all my settings, including power usage etc. with nothing different from what it was before 11.9

It's not a huge hit, but in my book, any hit is worth fixing, and I'm worried it might perform worse on BF3 when it's released than it would have done.

Also, for some reason, my PC wasn't saving backups, so I can't restore it. (I'm kicking myself for not creating a backup manually)

If you have had this problem, have a suggestion or solution to the problem, please comment and help me. I'll leave my specs below. Thankyou for your time.
__________________________________________________ ______________
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1075T Processor 3 GHz
RAM: 4GB
System type: Windows 7 64 bit
PSU: OCZ StealthXstreamII 500
GPU: MSI ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express
Motherboard: ASRock M3A770DE AM3

 

[SolitarioSoldat]

Ok first of all what you did is perfectly fine and all is well,have you ever thought that what you are experiencing is a sort of placebo thingy???

Look this is how drivers worked for me:

-11.10 beta drivers in BF3 gave me very good FPS boost with strain on both of my GPU's up to 99% as for the CPU is always at 85% strain no matter what drivers,but the 11.10 drivers brought me lots of crashes.

-11.9 CAP1,you can find CAP 1 on AMD site which should have almost the same effect as the beta 11.10 drivers for BF3 and also fixed GPU issues with CF for RO2.

I think your fine with the latest 11.9 drivers but just make sure you download CAP1 too.

 

[Fisher]

Ok first of all what you did is perfectly fine and all is well,have you ever thought that what you are experiencing is a sort of placebo thingy???

Look this is how drivers worked for me:

-11.10 beta drivers in BF3 gave me very good FPS boost with strain on both of my GPU's up to 99% as for the CPU is always at 85% strain no matter what drivers,but the 11.10 drivers brought me lots of crashes.

-11.9 CAP1,you can find CAP 1 on AMD site which should have almost the same effect as the beta 11.10 drivers for BF3 and also fixed GPU issues with CF for RO2.

I think your fine with the latest 11.9 drivers but just make sure you download CAP1 too.

I'm more worried that, even though I rolled back, I still have a performance drop.

 

[SolitarioSoldat]

but that dont make sence cause u have the same drivers installed after proper removal...

 

[DarkHunt3r]

Firstly telling someone to use an AMD CAP with a single GPU setup is pointless, CAP = CROSSFIRE Application Profile, and is only beneficial to someone using a crossfire setup.

The loss of performance does seem strange when you have rolled back the driver the correct way, by the way you installation method is only really needed to roll back drivers, it is of no benefit when upgrading to newer drivers as the files are all overwritten, Thankfully the Drivers have improved greatly over the years.

Have you noticed this performance hit in all games or just in Dirt 3?

Could I ask you to install Cat 11.10 Beta and do the same test? I found the new 11.10 drivers to be much smoother over 11.8 & 11.9, they can be downloaded from Guru3D here >

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Catalyst-11.10-Preview-Win-Vista-7-32-and-64-bit-download-2795.html

Installing these will give some idea if the problem is related to the Catalyst drivers or another issue on your PC, if these don't improve your performance we can look at what else might be causing this issue for you

 

[Freezy]

CAP = CATALYST Application Profile

it also fixes things for single GPU users

CAP dated 02.09.2011:
"-Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

 

[Fisher]

Firstly telling someone to use an AMD CAP with a single GPU setup is pointless, CAP = CROSSFIRE Application Profile, and is only beneficial to someone using a crossfire setup.

The loss of performance does seem strange when you have rolled back the driver the correct way, by the way you installation method is only really needed to roll back drivers, it is of no benefit when upgrading to newer drivers as the files are all overwritten, Thankfully the Drivers have improved greatly over the years.

Have you noticed this performance hit in all games or just in Dirt 3?

Could I ask you to install Cat 11.10 Beta and do the same test? I found the new 11.10 drivers to be much smoother over 11.8 & 11.9, they can be downloaded from Guru3D here >

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Catalyst...load-2795.html

Installing these will give some idea if the problem is related to the Catalyst drivers or another issue on your PC, if these don't improve your performance we can look at what else might be causing this issue for you

I'll try this. I'll also test other games benchmarks. If that doesn't work, then I don't really know what to do, because I don't think any of my hardware is bottlenecking anything else.