I got ATI, and i heard Nvidia had some beta drivers that boost the FPS/performance really well. What is the ATI equivalent of it, if there is such thing? Or is Nvidia>ATI now?

*AMD to be exact

Which drivers generate the best results seems to vary from card to card and set-up to set-up, taking into account things like Crossfire vs. a single card and the like. There usually isn't a "magic bullet" driver. Personally, I have good performance with the official 12.1 release drivers on my 6970. Some other people have had better luck with the 12.2 preview set. I haven't tried those myself...I prefer to stick to official releases.

I'd recommend trying either of those. Neither has had many reported problems with Skyrim, especially on a single card set-up like your sig says you have.

Stay far, far away from the 12.2 pre-certified / pre-WHQL and 12.3 release candidates until further notice. Those drivers seem to be a genuine mess and are causing BSODs for 7xxx-series owners and major artifacting issues in Skyrim (and other games, like SWTOR). They're pre-certified though, so hopefully Microsoft has the good sense to keep them from escaping into the general population in their current state.

TL;DR: Try 12.1 or 12.2 preview if you don't have them already. Avoid 12.2 pre-certs and 12.3 RCs like the plague.

EDIT: I should add--I never really had a performance problem with Skyrim to begin with. But the biggest performance increases I've seen have been through Bethesda's patches (1.3 and 1.4, to be precise), not through driver updates.

I am using 12.3 pre release right now. I havent noticed anything wrong with them really.

That's not true at all. I'm using 12.2 pre-certs with a 7970 and haven't had a problem whatsoever with them. No artifacting, no BSODs, in fact Skyrim's FPS is a steady 60.1 now with them, compared to the initial release drivers 7000 series cards had, where it was usually 55-59.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1353735-game-suddenly-has-gray-boxespixels/ http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1349485-amd-122-precertified-drivers-bug/ a-go-go for http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=425&threadid=158706&enterthread=y running the 12.2 pre-WHQLs with Skyrim. For the most part, http://benchmark3d.com/amd-catalyst-12-3-rc-8-95-14-february-benchmark/4, and I definitely wouldn't recommend their use for somebody looking for a Skyrim performance boost.

I'm glad you're not having any problems, but the pre-WHQLs are causing problems for a lot more people than they're solving, especially people with pre-7xxx series cards.

Well, I've been using a pair of GTX285s for quite long. Last weekend, I switched to ATI and a HD7970. Having the nVidia-boy's attitude, I headed to the site and picked up the latest driver I could find: 12.2 pre-certified.

Apart from a couple of games, not willing to listen to driver-forced vsync and the fact that ATI's HDR in Skyrim is just TOO DAMN BRIGHT!!!, no issues

12.2 beta's atm on my card no issues no crashes no nothing multiple games.

Whoa.. thanks for the heads-up. I was just about to download those 12.2 pre-cert drivers now. You saved me a 145mb download

Guess I'll stick to 12.1 for now. ATI seems to lag behind this month... they are releasing pre-cert drivers at a time when the final 12.2 drivers should've been ready :

Regarding the topic, I do kind of feel that nVidia has an edge over ATI drivers in case of skyrim (what with the recent huge FPS increase, SSAO). Not that it matters much to me anyway, since I get 55-60 FPS everywhere since the 1.4 patch.

Karellan, they usually miss at least one release a year. In 2011 there were no March drivers. In terms of 12.2 pre-certs, some people have issues with them, some don't. Your call on if you want to use them.

I think the unified drivers are a bad idea, and just adds load of crap in your windows. I can't believe both ATi and Nvidia is doing it.

You don't HAVE to install the unified drivers. You can just install the display driver and the control panel.

What do you mean by unified drivers? Sorry for my ignorance but my last rig got by with never changing drivers more than twice in 6 years. Seems that AMD puts a preview and then a certified like every month. I have swapped drivers about 6 times with this rig in the past 5 months seems the originals were fine until Skyrim and since the best experience I have had so far is the 12.2 preview.

Thoth, he doesn't like the convenience of downloading only 1 file when you update your drivers, because of a perceived notion of them being "full of junk"

Just fyi: The new nvidia drivers are not beta anymore. There is now a WHQL certified driver for nvidia with the performance boost.

So like the Hydravision, Eyefinity etc. support files that come with each AMD driver package? (at least in my case)

Pretty much yeah.