New ATI Driver UI: The Catalyst Control Center
by Derek Wilson on September 2, 2004 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Would You Like Aniso With That?
We were very excited to see that ATI would be offering a profile manager. We've been happy with the ForceWare profile manager, and had previously asked ATI if they would allow certain settings to be associated with specific applications. This was, of course, the wrong question to ask (the answer was, and still is, "no"). ATI is very adamant about staying away from associating anything with a specific executable (anyone who remembers "quake/quack" will know why). Their solution to the problem is simple and elegant. Don't associate a profile with a specific executable; allow executables to be launched when a profile is enabled.Shortcuts to profiles can be created and placed anywhere (like the desktop or start menu), and can be used just like shortcuts to a game that have the added bonus of changing display settings before the game is launched. This is a very clean and elegant way of solving the linked profile problem. Here's a look at the profile manager screens:
There are also a couple of other windows in the driver such as the hotkey manager, preferences window (which is basically a skin chooser), and an information window, but these are very straight forward and don't really require any explanation.
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MaxisOne - Thursday, September 2, 2004 - link
Oh WE WILL get a clue... and get a Nividia 6800GT... under NO circumstances is MS.net going on my system.. When Longhorn comes out thats a diff story but right now theres a choice and i have a radeon 9800 pro right now ... but i wont hesitate to switch when its in my interest.mlittl3 - Thursday, September 2, 2004 - link
Oh, no...ATI has updated their control panel and it requires a heftier download. I thought 100 years from now I will be able to download a 5 MB file size of catalyst driver 3.0 for my ATI Radeon XXX4008000+ XT Super Duper Platinum Edition with a 56k modem (extreme sarcasm).Give me a break people. 50% of internet users have broadband in this country which means a 50 MB download is like 20 seconds. Every company updates their drivers and control panel to something new and guess what, Longhorn will probably have .NET built in no matter how much you hate it. Get broadband, get a clue and stop complaining.
DEMO24 - Thursday, September 2, 2004 - link
I havent figured out why the writer wants a XP skin so much. The one on the utility looks good and the XP ones are exactly beautiful. Not really sure how thats a disadvantage but alright.daniel1113 - Thursday, September 2, 2004 - link
Just so you all know (including whoever wrote this review), the ATI skins can be disabled and the default system skin enabled.Ardan - Thursday, September 2, 2004 - link
Oh man, this isn't required use is it?I'll have 1GB of RAM before I get the 9800 Pro that I want (from MSI, of course), but if this is something that they want people to use from now on, then i'm probably going to sit and wait for a 6800 later on instead.
starjax - Thursday, September 2, 2004 - link
http://ati.com/support/drivers/winxp/radeonwdm-xp....the actuall downlaod of the catalyst 4.8 drivers with display driver, contral panel, catalyst control center, and capture wdm driver is only 41 megs. 26 megs with out ccc. the ccc download only is 19 megs.
Da3dalus - Thursday, September 2, 2004 - link
How is the new profile management "simple and elegant"? It may be an improvement over the current control panels (almost non-existant) profile management, but it still appears overly complex and unintuitive.Is it even possible to use the profiles together with something like The All-Seeing Eye (my favourite server browser)?
The nVidia way of handling application-specific profiles just seems much easier and less of a hassle to use.
It's a nice initiative from ATI, the control panel does need updating, but the end result is disappointing :(
Jeff7181 - Thursday, September 2, 2004 - link
By the way... it can be found in the same area you normally get drivers on ATI's site. It's not worth it though... especially if you're on 56k.kuljc - Thursday, September 2, 2004 - link
Yeah so like #6 said... where and when can we get this? I tried looking at ati's site, but with my SUPER FAST 56k I gave up.Also didn't read anywhere or maybe just missed it, but would it be ok to run older cats w/ this? For those of us who have the standby screen problem.
Reflex - Thursday, September 2, 2004 - link
Many people do not seem to understand modern memory management. The amount of memory an application uses really dosen't matter much anymore unless it is truly obscene(Photoshop), what matters more is how that memory is managed. 60-70MB means nothing if that memory can be cleared at a whim for other applications, and it sounds like Ati has implemented it properly since they claim that it will.Run some benchmarks. It is unlikely that this application will slow down any other application on your system. If nothing else is slowed down by it, then what does it matter how much memory it takes up?