Final Words
We are definitely looking forward to the new features coming down the line. For now, the Catalyst Control Center has become a useable feature with the improved load time and the decreased lag in changing options. We feel that the interface still needs to be massaged in order for the enthusiast crowd to embrace it. Right now, if you know what you are doing, there is really no compelling incentive to install CCC when the control panel works fine.It is commendable that ATI have begun pushing their mobility driver along side their desktop Catalyst offering, but unless most OEMs opt in on the program, the end users won't see any benefit.
The video options now available in Catalyst are getting better, but we would like to see more finely grained control and a useful preview. If we could select a preview source and play with the options, that would be more compelling. The issue is that every video clip is unique and responds differently to settings. Of course, the current preview shows ATI's motion adaptive mode to be the best option, but in some cases, we may see better results from something else.
Better control of HDTV modes is long over due. NVIDIA gave it a shot a few months ago, but even their controls are still too clunky. We will be interested to see what ATI can do with this. Adding the Media Center Extensions is also a good effort to make. Easily adjusting TV settings is a difficult task in itself, but doing it via a 10-foot UI is even better.
It goes without saying that we are disappointed in the performance of Catalyst 5.6. We had been expecting at least a small improvement in our OpenGL titles, but none of the games that we tested showed any improvement (less than 1% improvement falls into the "noise" category).
While Lock On may have shown some significant improvement and application specific optimizations are of interest, a single game gaining performance isn't as compelling as what a general improvement in OpenGL performance would be.
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ImJacksAmygdala - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
The pictures are worthless... I had to put my beer goggles on just to read the menus.I am most interested in buying a card that can run Unreal3 and is the best card for home theater HDTV applications. Whoever makes that card first gets my money.
It is nice to see the video card drivers supporting home theater HDTV, but both ATI and Nvidia could do much better. Tier 1 companies could also do much better by offering software bundles and they need to market a home theater specific card package that has bundled codecs (like Nividias codecs) and player software right out of the box. I'm talking about players like Theatertek and Zoomplayer. PowerDVD and WinDVD are fine but for the money you spend on these cards it would be nice to have some real software that a user can get the best PQ for the money they spent. It should also be said that at this point every card sold should have VGA, DVI, Svideo, and Component connections. HDTV theater packages should also include things like DVI to HDMI adapters. If I'm spending $400-$550 on a card it would be nice if all I had to do is install it, hook it up, grab FFDshow and start tweaking. I could care less about all the bundled fluffware and games I will never play.
BubbaJudge - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
I guess all talk, or rumor, of a Nvidia Digital Vibrance equivalent has been dropped. guess I should be thankful we still have hotkeys for gamma adjustment for CS:Sfishbits - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
"ATI has also been touting some performance enhancements this time around as well."Then the performace increases should have been uncovered in the testing that was done. If the increases are very specific "Only in this game, on this map, at this resolution with these settings," then IMHO ATI shouldn't be bragging about them, or should at least qualify the statement. Why disappoint customers by implying they should expect an across-the-board boost in performance, when that won't match the actual experience in most cases?
"would rather have all their clients running exactly the same software configuration and *down* want to allow end users"
Not complaining, just pointing out.
DerekWilson - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
My appologies for the grammar.Yes, there is someone who normally edits our articles before they go live (hi Karen). Unfortunately, it's been a busy week and I was unable to get this artile to her in time for proper editing.
Thus I was forced to employ MS Word as my editor for the article.
And no more coming up with titles at 4AM for me :-)
Thank you for pointing out the errors.
Questar - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
Holy Crap Batman, the commas got out of their cage and are running amok on the Internet!Can you guys hire someone who knows how to write?
gsellis - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
Hey Derek. Did you only test 16x12? What about at other resolutions. And yes, they are now available.probedb - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
This is fantastic news on doing more for HDTV. It's one area that gets left behind a lot.bbomb - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
And for LoneWolf just change where to were.Woodchuck2000 - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
Anyone fancy petitioning ATI for the option of a command-line interface? I wonder how small they could make it and still retain the same technological feature set. Just imagine;CCC/>set aa="4"
CCC/>set refresh="85"
now wouldn't that be better... We could just have a few litle batch files (.ccb I'm thinking) and execute them to configure our exact settings. It'd be handy for benchmarking too!
#10 - Well spotted! I'm glad I only skimmed through the article!
bbomb - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
HardOCP said that 5.5 used almost 80MB of memory and that 5.6 used only 15MB for them. Im surrised that Anandtech didnt mention what theirs was. They said in 5.5 there where 2 instances of CLI.exe, one used 35 and the other used 45. In 5.6 there were 3 instances and each used around 5Mb each.