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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LoneWolf15 - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
You'd think that a site this high quality would have someone going over copy before publishing. I know it sounds bitchy, but man, grammar goes a long way towards making a good site better.(ATI didn't take the reigns with mobile drivers, they took the REINS. Reign = kings/queens/rulers, reins=horses).
As for ATI, I'm not a big Catalyst Control Center fan either; the interface looks nice, but I don't want anything that takes .NET to run and makes a good thing slower. What I DO want is working DXVA support for HD WMV video acceleration. In Catalyst 5.5, you have to unlock it in the registry, and while CPU usage goes down, it de-syncs the audio.
lifeblood - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
I wonder if the OpenGL improvement was in the linux version. The Linux users I know hate ATI because of it's poor Linux performance.I have a 9600XT. Would a new driver do the least bit of good for me? At 100MB I'm not going to install it just for the eye candy.
yacoub - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
I look at those images and all I see is worthless bloat and gaudy GUI everywhere. :(#2 = "Why do certain contributers to this site seem unable to correctly use apostrophes?"
Welcome to the Internet where no one seem's able to use apostrophe's properly. (Really though, I hate it too.)
Sunbird - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
The driver control center is useless, when I had it installed my screen would go black for a second after going into the desktop when rebooting, I'm so glad I uninstalled it.nserra - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
I agree with #3.Maybe you would see performance gains with some specific ati card, board (chipset), processor, game detail setting, ...
gibhunter - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
What I'm seeing here is more fluff without any substence. The driver control center is a bloated memory hog, slow to come up, slow to work with and shows negligeble performance improvement. With 100MB download it is a step back, not a step forward.Azsen - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
Are they available for download yet?Live - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
Did you contact ATI about not seeing any performance gains? If not you should. My thought is that there might be special settings needed to get the boost. This then most certainly would involve tradeoffs of some sort but it would be interesting to know if this is the case. Since opengl performance is basically the only thing holding ATI back right now. Assuming of course that crossfire is as good as they say it is.Woodchuck2000 - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
Why do certain contributers to this site seem unable to correctly use apostrophes? The quality of jounalism on this site is normally excellent, but "ATI's Next Three Month's Of Catalyst" is simply inexcusable!On a seperate note, the install for the current Catalyst with Control Centre is over 100Mb which (in my humble opinion), is ridiculously bloated for what it does.
MAME - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link
go ati, competition is a good thing