New ATI Driver UI: The Catalyst Control Center
by Derek Wilson on September 2, 2004 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Simplifying Settings
The first thing that we noticed (aside from the skin) about the CCC is just how clean and simple it is. We do prefer a consistent UI look and feel, but the layout of and obviousness of where everything is helps immensely in getting around.
The tabs at the side clearly talk about what they are, and have only the most straight forward, basic, and necessary options inside. For instance, the Display manager offers resolution and multi-monitor setup options with a wizard button at the top, if you need help.
The wizard asks really basic questions about what type of monitor and setup that it's working with and comes up with settings based on the answers.
The simple 3D view is where things get really innovative. ATI has embedded a small OpenGL app into the CCC, which updates in real time as settings are changed. This allows the user to move the slider (siders in the advanced view) to determine exactly what will happen to their games. The inclusion of this feature will help in educating ATI users about what a setting does, and will also get more people hooked on the almost crack-like properties that high levels of anisotropic filtering and antialiasing have (when you see what they do visually, it's easier to tell when they aren't cranked up).
This is the must-have feature that ATI has included in the CCC. We want NVIDIA, Intel, and S3 to pick this up and run with it. It's just that helpful to new users and could help people adjust their settings in a useful way. And if the windowed mode isn't enough to help get the idea of what's going on, just double-click the scene and it'll go full screen.
The only downside that we've seen so far is that this new feature makes moving a slider a bit of a chore. The performance hit incurred by moving a slider on our x800XTPE in an FX53 system with 2GB of RAM qualifies as annoying if we are being kind. ATI has said that they are addressing performance related issues; hopefully, future releases will see faster response time.
But that's enough of the simple stuff. Let's take a look at the advanced view and find out what else this baby can do.
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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?