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Ati Catalyst Center - Am I missing something?

buchtis

buchtis

buchtis

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Joined
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I've recently purchased a HiS Turbo 5850 after having been with BFG and Nvidia for what feels like decades. Reading through a couple of threads especially the ATi related driver threads has got me wondering, why do people bother installing the Catalyst Center and not just the display driver?

I'm so used to using MSI Afterburner that I only use that to overclock and don't need anything else. So apart form overclocking, am I missing something that Catalyst features and other software does not?

Last question. Why do ATi users moan so much about drivers? I've literally tried all the drivers from 10.4 up and not had a single issue with them and this is from a person who runs Windows XP 64 (SP2) bit. Every time I read a release thread there's always something kicking off with the drivers, explanations please!
 
The CCC allows you to control settings such as AA, AF, AA modes etc. A must IMHO, to be honest I can never understand why people don't install it, it does what it's supposed to perfectly.....

if I were you I'd keep it installed, in case you need to change a setting or two ;)

Well I know mate, I've never had any problems either and I've installed the hotfix drivers too. Never had to uninstall old drivers, just installed the new one over the top. Always worked :)

Some people must just have dodgy rigs ;)
 
With the AA/AF etc. settings, I change them all in-game anyway. Once main reason why I don't install it is because I hate the unnecessary stuff running in the background of Windows, so I use CCleaner to disable the useless crap and it still doesn't cause any graphical corruption or crashes. Note that i'd rather have performance than looks so i've got the old tacky Windows them from like Windows 98 on lol.
 
buchtis said:
With the AA/AF etc. settings, I change them all in-game anyway. .
Click to expand...

But how do you change between the 7 different types of AA within game?

I have never yet seen a game with box, edge,wide, adaptive,SSAA, mipmap quality etc settings.
 
I uninstalled CCC today, different AA settings only gave me issues with some games (Adaptive AA, lower fps with edge, ****ty textures with others). Mipmap and Catalyst AI are set well on standard, most if not games I play support AF (and I'd rather not force it if they don't), antialising doesn't bother me that much. Something caused my system to not resume properly and after uninstalling CCC it works damn well. Will try to install it again later on but tbf I never change any of the important settings.
 
buchtis said:
this is from a person who runs Windows XP 64 (SP2) bit.
Click to expand...

So you're quite obviously not going to witness any of the DX10/DX11 issues.
For example, loading times in BFBC2 were horrific unlesss in DX9 for a while.

Having a single card, you also won't witness any of the crossfire issues.

I owned a 4870X2 on Windows 7, and as such came into many more issues than yourself would be open to.

It's like asking how come no-one likes Robin Reliants when yours is fine, but you've never driven it on a motorway.

How come you're running WinXP? You're limiting your gaming performance and image quality, being that DX10 and DX11 not only bring new features, but faster performance over DX9.
 
I do not install the ccc.

Had bad experiences with it. I like to keep things simple, just use the display driver and have recently been installig the application profiles as well.

Only have a single 5870, tho, so not sure if profiles are neccesry.
 
I like CCC. Controls absolutely everything from one app, ability to make individual rather than global adjustments to both my monitors. Maybe there is better out there, but this has always worked for me, aint broke/fix etc.
 
buchtis said:
Reading through a couple of threads especially the ATi related driver threads has got me wondering, why do people bother installing the Catalyst Center and not just the display driver?

Last question. Why do ATi users moan so much about drivers? I've literally tried all the drivers from 10.4 up and not had a single issue with them and this is from a person who runs Windows XP 64 (SP2) bit.
Click to expand...

I didnt run Catalyst for a time with my 4850. But then it was a card that wasnt really powerful enough for full bells and whistles, even 2 years ago.

The reason for running catalyst is Catalyst AI (not particularly important at all), and for over ruling games on AA, AF and Vsinc = very important as half of games dont have AA in their settings. I also use it for adjusting brightness/contrast and gamma on the fly (profiles), as it takes all day on my current monitor compared with my old one.

I dont think there is much moaning about single card issues with ATI drivers vs the number of users with them this year. I think there are a few more than Nvidia though. E.g. I'm playing Boarderlands at the moment and the new 10.7s have an issue. That said, everyone has a set they have no issues with (i.e. the .4as).

There was some annoyance with the idle temp vs overclocking settings policy change from 10.5 onwards.
 
Mr Krugga said:
I uninstalled CCC today, different AA settings only gave me issues with some games (Adaptive AA, lower fps with edge, ****ty textures with others). Mipmap and Catalyst AI are set well on standard, most if not games I play support AF (and I'd rather not force it if they don't), antialising doesn't bother me that much. Something caused my system to not resume properly and after uninstalling CCC it works damn well. Will try to install it again later on but tbf I never change any of the important settings.
Click to expand...

Ahhh I see. To be fair it doesn't bother me at all, i'd rather use the in-game settings than mess about with AA/AF rather than through Catalyst. If anyone will would be kind enough to post some screen comparisons between game AF/AA and the Catalyst settings i'd be grateful. I'd like to see a comparison of just how essential this Catalyst is to improve image quality.



uv said:
So you're quite obviously not going to witness any of the DX10/DX11 issues.
For example, loading times in BFBC2 were horrific unlesss in DX9 for a while.

Having a single card, you also won't witness any of the crossfire issues.

I owned a 4870X2 on Windows 7, and as such came into many more issues than yourself would be open to.

It's like asking how come no-one likes Robin Reliants when yours is fine, but you've never driven it on a motorway.

How come you're running WinXP? You're limiting your gaming performance and image quality, being that DX10 and DX11 not only bring new features, but faster performance over DX9.
Click to expand...

I've not felt the need to upgrade to Windows 7 for Direct X 10/11 as XP is running just fine and is lightning fast. I never get any crashes or BSOD's, it feels extremely responsive.

As for Battlefield 2, played it on a friends computer and wasn't impressed so...

Also, would you be able to post comparisons of the apparent 'performance increase over DX9' please, i'd be interested in seeing some benches.

Ta.
 
I'm going to sort of agree. XP64 was good for gaming for me too. And now after about 7 months of Win7 gaming, I cant say I've noticed much of a benefit in DX10 over Dx9, apart from with Dirt2 (DX11 there).

However my computer is used for stuff other than gaming and its better at non gamey stuff :)
 
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