ATI's Next Three Months Of Catalyst

by Derek Wilson on 6/9/2005 6:00 AM EST
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  • tanekaha - Friday, June 10, 2005 - link

    #29
    mike go windows update and let windows scan ya
    in sov...... ahh nm
  • miketheidiot - Friday, June 10, 2005 - link

    so where do i download .net? All i get is this: http://www.microsoft.com/Net/Default.aspx

    i see nothing about downloads.
  • chucky2 - Friday, June 10, 2005 - link

    #24....possibly the problem is that CCC requires .NET to be installed (and when you do that, make sure to run WindowsUpdate about 5 times to get all the updates for it).

    If you don't have .NET installed (and hopefully patched), that's probably your problem.

    Chuck
  • LoneWolf15 - Friday, June 10, 2005 - link

    At least the drivers are available without CCC. Checked and downloaded them last night, but haven't installed them yet (life intervenes).
  • chucky2 - Friday, June 10, 2005 - link

    I can't wait for 5.8 as my only display is my Syntax Olevia 32" LCD TV....while it looks fine at 1280x720, it's native is 1366x768...it'd be nice using just ATI's driver (if it indeed takes up small meg'age instead of 100MB; didn't know that) instead of debating the use of Powerstrip (which is an excellany program).

    Come'on ATI, 5.8 with a small foot print, you can do it!!!

    Chuck
  • Gatak - Friday, June 10, 2005 - link

    #24
    Think of .NET as Microsofts version of Java. It is an interpreted language run in a virtual machine. This is why it is so horribly slow.
  • miketheidiot - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link

    i have ccc install but it fails to load and i get error messages every time it tries to load on boot. WTF? Its a worthless pos but it would be nice not to deal with the error messages every time i load up. Yes i know i could uninstall, but thats way to much work.

    BTW what is .net?
  • ariafrost - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link

    One last comment about another grammar error - "OEMs that focus mainly on the business computing side of the market would rather have all their clients running exactly the same software configuration and DOWN want to allow end users to download and install their own drivers."

    I believe it should be don't rather than DOWN. BTW, is there any way to measure minimum frame rates? Maybe their OpenGL driver has simply gotten better to where minimum frame rates are higher even if the average is the same...
  • yacoub - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link

    I'M SORRY #21, WHAT'S THAT?? I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE BLOAT.

    j/k ;)
  • sinisterDei - Thursday, June 9, 2005 - link

    Complaining about the performance of the drivers is unfair:

    From the 5.6 release notes, performance section. And I quote:

    "
    # Doom3: A performance gain of up to 7% is noticed at lower resolutions as a result of more efficient memory use
    # Chronicles of Riddick: A performance gain of up to 10% is noticed as a result of more efficient storage of vertex data
    # Halo: A performance gain of up to 20% is noticed as a result of generic driver Z-optimizations
    # 3DMark05: A performance gain of up to 5% is noticed as a result of generic driver Z-optimizations
    "

    Only one of these titles was tested (Doom 3) and the release notes specifically state lower resolutions as the affected bit, and last I checked 1600x1200 with or without AA/AF does NOT qualify as "lower resolutions."

    In truth, I'd be most interested in the Halo gains.
  • 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:S
  • fishbits - 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.
  • 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

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