AMD previews new Catalyst Control Center

Emil

Posts: 152   +0
Staff

AMD has announced a new user interface for its AMD Radeon drivers supporting desktop, notebook, and chipset graphics products for Windows Vista and Windows 7. The company collaborated with user-interface design experts at Infusion to develop a new user interface that improves the usability of the AMD Catalyst Control Center.

The AMD Catalyst Control Center is now based on a task-based discovery model that leverages familiar user-interface concepts from the Web, such as a navigation bar and search field. It has quick navigation features, a resizable interface, as well as presets and one-click access to any setting. The latest improvements to the AMD Catalyst software will also include the DivX Plus Codec Pack for AMD Radeon HD 6800 and HD 6900 series graphics cards as well as support for OpenGL 4.

"The AMD Catalyst software updates we are announcing today help make the industry’s best graphics solutions perform even better, while continuing to offer the highest level of stability and reliability," Ben Bar-Haim, corporate vice president of software at AMD Products Group, said in a statement. "Today's driver release brings significant enhancements to the user interface, making it more intuitive than ever for users to take advantage of the wide range of features and benefits of their AMD Radeon graphics hardware. And our standard of providing monthly driver updates is designed to enable ongoing performance improvements in not only our graphics products, but also our upcoming AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Units."

Permalink to story.

 
AMD drivers will get better when they have profiles like they have in nvidia control panel. That will be the only reason why I will go with nvidia when I upgrade. There are some games that I can play with 28X aliasing, but I have to change it every time I want to play a game. I know I can't play crysis at 28X AA, I just have to change it in CCC every time I switch from a game like killing floor or TF2. Damn AMD drivers...
 
"DivX Plus Codec Pack for AMD Radeon HD 6800 and HD 6900 series graphics cards as well as support for OpenGL 4." What about my 5770...its not exactly ready for the trash bin!
 
This will be a welcome improvement CCC is serviceable, but I have not found it as intuitive as nVidia's.

I do find it odd that automatic profiles are not being implemented. AMD has profile settings for executables in its Overdrive utility that automatically clock the CPU, or set core affinity depending on the user's preferences. Why they haven't carried a similar function over to CCC is beyond me.
 
tekgun said:
princeton said:

Isn't relevant. Nvidia has a huge advantage when ATi themselves isn't competent enough to do it themselves.

They do and have done for some time. AMD Crossfire Profiles

Hooray for not reading! If you would have you would notice the post I was adding onto was commenting on how you have to manually go back into the drivers at times.
 
You can also use ATI Tray tools. It's a great program for tweaking/overclocking + you can setup game profiles for every game.
 
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

While AMD and nvidia are fairly well matched in the hardware design aspect of GPU - differing more in philosophy and market goals- It just goes to show the gulf in software resources between the two companies.
When Eyefinity launched amid great secrecy in September 2009, it took nvidia four months to demonstrate 3D Surround at CES in January 2010 and a further four months to have the comparable ( and working + 3D) solution ready for nvidia card users.
AMD, and ATI before them, on the other hand have taken some five years to allow user defined app settings (global game settings, multi-gpu profiles, forced IQ etc.) to the degree that the nvidia CP allows (mostly introduced 2005-06)...not from any lack of consumer prompting I might add.

AMD have never made a secret of the fact they are first, foremost and almost entirely a hardware company. Nvidia on the other hand is argueably just as well known for it's software (CUDA, PhysX, SceniX, CompleX and OptiX etc.) stack and generally has much more in the way of resources, expertise and success in introducing that software as an "added value" dimension to it's hardware....so why not let nvidia burn R&D funds blazing the software trail and then take the fruits of their labour? I just wish they didn't lag behind the pathfinder (in this instance) by such a distance.

They do and have done for some time. AMD Crossfire Profiles
...introduced in February this year (Cat 10.2 from memory). For people who have been clamouring for this feature for five years it was a welcome...if somewhat late...addition, so "for some time" is a purely subjective view, although it probably rings true for the comparitively late arrivals to the scene.
You can also use ATI Tray tools. It's a great program for tweaking/overclocking + you can setup game profiles for every game.
...and albeit a great program (and my personal preference over the advertisement laden CCC) it is third party software. The article is about AMD produced software.
 
dividebyzero said:
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

While AMD and nvidia are fairly well matched in the hardware design aspect of GPU - differing more in philosophy and market goals- It just goes to show the gulf in software resources between the two companies.
When Eyefinity launched amid great secrecy in September 2009, it took nvidia four months to demonstrate 3D Surround at CES in January 2010 and a further four months to have the comparable ( and working + 3D) solution ready for nvidia card users.
AMD, and ATI before them, on the other hand have taken some five years to allow user defined app settings (global game settings, multi-gpu profiles, forced IQ etc.) to the degree that the nvidia CP allows (mostly introduced 2005-06)...not from any lack of consumer prompting I might add.

AMD have never made a secret of the fact they are first, foremost and almost entirely a hardware company. Nvidia on the other hand is argueably just as well known for it's software (CUDA, PhysX, SceniX, CompleX and OptiX etc.) stack and generally has much more in the way of resources, expertise and success in introducing that software as an "added value" dimension to it's hardware....so why not let nvidia burn R&D funds blazing the software trail and then take the fruits of their labour? I just wish they didn't lag behind the pathfinder (in this instance) by such a distance.

They do and have done for some time. AMD Crossfire Profiles
...introduced in February this year (Cat 10.2 from memory). For people who have been clamouring for this feature for five years it was a welcome...if somewhat late...addition, so "for some time" is a purely subjective view, although it probably rings true for the comparitively late arrivals to the scene.
You can also use ATI Tray tools. It's a great program for tweaking/overclocking + you can setup game profiles for every game.
...and albeit a great program (and my personal preference over the advertisement laden CCC) it is third party software. The article is about AMD produced software.

One question. It's obvious if Nvidia wanted to they could have consumed ATi years ago. Why didn't they? Is it antitrust/monopolization issues?
 
One question. It's obvious if Nvidia wanted to they could have consumed ATi years ago. Why didn't they? Is it antitrust/monopolization issues?

At the time ATi was a basketcase. Overvalued in the market, no software (ATi/AMD rely on open source devs almost entirely), little in the way of IP that nvidia thought it could use, and a product line- while having good/fair performance- was essentially bolstered by out-and-out rebrands ( the top SKU- X1950XT was simply a rebranded X1900XTX, the X1650 Pro a rebranded X1300XT, the X1050 a rebranded X300 etc...).
Acquiring ATI -even if the SEC happily sanctioned it- would have resulted in a company top-heavy in designers (some with a differing philosophy to the company I'm sure) and chip engineers. Remember at the time that nvidia was riding high on RSX (Playstation 3), had acquired Hybrid Graphics and their extensive OpenGL libraries (nvidia are one of the founder members of the Khronus Group which promotes open source API's -something CUDA/PhysX bashers tend to overlook) and were actively pursuing PortalPlayer, in addition to expanding their own chipset market and workstation/compute solutions.
In the end I don't think ATI represented enough value for the amount of capital needed to gain control of the company (and it's debt). Maybe they thought that ATI would keel over of it's own accord and from nvidia's competition and that they (nvidia) could pick over the bones of ATI for a much lesser sum in future.

Remember that AMD's buyout of ATI was (and still is to some extent) seen as a huge gamble ($5.4bn), and one that few analysts (tech and financial) at the time foresaw, and fewer still agreed with. I remember that at the time just prior to the takeover/merger that ATI was thought to be one step away from evisceration ( a la 3dfx) and to be just another footnote in tech history...how time (and a lot of belt-tightening) changes!
 
And fanboyism explode onece again!

How hard is to get in your head there are people that like more one brand than other? You both will stampede each other with arguments and bla bla bla but neither will change their mind, even if they tell you one is a million times better than the others with proof of it (Which is not really, not even by half of a card, or a quarter... whatever... the differences are really slim unless you are comparing a 210 vs a 5870 or the other way around).

There are enough reviews and benchmarks out there for you to make your own choice, and if being a fanboy makes you sleep at night because you bought something that could've been better with another brand, good for you.

Now back with the topic. What if it happens it looks like one or another? WOW IT IS A WINDOW! HERETIC!...

Rant over =)
 
Ok Fanbois of either side, let one company fail and die (like you seem to want) then have fun buying **** cards from one monopoly company for 10 times the price for the rest of your lives :)
 
I like the frequent updates from AMD ATI on updated drivers, unlike NVidia which takes a long time to update their display driver.
 
I like the frequent updates from AMD ATI on updated drivers, unlike NVidia which takes a long time to update their display driver.
Nobody likes a lazy troll...

The last six months driver releases -excluding dev/workstation builds.

AMD:

Catalyst 10.12 (Dec 13), 10.11 (Nov 18), 10.10e hotfix (Nov 11), 10.10d hotfix (Nov 10),10.10c hotfix (Oct 27), 10.10b hotfix (Oct 26), 10.10a hotfix (Oct 25), 10.10 (Oct 23), 10.9a hotfix (Oct 14), 10.9 (Sept 17), 10.8b hotfix (Sept 13), 10.8a hotfix (Aug 28), 10.8 (Aug 26), 10.7b beta (Aug 6), 10.7a beta (Aug 2), 10.7 (Jul 27), 10.6 (Jun 17)

17 driver releases


nvidia:

Forceware 263.09 (Dec 9), 262.99 (Nov 10), 261.00 (Oct 29), 260.99 (Oct 25), 260.93beta (Oct 19), 260.89 (Oct 18), 260.83 (Sept 15), 260.63beta (Sept 14), 260.61 (Sept 14), 260.52beta (Sept 13), 259.31 (Aug 11), 259.31beta (Aug 10), 259.09 (Jul 27), 258.96beta (Jul 12), 258.86 (Jul 13), 258.69beta (Jun 29), 258.19beta (Jun 25), 257.21 (Jun 16)

18 driver releases
 
I installed this, and I get the message "Catalyst Control Center: Host application has stopped working". How do you fix this error? I'm running Windows 7 64 bit.
 
Back