Catalyst Control Center Gripe.. may drive me to switch back to Nvidia

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hartsickdiscipl

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#1 hartsickdiscipl
Member since 2003 • 14787 Posts

I got my 5870 last October, and have enjoyed it's incredible performance and relatively low power draw/cool temperatures. However.. I have a gripe that may be a deal-breaker that drives me back to Nvidia. Catalyst Control Center (CCC) seems inferior to the Nvidia control panel for my purposes. I play alot of new games that have AA/AF options in the game menus themselves, but alot of the older games that I play don't. One of the things that I loved about my Nvidia cards is that I could permanently set image quality preferences in the Nvidia Control Panel for each program, and those settings would stick and self-apply every time I launched the game.

I'm hoping that I'm just missing something, but I don't see the same functionality in CCC. I've been able to create my game profiles with AA/AF and other image quality settings, but it seems that if I just launch the program with a normal start menu or desktop icon, the settings don't get applied. One example is Jedi Academy. If I want Jedi Academy to run with 4xAA and 16xAF, it seems like I literally have to go into the CCC and activate the Jedi Academy profile every time. If I launch the game from the game launcher or .exe file itself, the setting don't get applied. I have the same problem with Star Trek Bridge Commander, and a few other older games that I play as well. Even if I do launch the game through CCC with the settings I want, when I quit the game the settings seem to stick on. What I mean is that if I go to run 3dmark, or Crysis, or any other game.. the Jedi Academy image quality settings still seem to be active. This is very inconvenient.

So I ask the experts who use this everyday, and have much more experience with CCC than I.. What is going on? Is there a better way to do what I'm trying to do?

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KHAndAnime

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#2 KHAndAnime
Member since 2009 • 17565 Posts
Yea, I agree that ATI's drivers and control center is overall much weaker than NVIDIA's. The profiles and profile triggers are a hassle to use and I just don't bother anymore with them. It's also dumb that the Catalyst Control Center's overclocking is is extremely limited. Can't do much with it at all. I too had an NVIDIA card and upgraded to a 5xxx card. I like the strength and power of the card, but the weak software for it really bothers me. And no more PhysX either. :(
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yukilla

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#3 yukilla
Member since 2003 • 240 Posts

I've always heard that ATI has bad drivers and I didn't believe it until I got my first ATI card (5850). Unfortunately, this will be my last ATI card because these drivers issues. It's a shame because this card is so powerful but it's potential is put to waste because of bad software.

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Dealge

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#4 Dealge
Member since 2009 • 212 Posts
I had some terrible issues with ATi drivers when I was running the W7 RC. It wouldn't let me even install the drivers myself D: