New ATI Driver UI: The Catalyst Control Center

Would You Like Aniso With That?

We were very excited to see that ATI would be offering a profile manager. We've been happy with the ForceWare profile manager, and had previously asked ATI if they would allow certain settings to be associated with specific applications. This was, of course, the wrong question to ask (the answer was, and still is, "no"). ATI is very adamant about staying away from associating anything with a specific executable (anyone who remembers "quake/quack" will know why). Their solution to the problem is simple and elegant. Don't associate a profile with a specific executable; allow executables to be launched when a profile is enabled.

Shortcuts to profiles can be created and placed anywhere (like the desktop or start menu), and can be used just like shortcuts to a game that have the added bonus of changing display settings before the game is launched. This is a very clean and elegant way of solving the linked profile problem. Here's a look at the profile manager screens:

There are also a couple of other windows in the driver such as the hotkey manager, preferences window (which is basically a skin chooser), and an information window, but these are very straight forward and don't really require any explanation.