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ATI Catalyst - Part 1

A new driver suite from ATI, check out what all the buzz is about in Part 1 of our look at Catalyst.

Introduction

ATI and drivers, two words together that have created mixed emotions among many. In the past ATI's drivers have been known to be sub-par in terms of utilizing the given hardware to its full potential. This has been a very well known fact among the enthusiast crowd for many years. Let’s take a short trip down memory lane and see how far ATI's drivers have come.

We will start with ATI’s first hybrid 2D/3D on the same chip, the Rage Pro. When cards based on this chipset shipped the driver included only supported Direct3D at the time. There was absolutely no OpenGL support in the drivers. This being ATI’s top of the line 3D card at the time did not bode well for them, cutting out a good chunk of the enthusiast crowd. It was not until much later that OpenGL support was included in future driver releases. Driver releases were few and far between at the time as well. This was just the beginning of ATI’s track record for drivers. When the Rage 128 was introduced it boasted a full feature rich hardware design. However, we soon found out drivers were keeping this video card from performing at it’s best. But they were a lot better then the Rage Pro drivers for sure. In fact ATI was also releasing drivers at a faster pace then they did on the Rage Pro. ATI card owners still found themselves mixing and matching driver components to find the best performance and image quality. ATI then made an ambitious move in the hardware area by introducing their Rage Fury MAXX video card which brought in their method of dual core chipsets. However this card was ill-fated giving ATI the most trouble with drivers they have ever had. Enthusiasts were highly anxious to see the MAXX in action, but it just wasn’t happening the way ATI had envisioned. Then the Radeon 64 came to market and ATI came out with much better optimized BETA drivers with more releases then ever before. However most felt they still were not tapping the potential of the GPU.

Enter ATI's best driver era to date. When the Radeon 8500 was introduced everyone was theorizing how it would best NVIDIA’s flagship, the GeForce3 Ti 500. The retail ATI 8500 had a higher core and memory clock then that of the GF3 Ti 500. However that was not the case as ATI's initial driver set was plagued with problems from CPU compatibility to the fact that they were terribly degrading visual quality in order to get higher framerates in specific games.

Many people were discouraged again proclaiming how ATI’s drivers do not take full advantage of the hardware given. SMOOTHVISION support was not even present on the initial release of drivers, a feature which ATI was promoting at launch. It wasn’t until the second driver release that SMOOTHVISION was implemented finally. Again people had a bad taste in their mouths about what would become of driver issues.

ATI committed way back then at the 8500’s introduction to having regular official releases of drivers for the 8500. It was rough at first, but finally towards the end of 2001 and into 2002 ATI finally started to catch up with their competition's support. Their 7.66 version drivers were a breath of fresh air and quickly picked the 8500 up off its knees and brought it into the lime light. And ever since then ATI has kept packing more and more heat into their drivers. And finally today, they are ready to bring to you, Catalyst.

Catalyst

The dictionary definition of Catalyst is as follows:

1: (chemistry) a substance that initiates or accelerates a chemical reaction without itself being affected.

2: something that causes an important event to happen.

ATI would like to give you their own definition if you will:

1: (software) ATI’s suite of software and services that enhance and accelerate the ultimate visual experience.

There are four main elements you need to be aware of that make up the Catalyst suite itself:

1.) The Driver

2.) The Multimedia Center also known as MMC

3.) Hydravision

4.) The Remote Wonder Software.

There is a new proprietary diagnostic tool that is part of the Catalyst drivers. It is known as SMARTGART. This SMARTGART tool is not an option you will have any control over. The idea behind it is to be able to install the drivers and have the drivers set the optimal stability settings. Since we actually have no idea what this is changing or doing I cannot tell you how it will effect performance or stability. This is a feature meant to give novice users easy installation and setup of their new ATI video card.

(Editor's Note: We were specifically told by ATI that this SMARTGART feature could be controlled by the end user. Allowing him to toggle it on or off. We have not had time to re-verify this with ATI but will be following up on this issue as it seemed important to ATI that the user have this control. SMARTGART is bascially an AGP bus diagnostic tool that is more for legacy systems than current cutting edge users. It will go in and analyze the AGP bus and determine if it is in fact able to support more currently untilized features such as AGP 4X, Fast Writes, etc.)

Included in the new Catalyst drivers are brand spankin' new Direct3D and OpenGL control panels! Now this we definitely love. These new control panels give the end user much more customized control of features. Changes here will effect image quality and performance. For those that are not comfortable with changing the settings manually, you will have the option of just moving one single slider control. This slider called "Main Settings" allows you to slide it to the left for better performance at a lesser image quality, or all the way to the right for an optimal image quality but lesser performance. As you change the slider you can look below and see what each individual option is setting itself to. This option is certainly not aimed at the power user but rather the mainstream tweaker that is not sure of what all the controls actually change. This we think is a big step in making the driver set a bit more universal.

Here is what the old control panels looked like on the 6071 drivers for XP

And here is what the new driver control panels look like with Catalyst

Hydravision, ATI's multi-display implementation, got a new installation wizard that will help you get it up and running the way you want it configured for your desktop. Hydravision has become a very robust piece of this software as it is now simpler to use than ever.

Catalyst now also has complete component output support to drive HDTV on the Radeon and AIW 8500. You will find support for 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i resolutions. There is Macrovision support as well as YPrPb output.

The MMC got a face lift with new skin options. Even Remote Wonder, ATI's RF remote control unit interface, has been updated with plugins for support in Winamp and PowerPoint and more that can be programmed by the user.

But the big thing about Catalyst, that most [H] readers will care about, is its promised improvement in driver performance. ATI is actually so confident in this software that they are directly targeting the performance of a GeForce4 Ti 4200! So lets get to it and see what happens...