Stupid thing about the CCC drivers.

  • Thread starter Thread starter The Outsider
  • Start date Start date
ATi offers two versions of its Catalyst drivers. Contents are the same, but
with different interfaces:

CP - Control Panel
CCC - Catalyst Control Center
Click to expand...

Yea, and the CCC version increases the pagefile usage by about
100-150mb.
 
Mike Foss said:
Thanks for the info. Any idea why MS designed it this way?
Click to expand...

So that games with shit installers that force-installs whatever DX
version they were bundled with wouldn't completely mess up the user's
machine.

-a
 
I just download the drivers without either ccc or cp and use ati tray tools,
does the job better.
 
Is this just when CCC is running, or does the pagefile usage permanently
increase because of .NET framework being installed?

My beef with CCC is its reliability. With every driver release, half the
bugs come from CCC itself. We have enough problems with games and apps as
they are; now we can't even trust the control interface.

MS once had an explicit disclaimer that Java should not be used in
mission-critical systems like nuclear powerplants or medical life-support
machines. I wonder if the same was declared for .NET.
 
We'll see how bad it gets with .NET installed. By the time the CP drivers
are dropped, I might just upgrade to 2 GB of RAM and not notice a
difference...
 
First said:
We'll see how bad it gets with .NET installed. By the time the CP drivers
are dropped, I might just upgrade to 2 GB of RAM and not notice a
difference...
Click to expand...


I develop in .NET for some projects at work.

..NET doesn't actually load in any way unless you run a .NET application.
So if you don't run the control panel during a session (assuming you
don't run your PC 24 hours a day), then none of your RAM is taken up by
..NET (just your disk space).
 
And once you exit the application, does .NET unload itself?

Mind you, this is the way I expected it to work. However, I still remember
the first time I installed Internet Explorer 4 on my Win95 machine...
 
I develop in .NET for some projects at work.

.NET doesn't actually load in any way unless you run a .NET application.
So if you don't run the control panel during a session (assuming you
don't run your PC 24 hours a day), then none of your RAM is taken up by
.NET (just your disk space).
Click to expand...

But if you use the CCC tray icon then it does. Like I said, my
pagefile usage increased by about 100-150mb with the CCC drivers and
the tray icon loaded.
 
Removing the ATi icon from the system tray is the first thing I do after
installing new drivers, be it the CP or CCC version. :-)
 
First said:
And once you exit the application, does .NET unload itself?

Mind you, this is the way I expected it to work. However, I still remember
the first time I installed Internet Explorer 4 on my Win95 machine...
Click to expand...


Nope. .NET stays in memory once it is loaded (so subsequent loads of
..NET programs are much faster).
 
The said:
But if you use the CCC tray icon then it does. Like I said, my
pagefile usage increased by about 100-150mb with the CCC drivers and
the tray icon loaded.
Click to expand...

Of course, since having the tray icon means the program is running.
Don't put it in the tray and just leave it as an icon on the desktop.
How often do you really use it that would make it worth having in the tray?
 
Removing the ATi icon from the system tray is the first thing I do after
installing new drivers, be it the CP or CCC version. :-)
Click to expand...

I took someone else's advice and just installed the drivers (no CCC or
CP) then installed ATI Tray Trools to access all the configurations.
 
Of course, since having the tray icon means the program is running.
Don't put it in the tray and just leave it as an icon on the desktop.
How often do you really use it that would make it worth having in the tray?
Click to expand...

I'm now using ATI Tray tools instead and no CCC or CP installed. I
need quick access to certain functions because not all games are
compatible with AA and this way I can turn it off quickly.
 
The Outsider said:
On a whim I thought I would try out the CCC version drivers. :-) They
take up a ton of memory compared to the CP drivers so I don't
recommend them. One thing about the control panel in the CCC drivers
is that it is so huge that when you resize your dispaly to 640x480 you
can't access the apply button afterwards to apply any other changes.
Trying to drag the window up to get access to the apply area it just
bounces back down out of sight. Stupid UI design by ATI, IMO. Stupid
of me for installing this shit in the first place. ;-) If we are all
*forced* to go to CCC for the next driver version I forsee a lot of
gnashing of teeth. Give it up ATI, this CCC driver is unecessary
crapola. About to uninstall CCC and that .Net shit too.
Click to expand...


I'm going to give the CCC drivers a whirl for the first time just out of
sheer curiosity on my 9800 Pro. I've just restored a fresh Norton Ghost
image of my hard drive (which does not have any video card drivers
installed) and am finally going to see what the CCC is all about first hand.
I'm not expecting great things, I just want to see what's in store for the
future. As upset as I was with nVidia three years ago when I felt their
drivers were going downhill (at that point in time), I should not rule out
buying a card based on one of their GPU's again if I think the CCC is
bug-ridden bloatware and if it is forced upon us. That said, I hope ATI and
nVidia can always remain competitive into the future.
 
Leon said:
I just download the drivers without either ccc or cp and use ati tray
tools, does the job better.
Click to expand...

I'm late to the thread, sorry, and while the plain driver + ATI Tray Tools
looks good, what if you already have CCC installed?

I was about to uninstall it and start over when I wondered, what would
happen if I used MSCONFIG to uncheck cli.exe from ever starting up and
creating those two memory-hungry tasks?

Lo and behold, doing that works fine -- and CCC runs on demand should you
want to use it for things that don't require it to be resident. Running it
manually and then closing it will leave one cli.exe in memory, but you can
End Task on it with Taskman.

Maybe I'm wrong, but running with cli.exe unchecked (and the ATI Hotkey
Poller service disabled) is the same thing as just running the plain driver.

I have nothing in Taskman related to ATI.

BTW, another reason I didn't like CCC is that it accesses the Registry
several times a minute, as verified by Regmon
(http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Regmon.html). That's just wasteful. I
couldn't figure out a way to make it stop doing that short of taking cli.exe
out of memory.
 
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