AMD Catalyst Control Center is a program that is installed along with a standard set of drivers for AMD video cards. This control center has come as a replacement. In fact, these are two almost identical programs. The new one differs from the old one only in the name and the absence of some functions, which the developer considered inappropriate in the new version.
Functions
Using AMD Catalyst Control Center, you can control graphics settings in 3D applications, as well as switch between different power plans. In particular, using the sliders from the corresponding sections, the user can change the basic color parameters, turn on and off forced anti-aliasing, adjust interlacing, apply proprietary frame stabilization technologies, and so on.
In the case of 3D applications, the program allows you to select individual parameters for each of them. For example, for computer games AMD Catalyst Control Center provides some additional graphics settings that cannot be changed directly from the game menu. The slider responsible for “global” rendering parameters with an emphasis on performance, quality and balance has also not gone away. This decision clearly "migrated" to this program from the control center - programs with similar functionality from the main "green" competitor.
Additional tools
On computers with multiple graphics cards, AMD Catalyst Control Center allows you to configure dynamic switching between them. For new GPU models, menus with parameters for HydraVision, FreeSync, HydraVision and other proprietary technologies are available.
The program's graphical shell is quite intuitive, and all available functions are divided into thematic menus. Russian localization available.
Key Features
- makes it possible to control the operation of the GPU, CPU and display;
- allows you to configure hardware acceleration and power plan;
- offers "individual" 3D settings for each application that works with 3D graphics;
- is official software from AMD;
- has a simple and intuitive interface.
A clean installation of Windows, as well as the installation of new hardware components in a PC, almost inevitably ends for the user with the need to search for and add drivers to the system various devices. Video card as one of the most important components modern computers and laptops require the installation of components to be able to function properly almost in the first place. Owners of Radeon graphics adapters have little to worry about this issue, because a powerful and functional tool has been created for them - .
Download and update AMD drivers via Catalyst Control Center
We can say that AMD Catalyst Control Center (CCC) is designed mainly to maintain the performance of video cards that are based on graphics AMD processor, at the proper level, which means that installing and keeping drivers up to date should be carried out using this software without any problems. In fact, this is true.
The CCC installer is now called Catalyst Software Suite. It cannot be downloaded from the official website for modern powerful video card models - for them the developers have created a new application: . Use it to install and update video card software.
Automatic installation
The driver package for Advanced Micro Devices graphics adapters is included in Catalyst Control Center and all the necessary components are added to the system when installing the application. In order to install the video adapter driver, just follow a few simple steps.
- Download the AMD Catalyst Control Center installer from the official website of the manufacturer in the section technical support. To receive the required version drivers must be determined by type, series and model GPU, on the basis of which the video card is built.
After this, you will need to indicate the version and bitness of the used operating system.
The final step is to expand the tab and select Catalyst Software Suite.
- After the Catalyst installer is downloaded, we launch the installation.
The initial stage is the unpacking of the components necessary for the installer to work according to the path specified by the user.
- After unpacking, the Catalyst Installation Manager welcome window will automatically launch, in which you can select the language of the installer interface, as well as the Control Center components that will be installed along with the drivers.
- The CCC installation program “can” not only install the necessary components, but also remove them from the system. Therefore, a request for further operations appears. Press the button "Install",
which will bring up the following window.
- To begin with automatic installation drivers graphics adapter And software package Catalyst Control Center, set the installation type switch to "Fast" and press the button "Next".
- If you are installing AMD drivers and software for the first time, you will need to create a folder into which the components will be copied. The directory will be created automatically after clicking the button "Yes" in the corresponding request window. In addition, you will need to accept the terms and conditions License Agreement by clicking the corresponding button.
- Before starting the file copying procedure, the system will be analyzed for the presence of a graphics adapter and its parameters for installing the latest version of drivers.
- The further process is fully automated,
you just need to wait for the installation to complete and click the button "Ready" in the final installer window.
- The final stage is a system reboot, which will begin immediately after pressing the button "Yes" in the request window for the operation.
- After the reboot, you can check whether the driver is present in the system by opening "Device Manager".
Driver Update
Software is developing at a fairly serious pace and AMD video card drivers are no exception. The manufacturer is constantly improving the software and therefore you should not neglect updates. In addition, Catalyst Control Center provides all the possibilities for this.
As you can see, despite the importance of drivers in the functioning of Advanced Micro Devices video cards, installing and updating them using the Catalyst Control Center turns into a simple procedure, which usually does not cause difficulties even for novice users.
Catalyst Control Center is special program from AMD, which was created for display images, control of driver updates and all other functions. The developers are very proud because they created one-stop center management represented by Catalyst Control Center. What is this program? You will find out by reading this article.
Utility functionality
The company began attaching this program to drivers for its video cards starting in 2007. Over the course of 9 years, with the release of new generations of graphics chips, this utility has been improved and refined. Every year, AMD video cards become more powerful and cooler. However, without correct settings and control by software, the iron part cannot independently allocate resources correctly, which often leads to low performance. Or vice versa: the video card can operate at full capacity and overheat because of this, which will lead to malfunctions or complete breakdown of the equipment.
But this software can be useful not only for modern platforms. On fairly old machines, this program can help optimize work and “squeeze out” a little FPS for your favorite game. The application is also able to track all changes and updates in drivers and carefully notify the user about this. In addition to the described tasks, the program configures several screens connected simultaneously, allows you to adjust color reproduction, contrast and other parameters, bypassing the monitor settings, and much more. Not a single owner of a system assembled on the AMD platform will give up on the program and what its tasks are, we figured it out. Now let's move on to installation.
Installing the program
To do this, you need to go to the official AMD website amd.com. Go to the "AMD Software" tab in the left menu column. A page with full description the program we are interested in and its capabilities. If you wish, you can familiarize yourself with it and learn something new for yourself. At the bottom of the text there is a button “Download here” - click on it.
You will be redirected to the download page for all drivers and software. In the menu, select your operating system, its bit depth (the most important) and video card model (just specify the series). Next, you will be taken to a page with all the available software for your video card and OS characteristics. Download Catalyst Control Center from this page. Next, open and follow the instructions. During installation, you can select the components you want to install. You have the opportunity to immediately install the updated version of the drivers along with the software. Now you know how to install Catalyst Control Center.
To uninstall a program, you must use the Windows control panel or go to the folder with installed program and open the file uninst.exe. Be careful not to delete the driver for your video card along with the setup application by mistake. You know how to remove Catalyst Control Center, now let's move on to the first launch.
First launch of the program
When you first start, you need to choose one of two modes. If you are not very knowledgeable about settings, then choose the basic mode. Here you can set the screen resolution, adjust the picture quality and the number of connected monitors. It is also suggested in a simplified form to select the operating mode of the video accelerator: either quality or performance. The setting is made in the form of a slider; the default is balanced mode. IN last tab You can customize the video display. This is where the capabilities of the basic mode end.
If you can independently fine-tune the operation of the video card in all parameters, then select the advanced mode of AMD Catalyst Control Center. Setting in additional mode It opens very simply, even if you selected the basic mode when you first started it. To do this, just click on the “Advanced” button. Here experienced user there is somewhere to roam. Let's consider this mode in more detail.
Additional settings
In advanced mode you will find everything you can imagine. Starting from change appearance windows and ending with fine settings for the video card in the Catalyst Control Center. What kind of program is this, you ask, where are the settings? First, let's figure out in what direction you need to configure the operation of the graphics card.
If you know that the video card has enough power to spare, but it is not being used, you need to turn all the parameters to maximum. You can also adjust the program for performance, which will allow you to get a small increase in FPS on a weak video card.
More details about the items
To configure 3D parameters, go to the “3D Graphics Settings” tab. The first sub-item is “Standard parameters”. Everything here is exactly the same as in basic mode- a visual image that shows the changes, and a “Performance-Quality” slider. We set it to the position we need or leave it in the middle.
Responsible for detailing the surface of objects. The minimum parameter is 2X, and the maximum is 16X. Performance and quality work on the same principle as in the case of anti-aliasing. The detailing is adjusted in the same way.
The last sub-point - additional settings. Here you can select DirectX 3D and OpenGL accelerator options. As you can see, you can configure almost any characteristic of a video card using Catalyst Control Center. You know what kind of program this is and its configuration options. It remains to deal with possible problems.
If there are any problems with the launch or stable operation of the program, check its bitness and compare it with the bitness of your operating system. Catalyst Control Center also does not start due to outdated version. Download from the official website latest update for utility.
If all else fails, try completely uninstalling the AMD software along with the video card driver and installing it again. Select the Program Files folder on the system as the installation location. hard section disk. The path to the folder must not contain Russian letters.
Installation Catalyst drivers without CCC
When updating drivers Radeon video cards HD, each user is faced with the fact that they cannot be downloaded separately from the official website of the program. They only come bundled with the monstrous Catalyst Control Center app. If you want to install only AMD video card drivers, read our instructions.
The first step is to download the latest Catalyst 13.1 drivers. Direct links to download drivers for all current Windows versions(32 and 64-bit) can be found. Please note that if you are a user of a video card from one of the following series: HD 2000, 3000 and 4000, you must install special Catalyst 13.1 Legacy drivers.
Size installation file for 32-bit Windows it is 94.8 MB. Owners of 64-bit Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating systems will have to download a 146.5 MB file. AMD servers serve the file at a speed of ~3,800 KB/sec.
Catalyst 13.1 custom installation
After launching the installation file, the program will offer to unpack the files. Not everyone knows, but after installing the drivers, the folder with the unpacked files can be safely deleted from the system. By default they are unpacked to the following address: C:\AMD\Support\13-1_vista_win7_win8_64_dd_ccc_whql, however, you are free to select any other location by clicking the Browse button.
After unpacking the files necessary for installing Catalyst Driver, the installer dialog will automatically launch. After selecting the language, a dialog box will open in which you must select “Install”. In the next window, in the “Quick or custom installation” section be sure to select “Custom” and click Next.
The installer will analyze the system and video card, and then offer to select the components to install. This is where you can prevent installation of Catalyst Control Center. Just uncheck the “Catalyst Control Center” checkbox. We also recommend disabling the installation AMD APP SDK Runtime— this component is necessary only for application developers. In other cases, it only clutters the system. But “AMD Display Driver” and “HDMI Audio Driver” are exactly what we need.
After clicking the “Next” button, the installation process of the selected drivers and components will begin. During the installation process, the computer screen may turn off several times, and sometimes the resolution resets to 800x600. After installation is complete, all image settings will return to normal.
Catalyst 13.1 and CCC drivers are for video cards: HD 7970, HD 7950, HD 7870, HD 7850, HD 7770 and HD 7750 | HD 6990, HD 6970, HD 6950, HD 6870 and HD 6850 | HD 5970, 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition, HD 5870, HD 5850, HD 5830, HD 5770, HD 5750 and HD 5670.
Catalyst Legacy 13.1 and CCC drivers are designed for video cards of the HD 2000, 3000 and 4000 series (such as: HD 4870 X2, HD 4890, HD 4870, HD 4850, HD 4830, HD 4770, HD 3800, HD 3600, HD 3400, etc. .).
One of our readers asked for advice, and the editors at Tom's Hardware discovered a very unusual problem. At first glance, it is unlikely to seem serious, but the frequency of its occurrence is still somewhat annoying. After viewing several forums on the Internet regarding this problem, we came to conclusion that it is not private for our reader. This fueled interest in the issue, especially since we did not find any reasonable explanation for the problem. The problem itself is that the Device Manager and the Catalyst Installation Manager cannot agree. whether the north bridge driver is installed or not.
The reader has already contacted the service AMD support, but since the computer was working without any obvious problems, he received the answer that everything should be fine. But this answer did not satisfy the reader - and neither did we. We deliberately went through the process of installing Catalyst drivers on three different Windows systems 7, and were able to repeat the problem in all cases. In the end, it turned out that our reader was right.
The problem manifests itself under the following circumstances.
- Windows 7 (x64, x86);
- motherboard based on AMD chipset;
- drivers from Catalyst 10.2 to 10.5 ( latest version at the time of testing);
- installation in Custom mode (not in Express mode).
We hope that the article will be useful, because an old but very effective trick, which we will talk about a little later, turned out to be a solution to the problem. In addition, it has the potential to eliminate other pitfalls that may arise when installing AMD/ATI drivers. We'll also take a quick look at a hidden option in the Catalyst installer that may also be useful.
To eliminate all possible sources of errors, we used a "clean" Windows installation 7 with no drivers or updates installed, except for updates to Windows 7 itself.
In the Device Manager, in the System section, we selected the “AMD PCI Express (3GIO) Driver” item, in which we found the files atipcie.sys (x86) or atipcie64.sys (x64). These drivers are installed by default. We have recorded the version of the installed drivers before further installation.
Then we unpacked the current version of the Catalyst drivers (at the time of testing) into the directory we specified, and then launched the installation, leaving it at the initial stage, where the choice of installing or removing drivers is made.
We selected "Uninstall" followed by "Custom Uninstall" to get a list of components that the installer recognizes. And the result confirmed the problem we identified earlier: the Catalyst installer did not recognize any installed components, although the driver was already installed in Windows 7 and updated via Windows Update.
After running the installation again, we selected "Installation" followed by "Custom Installation".
In addition to USB drivers, we now have the option to install Northbridge drivers. Interestingly, the version offered was the same as the one already installed. We chose to install the drivers anyway to avoid any confusion. The installation completed successfully.
After the mandatory reboot, we reopened the Catalyst installer to see what options appeared in the driver removal option. Except USB drivers, we didn't find any other options. Then we ran the installer again to install the drivers, after which we discovered that the driver was offered to be installed again, that is, nothing said that it was already installed!
Even though this problem can only be detected in Custom installation mode (Express mode displays very little information about the installation process), we were puzzled. Well, let's identify the reason and present a possible solution.
Possible reasons
After some experimentation and direct removal (using the Cleaner utility and manually erasing entries in the registry), we came to the conclusion that the AMD Catalyst installer and drivers obtained through Windows installation and/or Windows Update do not interact with each other. Although manual installation and deleting the driver through Device Manager works fine, the Catalyst installer “forgets” about the installed driver, offering to re-install the already installed drivers, not exclusively supplied by AMD (that is, they are already offered by Microsoft).
At the same time, the reverse scenario is not possible, since the drivers are not detected by the installer during installation or uninstallation. Basically, only AMD can answer whether this is a consequence of the protection mechanism or an installer error in determining the drivers.
But we would like to note once again that the identified problem does not lead to any computer failures. It can be called an annoying oversight that causes confusion for those users who regularly monitor driver versions so that the computer always works with the most the latest drivers. But our little research showed that this situation has existed for quite some time, and there has still been no explanation or fix from AMD.
The Catalyst installer begins its work by extracting files into the specified directory. We will need it to perform the trick.
We went to the directory with the unpacked files, after which we selected the "Config" subdirectory. It contains the file "InstallManager.cfg". We opened it with a suitable text editor Notepad The contents of the file are shown below.
Pay attention to the "WorkaroundInstall" item. By default it is set to "false". We activated the item by setting the value to "true", and then saved the file.
We then started the installation from the directory by executing the Setup.exe file. Please note the installation options we agreed to.
The situation, as we see, has changed: now, after executing the Catalyst installer, only AMD-exclusive driver packages are saved.
Additional benefits
A similar trick also helps in situations where the Catalyst installer for some reason refuses to install the driver, despite the connected hardware and perfect job old driver. So the next time you encounter a strange installation problem, remember that modifying the installation file can work wonders. We used a similar trick when current version Catalyst 10.5 refused to install on systems with already installed versions 10.2 or 10.3.
As we described just above, we went to the directory with the unpacked files. Then to the "Config" directory, after which we opened "InstallManager.cfg" in Notepad/Notepad. However, in this file we also found a "Show Update" item at the bottom. By default it is set to "false". We activated this item by setting the value to "true", and then saved the file.
Then after running the installer a new option appears.
If you select the "Update" option, previously hidden, a new wizard will launch.
Here you can update individual components without having to remove them. As far as we understand, the Installation option performs only limited or no uninstallation procedures, while the Update option combines complete removal and installing the selected components in the same reboot cycle. This allows you to save on one reboot cycle, which is required when completely removing drivers. This step is also useful after removing drivers and rebooting, since Windows may automatically replace removed drivers against your will.
If you are a user of Catalyst drivers, then take the identified problem calmly. It may seem strange at first, but this problem will not lead to serious crashes. Moreover, if you know some tricks, you can solve many similar problems easier and simpler than it might seem at first.
Manually editing the Catalyst configuration file can help solve problems similar to the one we described. In the article, we described in detail steps that will help inexperienced users. Perhaps AMD will react somehow. The more functions contained in software package, the more complex it becomes. And mistakes will inevitably occur. The real question is how quickly errors will be identified and corrected. All this should be taken into account when filing complaints.
