Amd driver question

What is amd catalyst controll center?
And do i update it when i upload my drivers or do they need to be updated seperately?
Sorry for the basic/stupid question

 

AMD Catalyst Control Center is sort of a 'front end' to whatever AMD drivers are installed - sort of a warehouse or depository of info. If you have an AMD (ATI) TV Card installed, that will be an entry. If you have an AMD motherboard, those various entries will be part of the Catalyst Control Center. If you only have an AMD-ATI video card, those entries will be listed.

Supposedly, this is presented as a "one stop shopping convenience" for driver updates and settings changes. For settings, the Control Center can offer more specific mods than the Windows Control Center does.

On AMD's newest equipment, I find the Control Center to be useful. But after a year or two, and certainly after 2 years and more, AMD seems to drop their support quickly. I can find some updates for individual hardware components, but often, AMD's lack of specific driver updates means "We've handed over all driver maint to Windows, and our hardware is now considered 'generic'" apparently.

 

Greetings, Referystylex.

Those are good questions.

Agreed with Christine's information. As far as I know the Control Center is now included with any Catalyst driver update package - used to be you could download the drivers only, but I think it's unified presently.

I'm a semi-gamer, but not to the point where I'm always video tweaking - so, I never mess with the Control Centers on my AMD/ATI machines. Never had to.

 

Oh, by the way...

I never let Windows Update perform a Video Driver update. Maybe they've accomplished the needed miracle in the last few years, but IF I see Windows Update offering an ATI-AMD or nVIDIA driver update, I know it's going to be Base Level At Best, and it MIGHT have a bad impact. There's just about nothing worse than a Bad Video Driver Update. "Video? I don' need no steenkin' video!!" Well, I think that's Alfonso Bedoya was going to say IF there as a remake.

Instead, I use the WinUpdate 'offer' as merely a notification to head over to the proper website and do the download and install from there.

(I sure hope Cali's a fan of that film!)
http://www.longcamp.com/gifs/facethatkills2.gif

 

I've not used or installed AMD's CCC on either of my ATI graphics powered PCs for 2 years or so.

I download the CCC package, install it (and copy the install folder path for use later) to the default folder then hit cancel at the first opportunity.

To install drivers only, first uninstall the Catalyst software suite via Control panel > Add/Remove programs - or follow the instructions here: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/GPU57RemoveOldGraphicsDrivers.aspx

Next, open Device Manager, locate the Display adapter, right-click > Update Driver Software > select 'Browse my computer for driver software. Locate and install driver software manually' > then paste the install folder info (that you copied earlier, currently C:\AMD\Support\13-12_win7_win8_64_dd_ccc_whql) into the search box and ensure that "Include subfolders" is checked.

Click Next and the install process will begin, the screen flashing to black is normal, after a short time you should be presented with a success message, close that and you are ready to go.



Notebooks might require a different procedure or perhaps you would need to stay with the makers own drivers - best to research individual models first. Notebooks with dual graphics are more complex, safest to use Intel/ATI/Nvidia drivers only if the notebooks OEM install has been wiped and a retail Windows installed.

Nvidia graphics cards can also be installed 'drivers only' by a similar method.

 

Thank you all for the information, the reason i asked the question was i was wondering if i had anything to update and didn't know if catalyst controll center has to be update or completely what it actually was.
I'm gonna mark all of you're posts with thanks if it means anything

 

oh yea and just one more (general question)
when i'm updating drivers (for any device) should i uninstall the former ones and reboot before doing so?

 

AMD has been decent about doing conflict-removing uninstalls. Those are probably critical for their Updates to determine what prior versions are installed so I leave those and let the new versions uninstall or overwrite them. I do keep a history of AMD-ATI drivers by date and version numbers, but so does OLDVERSION.COM.

 

Once your graphics hardware passes 'last generation', somewhere around 2-3 years after release, there's usually little to no reason to update the drivers/CCC as there are rarely any patches/fixes for anything except, perhaps, a patch for a recent game.