Introduction

Today ATI is launching a new piece of free software called CATALYST Control Center which offers a new and refreshing way of controlling your ATI based Radeon graphics cards past the usual "Advanced Properties" section built into Windows all these years.

Built using advanced Microsoft .NET framework technology which the Longhorn OS will use in 2006, the CATALYST Control Center software promises to bring a simple yet intelligent user interface which allows users to change all settings associated with the graphics card and even use real-time previews to see and learn what the impact of your chosen 3D settings will be in your eventual game play - perfect for new computer users who have no concept of what AA and AF and so forth actually does.

Currently the CATALYST Control Center will be launched with support for the R3XX and R4XX (that's basically Radeon 9500 and above - anything below and you are out of luck) class of products and a future release will add support for the entire Radeon range later this year. At this stage you'll only be able to use the control center with Windows but ATI are currently working on versions for Mac and Linux.

In this article we'll give you a quick rundown of the first version of the CATALYST Control Center, what you need to use the software, some of our initial thoughts on the latest driver control panel software from ATI and what the company intends on adding in the coming months. We are going to include screen captures from ATI's PowerPoint presentation and then provide our own commentary for each screen capture.

Let's get started!

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