ATI released their much anticipated Catalyst Control Center today. It requires the .Net framework. The CCC download alone is 19Mb! Uses anywhere from 20-100Mb to run (those with 512Mb of memory be forewarned). The skinning features requires WindowBlinds, an application that has caused problems for some FS9er's. All this just to tweak some driver registry settings?RadLinker is a little over 400Kb download, and uses no resources once driver settings are tweaked and RadLinker is closed.This is the future...GregP.S. Any of you nVidia owners having a chuckle at the expense of ATI owners... your day is coming. nVidia is working on it's own new tweaker, and it won't be much different from what I described above.

"The skinning features requires WindowBlinds,"eeeewww...why? Are they too lazy to program a skinning feature themselves?Will the old control panel still be available as an option?

"Will the old control panel still be available as an option?"Wouldn't hurt to pray, Jimmi. I am (actually, I'm sure options will be available for a while).Greg

Tried it.-Takes 40+MB on my C drive (didn't see an option to install it on another drive, maybe I missed it).-Takes much longer to load than the old one-More clicks required to change options-The interface is not as easy to navigate as the old one and the text is harder to read. The skin reminds me of those amateur-designed WinXP skins put together by someone who just learnt how to use filters in Photoshop, or like a bad copy of those crappy "l33t" (read: unorganized, messy) window managers for X.-I hate change and'd rather we still had monarchy and C64's *-They have unified OpenGL and D3D AA/AF settings it seems. That's actually a good thing as I'm sick of trying to guess if a new game or scene demo is OpenGL or D3D and set AA/AF accordingly :)*not to be taken seriously

"-I hate change and'd rather we still had monarchy and C64's *"LOLJust curious... what difference did you see in resource usage?For me, I don't need all the cool toys (that seem to need more refinement at this time) just to tweak VC drivers.Greg

It does NOT require WindowBlinds to use - I am able to change skins perfectly well. I think what they said was that it supports skins made with Window blinds. The memory requirements are also only when running it (the 3D demo mode mostly - this is actually a very cool feature as it lets you see in real time how your settings change the look of the graphics.) I find it using up no more memory that the normal panel when not running that 3d demo mode. (which won't be while playing a game etc)

"It does NOT require WindowBlinds to use "You're correct, Ryan. Mybad... I should have written that the new Control Panel USES WindowBlinds for it's themes. Sorry about that mistake.Evenso, I just can't understand all the gimmicky design for a tool needed only to tweak video drivers. There are many who like it, but I'll stick with the simple route. I don't need any more than that.Cheers,Greg

LOL - today the program stopped working. When I try to open the panel nothing happens, then a message pops up saying that it can't find the ATI Drivers :-lol I did not change anything, it just suddenly decided to not work. Why did they release this to the public? It should have been released as an internal beta, especially considering the new tagline - "CATALYST

Tried it yesterday. It's pretty but...:-( I didn't see anything that the regular one couldn't provide and found it a bit more gimmicky to use. Rolled back to my previous state...sure glad I took a restore point prior to putting it on. Let's hope the original version continues to be available else I may not be updating my drivers anymore.Also, be advised, it uses a cli.exe service that seems to be there even when the console is not displayed so there is resource taken up all of the time. I ran some AquaMark3 tests while it was installed and ended up with some notably lower readings than prior to its install.Larry S.