I published a guide about the NVIDIA driver installation process yesterday which looked at all the optional modules that get installed with the express installation option. Most of these features may not be needed but are installed by the majority of users anyway which may mean additional startup items and processes running in the background. I promised to do the same for the ATI Catalyst installation.
I do not own an ATI card right now which makes it a bit difficult as I can't test the effect of not installing components on the system. What I can do however is explain what each component is for so that you can customize the installation and avoid installing components that may add startup items and processes to the system despite the fact that you may not make use of their features at all.
Hope that helps AMD / ATI users who have troubles making decisions what to install during driver installation. If you have any questions or corrections fire away.
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Ghacks is a technology news blog that was founded in 2005 by Martin Brinkmann. It has since then become one of the most popular tech news sites on the Internet with five authors and regular contributions from freelance writers.
I always wondered what the point of Hydravision was, it never seemed to have any options I would actually use. Windows’ own multi-monitor support did the same things.
Thanks for the review.
No driver updates since 10/22…
There may also be an option to install a Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable. The redistributable is not necessary to use the Display driver.
I have not tried instaling an AMD/ATI driver package since the their early 12.x series. After the 11.x series AMD only made available combined component packages. Theses packages included many components some of which, their installation was not optional during instalation. To prevent such components from installing the individual components (which were segregated) could be removed from an extracted installation package.
After the Microsoft .NET Framework should also be removed from installation. The .NET Framework is not necessary for the display driver to function. Catalyst Control Center seems to be the only option to configure more advanced display driver options for newer AMD/ATI video cards. Because there appears to be no easy was to configure the newer AMD/ATI cards without the .NET Framework, I recommend avoiding the newer AMD/ATI video cards (I believe they are the Radeon HD 4xxx and newer series) where possible.
Thank you, Martin!
I hava sony vaio laptop, Sony does not provide latest ati driver and amd says contact your manufacturer !! Is there any method to update driver??
Great job! thx!