ATI Control Center vs Nvidia Control Panel

[Minjin]

I just upgraded my ATI x1800xt to an Nvidia 240 GT mainly to get modern video acceleration abilities and to lower my power consumption. One thing I'm very disappointed in is the Nvidia Control Panel. The options that you have compared to the ATI Control Center are extremely lacking. You can't easily change the position of your displays if you are running more than one. You can't adjust frequencies or do any overclocking. You can't view temperatures. And more. Am I missing something? I don't regret the purchase, but I thought Nvidia was on the ball and I didn't realize they were so far behind in their controlling software.

One specific thing that I want to do is lower the frequencies when I'm not gaming. ATI will do that automatically but based on the power I'm consuming (that I can see with a kill a watt), I don't think the Nvidia card is downclocking. This thing should be using far less power than my x1800xt and right now it's sitting at just slightly less.

Is there some setting that I need to change to see the advanced features? Or do they not exist without third party software?

 

[tweakboy]

This is easy.

CCC is a resource hog and loads stuff in background. nVidia is simple and easy no CCC just a simple npanel .

Also CCC drivers are known to cause issues for lots of people with differnt ATI cards.

Or remove the CCC and use ATI Tray Tools . I used to use that long time ago on my old x800 and the drivers made me suffer for 4 years,, it would mess up things when you update blah blah. Never I will touch ATI because of their driver issues and the thickness of the suite.. thx

Tweakboy, please read the subjects content before posting. Just replying to a topic title tends to muck up the thread, annoy other members and take the subject off topic. Thank you.

Anandtech Moderator - Keysplayr

 

[Lonyo]

This is easy.

CCC is a resource hog and loads stuff in background. nVidia is simple and easy no CCC just a simple npanel .

Also CCC drivers are known to cause issues for lots of people with differnt ATI cards.

Or remove the CCC and use ATI Tray Tools . I used to use that long time ago on my old x800 and the drivers made me suffer for 4 years,, it would mess up things when you update blah blah. Never I will touch ATI because of their driver issues and the thickness of the suite.. thx

Way to be an utter useless troll, thanks for playing.

To the OP:
I would assume that temperature monitoring should be there somewhere, I would be surprised if it's not (since it has been around for a long time in NV drivers, although I don't have any recent hardware/driver combinations to look at).

In terms of changing display positions, you should be able to do that in the Windows display settings control panel if the driver control panel doesn't offer it.

Download GPU-Z (http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1761/TechPowerUp_GPU-Z_v0.3.9.html) and I think it should tell you current vs default clocks (default will be 3D, current should be a downclock for 2D).

 

[zerocool84]

This is easy.

CCC is a resource hog and loads stuff in background. nVidia is simple and easy no CCC just a simple npanel .

Also CCC drivers are known to cause issues for lots of people with differnt ATI cards.

Or remove the CCC and use ATI Tray Tools . I used to use that long time ago on my old x800 and the drivers made me suffer for 4 years,, it would mess up things when you update blah blah. Never I will touch ATI because of their driver issues and the thickness of the suite.. thx

I disliked Nvidia drivers much more than CCC I've only had for a couple weeks. Nvidia driver crashes are fairly common.

 

[RobsTV]

This ended up forcing me to switch back to ATi in a HTPC, which was fine, since the nvidia cards were cheap, and simply a test to see how well they would work for my needs.

The nvidia display controls will probably be fine for most, but if you choose to do more than basic things, they are unacceptable for those used to the advanced ATi capabilities.

Similar post I made along the same lines.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2047583

 

[nitromullet]

Essential tools for owning an NVIDIA card:

nHancer (for changing graphics settings/managing profiles) - http://www.nhancer.com
A RivaTuner based program for overclocking:
RivaTuner (the original) - http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner
EVGA Precision - http://www.evga.com/PRecision/
MSI Afterburner - http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/

These apps are all essentially the same underlying code written by the same programmer, but the EVGA and MSI versions have different interfaces and features enabled. Try them all, see which one you like the best.

With the proper tools, you can do pretty much the same thing with an ATI or NVIDIA card, but the tools will feel different sometimes so and it's generally a matter of personal preference which is 'better'.

NVIDIA cards down clock in 2D mode as well, just like ATI cards. So, no issue there. You'll see that it does if you install a RivaTuner app.

You can adjust the position of your display with Windows, you don't need the card's control panel to do that. The machine I'm on right now is an XP machine, and all I have to do is rt-click the desktop, select "Properties", and "Settings" to adjust the position of my dual monitor setup. I'm sure this control isn't significantly different to in Vista or 7. I know I've run dual displays on my Win7 machine and haven't had any difficulty lining them up with each other with either ATI or NV cards.

Finally, if you just gotta have official NVIDIA tools, they do offer NVIDIA System Tools that has OCing and temp monitoring, but most people use the tools I recommended because they like them better. I personally DO NOT recommend using the NVIDIA tool. The last time I tied it, it attempted to overclock my non-NVIDIA chipset board and I had to fix my settings. That was a while ago (P35 board), I haven't touched their software since then, but maybe it's gotten better.

 

[WelshBloke]

Essential tools for owning an NVIDIA card:

nHancer (for changing graphics settings/managing profiles) - http://www.nhancer.com
A RivaTuner based program for overclocking:
RivaTuner (the original) - http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner
EVGA Precision - http://www.evga.com/PRecision/
MSI Afterburner - http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/

These apps are all essentially the same underlying code written by the same programmer, but the EVGA and MSI versions have different interfaces and features enabled. Try them all, see which one you like the best.

With the proper tools, you can do pretty much the same thing with an ATI or NVIDIA card, but the tools will feel different sometimes so and it's generally a matter of personal preference which is 'better'.

NVIDIA cards down clock in 2D mode as well, just like ATI cards. So, no issue there. You'll see that it does if you install a RivaTuner app.

You can adjust the position of your display with Windows, you don't need the card's control panel to do that. The machine I'm on right now is an XP machine, and all I have to do is rt-click the desktop, select "Properties", and "Settings" to adjust the position of my dual monitor setup. I'm sure this control isn't significantly different to in Vista or 7. I know I've run dual displays on my Win7 machine and haven't had any difficulty lining them up with each other with either ATI or NV cards.

Finally, if you just gotta have official NVIDIA tools, they do offer NVIDIA System Tools that offers OCing and temp monitoring, but most people use the tools I recommended because they like them better. I personally DO NOT recommend using the NVIDIA tool. The last time I tied it, it attempted to overclock my non-NVIDIA chipset board and I had to fix my settings. That was a while ago (P35 board), I haven't touched their software since then, but maybe it's gotten better.

Nitro's pretty much nailed it there.

I like the original Rivatuner, but probably only because I've been using it for years and am used to it.

And to move your displays in Win7 rt click desktop>screen resolution and just drag them round.

Edit: Oh, and personally I think both the control panels suck(NV and AMD). It would be nice if they could integrate more into windows like the old style ones did.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Don't listen to tweakboy. He's the nvidia equivalent of GUTB.

 

[Lonyo]

Don't listen to tweakboy. He's the nvidia equivalent of GUTB.

It wouldn't be so hilarious, except he didn't even read what the OP had written. The OP had already switched from ATI to NV and was using NV software, but wanted to know how to do some things.
Being an amazing troll, tweakboy just decided to rant about how terrible ATI CCC is, rather than offering help in finding the features the OP wanted in the oh so amazing NV control panel.

He went on about how ATI/CCC have driver problems and cause users issues, and the OP isn't even using them anymore! Talk about an absolute blind fanboy troll.

 

[tviceman]

Nvidia driver crashes are fairly common.

I have absolutely no problems with nvidia's drivers. In fact, ATI has to release hotfixes much more often for new game releases than nvidia does.

 

[soccerballtux]

This is easy.

CCC is a resource hog and loads stuff in background. nVidia is simple and easy no CCC just a simple npanel .

Also CCC drivers are known to cause issues for lots of people with differnt ATI cards.

Or remove the CCC and use ATI Tray Tools . I used to use that long time ago on my old x800 and the drivers made me suffer for 4 years,, it would mess up things when you update blah blah. Never I will touch ATI because of their driver issues and the thickness of the suite.. thx

Troll troll troll troll, troll troll troll troll troll.
Troll troll? Troll troll troll troll.

Troll troll troll.

Ban ban ban ban ban? Ban ban, ban ban.

/agree.

 

[solofly]

Let the tweakboy have his fantasy guys, sounds like a young kid to me...(simply smile and move on)

 

[BenSkywalker]

You didn't download nSysTools?

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_system_tools_6.05.html

That is the modern version of CoolBits for those that have been around for a while.

I don't regret the purchase, but I thought Nvidia was on the ball and I didn't realize they were so far behind in their controlling software.

I haven't run CCC in a few releases now, but comparing the two you can control far more inside of nV's control panel then CCC if you have SysTools installed(I can adjust my systems memory latency on the fly without reboot as a generic example). You can set up rules to load particular profiles, say if the GPU is under 30% load set clock values to whatever you like, you can also seperate it out to adjust the core and shader clock seperately given a certain set of parameters, you can set GPU fan speeds to adjust based on load useage, it is extremely flexible- their profile support is one area where I would say they are quite far ahead of ATi.

I'm not sure how much it changes as far as multiple display support, I haven't really messed around with that much, but in terms of the other elements you are looking for, it seems like it offers far more then what you are looking for.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Having used both ATI CCC and Nvidia Control Panel, the latter is definitely superior. Setting custom settings for games in NCP is easy while CCC makes it a huge pain. I think ATI Tray Tools fixes this issue but I'd rather use the official software.

 

[Minjin]

Thanks for the responses guys. I do remember the coolbits days. We've definitely come a long way. I installed Rivatuner, the MSI tool, and the EVGA tool. Those combined with gpuz all show that the video card isn't downclocking in 2d. The core is staying at a constant 550mhz even when I start up a game. None of the other ones are changing either. I see that I can set profiles to somehow upclock when it needs it but I was hoping it would do it automatically.

 

[eklock2000]

Essential tools for owning an NVIDIA card:

Any recommendations on essential tools for ATI users?

Thanks,

EK2K

 

[Kakkoii]

Ati Tray Tools is much better than CCC. It has a shit load more functionality, and a shit load more options to tweak to your liking.

Here's the forum and thread where it's developed. Can get the latest version in that thread. This beta version supports new cards. And in the advanced tweaks menu you can turn on ATI's EATM anti-aliasing. It's a lot faster and gives about the same quality.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=275077

 

[Schadenfroh]

nVidia wins this one, the CCC was bloated last I used it.

 

[CP5670]

Both companies' stock control panels are lousy. You will want to use third party tools either way. nHancer/Rivatuner and ATI Tray Tools are both far better than the stock control panels, although I prefer the interfaces of the two Nvidia programs and they also seem to get updated more frequently.

 

[nitromullet]

Any recommendations on essential tools for ATI users?

Thanks,

EK2K

ATI tray tools is a must for many http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=733 I used this a while back, but I haven't really felt the need for it the last few ATI cards I've owned because the CCC has definitely gotten much better (and faster) over the last few years.

CCC is nice in that you can OC right out of the box with it, but it has a limit imposed by ATI. RivaTuner works for both ATI and NV cards, so I'd probably opt for RivaTuner of MSI Afterburner if I wanted to OC beyond that limit.

 

[Sylvanas]

Welcome to 2010, the CCC is not bloated anymore and starts almost instantly- if you think it lags then the CCC will not be the only program you have that exhibits the same behaviour. There are pros and cons to both- I have found the CCC eaisier to just jump into and get going however I appreciate the settings which nvidia allows the user to modify (profiles etc).

 

[MrK6]

I'm curious as to what people are doing with their video cards that requires so much functionality in the control panel. I literally installed my 5870 in September, tweaked the color settings (saturation ftw ), set all 3D settings to application controlled or high quality, and applied my overclock. I haven't opened it again since, except to check that all settings stuck when I update the drivers and CCC.

 

[konakona]

amazing troll

sorry but I lol'd at this

 

[Minjin]

I found out that Nvidia cards apparently have issues with downclocking in 2D. The drivers seem to randomly fix and break this feature. So, what I did was manually downclock. I took each of the three clocks and gradually lowered them until tests failed. This is a GDDR5 model, FYI.

I started out with:
Core - 550mhz
Memory - 1700mhz
Shader - 1340mhz

I ended up with:
Core - 150mhz
Memory - 1150mhz
Shader - 350mhz

I started out with using 106 watts at idle. After these changes, I was using 103 watts at idle, only a decrease of 3 watts. I think the reason why the change was so small is because I haven't yet (if possible) changed the voltages. I have to look into it but the 240 might be locked down. I think that's where the big power decrease is lurking.

Also, FYI, I used the Control Panel to find out the Optimum settings. The result was:

Core - 649mhz
Memory - 1938mhz
Shader - 1516mhz

When in idle state with these frequencies, the power went up to about 108w or a gain of 2 watts.

 

[Continuity28]

Nvidia driver crashes are fairly common.

???

You can't honestly expect that to be the norm, can you? If everyone, or even a very substantial amount of people using nVidia hardware were crashing all the time, nVidia would have gone out of business years ago. They may have been fairly common for you, but you can't say they are fairly common in general. In your case, I would have asked for an RMA, or try to do some troubleshooting instead of labeling it all defunct.