Calibration - and whether I should uninstall Catalyst Contol Center

[Lupin]

I have an Eizo CG241W monitor which is calibrated every 200 hours with an X-Rite ColorMunki Photo via Eizo's ColorNavigator software. My graphics card is an Asus R9 270 and Catalyst Control Center 14.4 was installed together with the driver for the card.

My question is: can Catalyst Control Center override or interfere in any way with the calibration produced by ColorNavigator & ColorMunki? In other words, should I uninstall CCC?

[D Fosse]

It's not a problem, as long as you haven't tweaked any of the color controls there (and of course there's no reason to do that). And even so ColorNavigator never touches the video card anyway, it's all USB directly to the 16 bit monitor LUT.

I have a CG246 and an AMD card at default installation, so I assume CCC is in there. Never had any problems with that. It used to be that you could choose to install "driver only", but that's no longer possible. Now you have to manually deselect each and every component you don't want.

[Lupin]

I haven't tweaked anything in CCC - I think most of the settings are for playing videos and gaming anyway*. Nevertheless I was wondering what others do - i.e. do folks just install the driver or do they install CCC as well.

* The 'Video' section of CCC includes slider tweaks for Color Vibrance, Brighter Whites, Dynamic Range, etc - I'd always assumed that these don't affect the Eizo's settings (for the reason you state) but I wasn't 100% sure.


Re installation choices

The 3rd Catalyst install screen has a choice between 'Express' and 'Custom'. Express installs everything and Custom gives the option of excluding CCC and just installing the driver. http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/catalyst-windows-install.aspx

PS. If CCC is installed, there's an icon in the notification area - right clicking the icon produces the menu to open CCC.

[D Fosse]

No, I don't have the icon, so I suppose I did deselect it after all. I've certainly never seen any reason to have it (or any of that other stuff they try to push down your throat). The CG's aren't so hot for gaming anyway 

[Lupin]

No, I don't have the icon, so I suppose I did deselect it after all.

There might have been an option to put the icon in the notification area (or not) - I can't remember.

Are you sure it's not in Start/Programs? If it's there it'll be in an AMD folder, like so:

 

[D Fosse]

Nope. Nothing in the start menu either. It's simply not here. But as I said, I can't see why including it in the installation could do much harm - as long as you don't fiddle with it too much.

Is your card 10-bit capable BTW? Mine isn't, but I have been toying with the idea of getting one, just to see what the fuss is about. All the rest of the pipeline should be ready here.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Both AMD and NVIDIA have "control centers" for their video cards.  They exist to allow uses to configure the cards for special needs and check for driver updates.  As was noted this feature is mostly used by gamers and with the exception of 'possibly' video rendering not terribly useful for photographers.  I've had both types of video cards on my PCs with and without the extra software installed.  I use Spectraview to calibrate my NEC monitor and have never seen any interference by the extra software.  From the description is sounds like NVIDIA software is a little easier to manage than AMD these days (I'm on NVIDIA right now).

[Lupin]

..... Is your card 10-bit capable BTW? Mine isn't, but I have been toying with the idea of getting one, just to see what the fuss is about. All the rest of the pipeline should be ready here.

I don't know if mine is 10-bit capable or not, I can't find anything that says one way or the other.  

It's an Asus R9 270 DirectCU II OC 2GB (model number R9270-DC2OC-2GD5) - the most detailed specs I can find are these:

http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/R9270DC2OC2GD5/overview/
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-asus-radeon-r9-270-directcu-ii-oc-28nm-5600mhz-gddr5-gpu-950mhz-boost-975mhz-1280-streamsdp-dvi-

Is there much to be gained by having a 10-bit capable card?

.....  From the description is sounds like NVIDIA software is a little easier to manage than AMD these days (I'm on NVIDIA right now).

I haven't had an NVIDIA card for a while now so I can't really compare their software to AMD's/ATI's. I don't like Catalyst Control Center much though - for starters, the interface is a mess.

[D Fosse]

Is there much to be gained by having a 10-bit capable card?

I was just curious. Still haven't decided if it's worth a relatively expensive new card. What a 10 bit pipeline does is to get rid of the 256 individual steps in a black to white gradient - or, rather, replace it with 1024 steps.

You'd have to use DisplayPort, and I don't know whether the CG241 has a 10-bit panel or that came later. You also need Photoshop CS5 or later, Windows version (not supported in OS X). And still no Lightroom support.