first ATI card in a long time - Need some pointers

[MELVIn]

SO I bought a R5770 HAWK the other day, and it's brilliant. But enough of that.

I haven't used a card from ATI in a looooong time. I used to own a ATI 3D Rage II way back in the days.
I've been pretty good at tweaking and finding my way to optimize games and the such for Nvidia cards (I pretty much know them in and out by now), but now when I've got an ATI card I'm lost.

SO I'm reaching out to you handsome devils who've used ATI cards and know them well to give me some pointers and tips. Mostly with well known issues and workarounds, the CCC etc.

[Blink]

If you're not into overclocking and such then there isn't much to say. I just keep my drivers updated (they release quite frequently and watch for beta versions to fix certain games) and all my games are joy.

[xoqolatl]

Hawk is one kickass card, I believe it to be the best non-reference 5770. If you're not into overclocking, there's not much I can say. If you'd like to squeeze some extra computing power out of it, I can tell you that the card is bandwidth-limited - overclocking memory will increase performance faster than overclocking core. Memory should do around 1400 MHz without hardware mods (unless they are now making Hawks with Hynix memory and I don't know about that - in such case it should be even better).

[scratch]

Personally i'd suggest to kick out the CCC and use ATI Tray Tools instead. It has a couple more handy features and doesn't use as much resources. You can download the latest builds HERE, i'm currently using version 1-6-9-1464 without problems with an HD5750.

[Gary]

Erg, Scratch, I just downloaded that tool and it caused a BSOD.

[scratch]

Try different versions. Some cards don't do well with certain versions, i experienced my own crashes with that. You might also want to visit their forums located here.

[MELVIn]

This is all good to hear. I see no need in overclocking this yet, since I've been able to max out both Crysis Warhead and Call of Pripyat and get excellent frame-rates in both. (The snow level in Warhead being the only place so far where performance drops a bit.) Good thing is that the temperature only went up to 61c after playing Warhead for an hour, and the fans were only running at 55% capacity, so I assume that there's loads of room for overclocking this in the future.

on another note, is there something similar to the Digital Vibrance option you get with Nvidia cards? Now that I've switched to ATI the colors all seem a bit washed out.

[xoqolatl]

Good thing is that the temperature only went up to 61c after playing Warhead for an hour, and the fans were only running at 55% capacity, so I assume that there's loads of room for overclocking this in the future.

Don't bother yourself with temperatures - as long as it works, doesn't artifact or crash, it's fine. If you're a silence freak you can force the fan to always run at lowest speed - it should cope with the load without problem. Looks like retail cards have different fan speed profile in BIOS than the one I got, the fan on mine always ran at lowest speed when not overclocked.

on another note, is there something similar to the Digital Vibrance option you get with Nvidia cards? Now that I've switched to ATI the colors all seem a bit washed out.

Go to CCC -> click "Graphics" in upper left corner -> select "Desktop Properties" -> go to "Color" tab and adjust contrast & gamma as you like.

[Niserox]

Personally i'd suggest to kick out the CCC and use ATI Tray Tools instead. It has a couple more handy features and doesn't use as much resources. You can download the latest builds HERE, i'm currently using version 1-6-9-1464 without problems with an HD5750.

+1 to this. I use ATI Tools also and its really good in comparison to CCC. Easier to overclock, artifact scanning (which is almost needed for any overclocker, i think) and has the same options as CCC with a fan control option and less memory usage.

The only thing CCC has going for it really is the VPU recover option.

I like keeping my temperatures at 60 celcius max, when my card isnt overclocked, it usually runs at 32 celcius idle, and overclocked around 41 idle. In games, around 48 celcius and 61 overclocked. You should also try and find out how much heat your card can handle before you overclock and do constant artifact scanning to make sure in the process.