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AMD Catalyst Control Center

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Graphics Adaptor

AMD Catalyst Control Center
AMD Radeon Software
Intel Arc Control
Mesa
Nvidia Control Panel

Key points

The legacy AMD Graphics control panel for HD 6000 (Terascale) and older cards, replaced in 2016 with Radeon Software Crimson, then replaced in 2020 with Radeon Software Adrenalin.
Titled AMD VISION Engine Control Center on systems with AMD CPUs.[1]

Related articles

AMD

Essential improvements

Virtual Super Resolution (VSR)

Allows running games in higher resolutions (e.g. 4K Ultra HD) on lower-resolution displays.
Currently requires a Radeon HD 7790 series card or above, or an A-Series 7400K APU or above.[2]
Monitor's native resolution must be one of the following: 1366 X 768 @ 60Hz, 1600 X 900 @ 60Hz, ​1920 X 1080 @ 60Hz, 1920 X 1200 @ 60Hz, ​2560 X 1440 @ 60Hz, 1920 X 1080 @ 120Hz.[2]
4K Ultra HD VSR support requires one of the following cards: Radeon R9 285, Radeon R9 380 Series, AMD Radeon R9 Fury Series
Enable VSR
  1. Open the Control Center.
  2. Switch the view to Advanced Mode.
  3. Choose My Digital Flat Panels from the sidebar.
  4. Check Enable virtual super resolution.
  5. Click Apply.

Disable startup of additional bloatware

Disable ReLive DVR
  1. Open Task Scheduler (taskschd.msc), and:
  • disable StartCN for the CatalystNext/RadeonSettings control panel
  • disable StartDVR for DVR/ReLive
  • disable AMDInstallLauncher, AMDLinkUpdate and/or ModifyLinkUpdate for everything else

Issues unresolved

Can't enable Virtual Super Resolution (VSR)

VSR is only supported on monitors with the following native resolutions: 1366 X 768 @ 60Hz, 1600 X 900 @ 60Hz, ​1920 X 1080 @ 60Hz, 1920 X 1200 @ 60Hz, ​2560 X 1440 @ 60Hz, 1920 X 1080 @ 120Hz.[2]

External Events service tampers Steam overlay hooking

Disabling the service cause monitor not to awake anymore (unless Ctrl+Alt+Delete stroke)[3] and may break FreeSync[4][5]
Disable service
  1. Open Services (services.msc)
  2. Stop AMD External Events Utility service (optionally set it to Manual startup)

Issues fixed

GPU Scaling Options Locked In Windows 7

A common problem on Windows 7 is the GPU Scaling options being locked which would make older games stretched in widescreen or shrunk to fit original size. There are many various fixes such as those from AMD or third party fixes or custom programs.

Causes

Some causes or symptoms of the issue can be described as listed in AMD's support page.

  • Display's native resolution is currently being used.
  • Digital connection between the graphics card and display not being used.

Fixes

AMD's Official Fix

AMD's official fix is to choose a lower desktop resolution, set the scaling option, then restore the native desktop resolution.[6]

ATI GPU Scaling Fix Program

Using AgentGOD's program allows you to set GPU scaling options using his third party program. You can view a forum post on Guru3D about the fix as well as the update log for the program.

Underscanning Issue

If some DirectX 10 or DirectX 11 games are underscanned and have a black border around the screen (mostly on HDMI displays) in games like Crysis, Crysis 2, and L.A. Noire, despite the fact that you have set your scaling to zero, this guide should help. May not work with 4K displays or W10[7]

Fix underscanning
  1. Set the desktop resolution to 1920x1080 and the refresh rate to 60 Hz.
  2. Open Catalyst Control Center, select My Digital Flat Panel, then HDTV Support. In the right-side window, if 1080p24 is checked, uncheck this entry and in the area below, make sure it is not listed there, and if so, highlight this entry and select Remove. IMAGE - Check this area for 1080p24 (which one? remove all of them?)
  3. Go to your Scaling Options menu entry. You've already got it set as zero, I'm sure. Leave this window open and make no changes.
  4. Right-click the desktop, choose Screen Resolution, then Advanced Settings and then the Monitor tab. IMAGE - You should now be seeing these windows
  5. On the Frequency pull-down, select each refresh rate, beginning with the lowest, and click Apply. The screen will change to the selected refresh rate, and you'll notice your underscan slider has popped to the middle. IMAGE - Note at 25 Hz underscan is applied.
  6. Slide the underscan adjustment to zero, then click apply in CCC. Again, leave the CCC scaling window OPEN.
  7. Go back to the refresh selector, choose the next refresh rate, click apply, and again, slide the Underscan back to zero. Basically, you are setting an underscan preference for each refresh rate.
  8. Once all the frequencies for 1920x1080 have been adjusted to zero, and you're back to 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz. Make sure your Underscan is still at zero, and click Apply to any windows that are open.
  9. The CCC window, and the Screen Resolution windows can be closed.
  10. Reboot, DO NOT skip this step as rebooting saves all of your scaling preferences.

Now, before you launch the game, there's one other fix you have to apply, and this is done on each individual game executable file.

  1. Locate the executable file for the troublesome game.
  2. Right-click on the executable for the game itself, not the game launcher and not the Steam application itself. Example: For Crysis, find the Crysis.exe file, right-click on the executable, choose Properties and then go to the Compatibility tab and check Disable Display Scaling on High DPI Settings.
  3. Click OK.
  4. Run the game, and it should now run in 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz with no underscan.

Control Center not starting

there are PLENTY of possible causes and solutions for this problem.[8]

Enabling 64 bit .NET (x64 windows only)
  1. go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework
  2. Set Enable64bit DWORD to 1
Full CCC Uninstall and Reinstall

Uninstall just CCC selectively (using Catalyst Install Manager), and then:

  1. Check that registry locations are empty:
  • HKCU/Software/ATI/ACE
  • HKLM/Software/ATI/ACE
  1. Check that (Program Files (X86) folder )/ATI Technologies/ATI.ACE is empty
  2. Check (Windows folder)/Assembly folder to see if there's any files with Public Key Token of "90ba9c70f846762e" (Sort by Public key token to get a easier view). All these tokens should be uninstalled by right clicking and uninstalling.
  3. Check that (Document and Settings)/(User)/AppData/Local/ATI/ACE is empty
  4. Reinstall just CCC selectively, by running SETUP.EXE from the expanded Catalyst installer folder.[9]

Useful Links

AMD's official website where you can find support and download drivers.


References