# ATITool new feature suggestions



## dczajko (Jun 30, 2005)

Where can we send suggestions for new features for ATITool's future versions?


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## W1zzard (Jul 1, 2005)

post them here


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## INSTG8R (Jul 1, 2005)

Fan Speed Percentages in the tray along to go with the Temps


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## dczajko (Jul 3, 2005)

*Add a feature which behaves the same way as ATI's Overdrive feature did.*

ATI had a feature built into their Catalyst drivers up until v. 4.10.  They removed it since then.  It’s called Overdrive.  Because ATI no longer offers this functionality in Catalyst, it would be nice if ATITool had this feature.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, here are the details of its functionality:

OVERDRIVE was a form of an intelligent overclocking feature.  It would allow you to set your XT (ex: 9600 xt, 9800 xt, 800 xt, 800 xt pe, etc.) card’s clocks to whatever you desired.  However, the feature would prevent you from setting it too high, or prevent the card from crashing should it suddenly run hotter than you expected while playing games.  

While in 3d mode, the feature would actively monitor the temperature of the card to make sure that it never reached a temperature determined by the user as a maximum safe one.  If the card became too hot during a game play, Overdrive would begin downclocking the card until the temperature became safe.  If the card’s temperature became cool enough, Overdrive would begin increasing the clock back up until the maximum allowed temperature.

- The feature would never downclock the card to a setting lower than the factory default.
- The feature would never increase the clock to the point that the temperature would become hotter than what the user has earlier specified was the desired maximum.
- The feature would make these clock adjustments dynamically without user intervention.
- This feature only works on XT cards because those are the only ones that have a temperature sensors built in

I believe that Overdrive feature gave the user the ability to not only safely overclock one’s card, but to also always get the maximum performance out of it without crashing it.

When I asked ATI why my x800 XT doesn’t have the Overdrive feature visible, I got the following reply:

“The Overdrive feature has been disabled and we are working on making the utility much better. The feature will most likely be available in a future release of the Catalyst suite.”

I think that the word “likely” means “never” because if removing the feature was for the reason of improving it and then re-releasing it, ATI would have re-released it by now.  Also, how do you improve a feature, and take so long doing it, which isn’t complicated to begin with.  Being a software developer myself it seems to me that once you know how to read the temperature from the card, poking it for data at intervals and adjusting/leave-alone the clock, shouldn’t take long to implement, let alone ‘improve’.

I think that ATITool should take advantage of the XTs’ temperature sensors (which it already does), and implement it’s own intelligent OC’ing feature similar to ATI’s Overdrive.

What do the rest of you think?  Is this something you’d like to see ATITool do or I’m I the only one that sees use for it?


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