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They cannot tell YOU whats best for YOUR system, it doesn't work like that. IF you cannot spend a bit of time on your own system, testing this stuff for yourself, then why bother with PC gaming at all ?
Their tweaks, are fixed for all games, when you install them, a sort of pre-defined set of registry entries, that just doesn't work for all games.
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You sound like "If you don't know how to raise your voltage and fsb in your bios, why do you use a computer to word process?". The truth is, alot of people don't! Look, PC gaming is , in a sense, is a type of gaming. And what is gaming?A way of stress relieve and time killer or a form of entertainment. So now getting back to your response, I am only a casual gamer, and so I won't be sitting around all day benchmarking and tweaking my driver just to squeeze out 1-3 fps. After an 8-hour/day job, I only have a few hours on my hands to get on with my life, and only a little portion would be spent to gaming. If I would want better performance, I would get myself a 8800GTS
Of course that is my opinion, as Dukelord asked for my opinion and I told him what I think. But if you have visited guru3d, rage3d, or driverheaven, most people would tell you that custom drivers are better than STOCK ATI catalyst, not the one that you tweaked.
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If you don't know what they're for, how do you know they're any good ? How do you know if they actually helped anything, in any way ?
Sure, you can go from 100fps, to 102 fps, but was it really worth it ? Are you sure your gains aren't simply error of margin ?
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I don't really need to know if they are good or not, I just install a driver and run a game, if it runs stable and the performance is at my expectations, I will stop at that point.
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Experts ? And ATI, aren't, no ?
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I am not saying ATI people are not experts, as they are the ones who wrote and improve the drivers. But in terms of tweaking the original drivers, the people who created custom drivers have the experience (at least more than me).
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But wouldn't you feel better if you knew what these tweaks done ? And how they work ?
I remember arguing this a few years ago, when I found out that a set of these drivers had a -2 LOD setting, meaning you had negative LOD for every game. Fine, for a game where the mipmap boundary is constantly in your sights, such as a driving game, but a complete knightmare for a game like Oblivion.
Lastly, don't you think that ATI, what with the current negative press they're getting with the R600 cards, would (if they had the means) hold back on some 'Wonder' tweak that could potentially give their cards a nice boost, without hindering IQ ?
Think about it, the ATI coders wrote these drivers, and probably know every little trick in the book to get the most from them.
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At university, I already know more than I want to know on how stuff works (especially on computers). Its not like I would want to learn more during my gaming time. And if you are saying that ATI's driver is already the best, why are you tweaking it
. Also, as far as tweak goes, you should look at some of the descriptions that the people wrote for the given custom drivers. They are specifically either designed for IQ, or performance. People chooses custom firmware because they want either IQ or performance gain without the hassle to do the dirty work themselves.
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I'm not ragging on at you, don't get me wrong. If you like them, then continue to use them. But, I'm just saying that YOU, yourself, can also get the most from your card, without the need for custom drivers.
And, at the end of the day, all they're doing is adding a bunch of card ID's to the .inf file, and adding tweaks like Fast Color Clear, Color Compression, Various Texture Tiling/Micro Tiling settings, etc... to the regsitry, all of which can be done with ATT. They don't have any source code to tweak, or special compiled dlls.
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Its not the first day that I know that it can be done with ATT, but sometimes its not like a great deal to change the settings so that it will work at the most optimal condition. Sure, tweaking it urself would probably lead to the best performance, but for me, I just want the fastest gain of performance in the shortest of time.
In the end, it all comes down to personal preference, as you had your opinion and I had mine...