Silly ATI question
 

I know this is going to sound silly but I am running an ATI 9700 Pro graphics card in my machine and I was wondering if it was necessary for the icon (the far right on the tool bar) to be running at all times. It is necessary for the card to run correctly? Just wondering and thanks.

the long and the short
 

the short is no.

The long is yes. Confused?
The shell is loaded as a precurser to loading the device driver, which is not started until your 2000/xp logon box appears. Even when you turn the icon off, the shell still loads for several seconds in order to corectly place the updated driver in proccesing order and then turns off. Theres no real harm in leaving it alone, since ati shells (like the one in my status bar this very minute) take only about 2.5mb of memory and hog virtually no system bus since they only occasionaly communicate with the device in an "are you alright?" fashion. This can actualy be helpful in high Fps games where the shell can correct frame loss faster than the device driver being taxed by the running game.
Hope this helps.

OT. also make sure you get a program called Rage 3d. (can be found at www.rage3d.com ). It allows your to tweak your ati card as well as over clock it.