Yoosty
09-13-2007, 08:01 PM
Catalyst Control Center
The ATI Catalyst Control Center (CCC for short) is the user interface for the ATI Catalyst Drivers, and the replacement for the legacy ATI Control Panel. The Catalyst Control Center works on all ATI graphics cards and is constantly being refined by ATI to include new features. Since ATI have dropped official support for the legacy ATI Control Panel, I strongly recommend that you either install the latest Catalyst Control Center for maximum stability and functionality, or see the Advanced Tweaking section of this guide for an alternative interface using ATI Tray Tools.
The CCC provides access to a range of important graphics-related features, and this section of the guide covers these features in more detail. Before we look at the CCC however, it's important to note that for the CCC to work in XP, you must install the Microsoft .NET Framework. The ATI Catalyst Control Center will not function without .NET installed on your system. Vista already contains the .NET Framework. You can also remove a range of services, startup items and features which increase resource usage and are unnecessary - to find out more about both .NET and how to remove unnecessary resources, refer to the Tidying Up section of this guide.
There are several ways to access the Catalyst Control Center. You can go to Start>Control Panel and double-click on Display to open the Display Properties box, then click Settings>Advanced>Catalyst Control Center and click the ATI Catalyst Control Center button to launch it. Alternatively, you can right-click on an empty area of the Windows Desktop and select it from the top of the context menu, or use the 'CCC' shortcut placed in your Start>All Programs>Catalyst Control Center menu (or on your Desktop).
The first time you open the CCC you will be asked if you want to use Basic or Advanced view. I strongly recommend selecting the Advanced option and also ticking the 'Dont show this page again' box and clicking Next (and reconfirming if necessary). Basic view is only for extremely novice users and non-gamers, and does not contain the bulk of the settings required to optimize and configure your Catalysts. To confirm that you're in Advanced view, once the ATI CCC opens, click the Views button at the top and you will see the 'Advanced View' item is ticked. The settings of the CCC are each covered in detail below:
Views
Basic vs. Advanced View: As covered above, determines what type of things are displayed in the CCC. You should be using Advanced view at all times.
Custom View: If you want to customize which particular items appear in the Control Center, you can do so by selecting the 'Edit Custom View' option under the Views drop-down menu. This will open up the Custom View box, under which you will see a table of all the current items displayed in the Control Center (Click the small '+' sign to expand the list). You can then click the small tick mark next to any item to unselect it (remove it from the Control Center), or if a tick is present, it will be displayed. I recommend for the moment that you make sure a tick is placed against every item. In the future you can return to remove unneeded items as necessary.
If you've changed any of the items being displayed, the Control Center will automatically use your new Custom View. If you click the Views button you will see the 'Custom View' option is ticked. If you want to return to another view, e.g Advanced View, simply select it and all possible items will return to your Control Center. You can then switch between Custom View and another view as often as you like.
Hotkeys
If you wish to use a range of keyboard shortcuts for various functions of the CCC, you can assign them by clicking the Hotkeys button at the top of the Control Center and selecting 'Hotkey Manager'. This opens the Hotkeys Manager box, under which you can edit hotkey combinations for particular functions. Note that the 'Enable Hotkeys' option must be ticked for Hotkeys to work, and this is related to the ATI Hotkey Poller service discussed under the Tidying Up section of the guide. If you change Control Center functions on a regular basis, you may find hotkeys handy, but in general I believe they are an unnecessary option and can be left disabled on most systems, i.e. untick the 'Enable Hotkeys' item.
Profiles
If you want to use different graphics card settings in different circumstances, the profiles option might come in very handy. Click the Profiles button and select 'Profiles Manager' to bring up the Profiles Manager. You can save all your current Control Center settings under as many profiles as you like by entering a profile name in the box under 'Enter or select a profile name', and then click the Save button. However you can choose which particular settings are saved in the profile, and how they can be applied.
Composition: Under this tab you can select the particular Control Center settings to save for the current profile. If you click the small 'All Catalyst Control Center Settings' button all possible Control Center settings will be saved for the current profile. If you want to ignore certain settings, such as VPU Recover or Video Overlay settings for the current profile, click on the 'the following settings' button, and then you can double-click on the name of your graphics card (if you have only one display, select the first entry) and underneath it you can tick/untick the specific setting areas to add/remove.
Activation: Under this tab you can set the methods by which the profile can be activated (i.e the settings in the profile will be put into effect). There are four possible ways in which a profile can be activated: System Tray Menu - If you use the ATI Catalyst Control Center System Tray tool then if this option is ticked you can use it to quickly access and activate your profiles.
Hotkey Assignments - If you use the ATI Hotkeys function of the Control Center, then you tick this option to assign hotkeys to activate a profile. You must then select a Hotkey Modifier key, and enter a particular key in the 'Enter a Hotkeys selection' box. This is the key combination which will activate this profile.
Profiles Menu - This item should usually be ticked, as it allows you to access profiles and activate them using the drop-down menu next to the Profiles button in the ATI Control Center. Your profiles will be listed by name under the 'Activate Profile' item of the Profiles drop-down menu.
Desktop Shortcut - This is a very useful way of activating profiles, particularly profiles which apply to particular games or applications. If this option is ticked, when you save a profile this places a special ATI shortcut on your Windows Desktop, which when launched will activate the particular profile associated with it. See the Application tab description below for more details of how to use this feature to create and use different profiles for each game.
Applications: Under this tab you can associate a particular application or game with the profile. You can do this by putting a tick in the 'opens the following application, file or shortcut' box, and then inserting the full path and name of a executable or shortcut using the Browse button. I recommend you select the path to a shortcut, as the Control Center has some issues with launching certain executables properly (e.g Doom3.exe). Unfortunately this method doesn't mean that whenever you run that application or shortcut that the drivers will automatically detect this and run the appropriate profile. That would be extremely useful, but that's not what this does. The closest you can get to that sort of ease-of-use is to tick the 'Desktop Shortcut' option under the Activation tab, then save your profile. You will now find a shortcut on your desktop which, when launched, will start the application or game you've assigned to the profile, and implement all the profile's settings.
One last thing I can recommend in regards to profiles is that you should ideally save your regular "everyday" Control Center settings under a profile with a name like Default or Normal. That way you won't lose them. For more useful game profiles which are automatically detected and used when a game is launched, use ATI Tray Tools instead - see the Advanced Tweaking section for details.
Preferences
When you click the Preferences button, you will find several other options which are covered below: Always On Top - As the name implies, if ticked, this option forces the ATI Control Center to always remain on top of all other windows when open.
Hide Tooltips - Tooltips are the small grey popup boxes which appear every time you highlight a particular setting or option in the ATI Control Center. These give brief descriptions of each setting. If they annoy you, you can tick this option to remove them.
Hide Toolbar Text - If unticked, this option gives each of the five buttons at the top of the ATI Control Center a text label, such as 'View' and 'Preferences'. If ticked, the buttons remain but their text will be removed. I recommend leaving the text enabled (unticked), at least until you become extremely familiar with the Control Center.
Hide Splash Screen - If ticked, you will not see the 'ATI Catalyst Control Center' small intro screen/box which appears prior to the CCC being opened.
Enable System Tray Menu - The System Tray menu is another form of quick access to the ATI Control Center, however I personally feel it is an unnecessary use of resources and should be disabled. You can remove it by unticking this option, and instead I recommend using ATI Tray Tools (See Advanced Tweaking section). However if you really must use it, leave a tick here to ensure it loads into memory every time your system starts up and appears in your system tray area.
Select Language - If selected, brings up a language selection box, where you can choose the language used for all ATI Control Center interface text.
Select a Skin - If selected, brings up the Skin Select Form box, which allows you to choose a new "skin" (graphical appearance of the dialog boxes) for the ATI Catalyst Control Center. You can choose whichever suits your taste. Some skins may take up slightly more memory, but to be honest the entire Control Center takes up so much memory, another few MB won't make much of a difference. However for minimal resource usage choose the 'System Skin' option which uses the default skin.
Restore Factory Defaults - Selecting this option will restore all the default settings for the Control Center. I recommend you only use it if you run into a lot of problems and want to return to defaults settings to start from scratch.
Help
The Help button allows you to get more help about the Control Center functions, and also contains links for more help in troubleshooting your ATI graphics card.
Next we will examine the ATI Catalyst Control Center.
Welcome
This section only contains a range of ATI links. You can click on the links shown at the bottom right of the main panel to check for updates, contact ATI Customer Care, Send Feedback and so forth. None of these affect the performance or functionality of the ATI Catalysts on your system.
Information Center
The Information Center section contains details about your graphics card hardware and software. This is very handy for quickly finding out more details about your system, such as the core and memory clock speeds. Note that the information is not comprehensive, and on some systems may show up incorrectly. See the Overclocking section of this guide, as well as the System Specifications chapter of the TweakGuides Tweaking Companion (http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html) for a range of better tools for finding out much more about your ATI graphics card and your entire system.
Displays Manager
This section shows all the displays connected to your system and currently recognized by the drivers. A picture of the primary display will be under the Main box, and if another is connected, under the Secondary box. If you right-click on the picture of the display, you will see the options to Rotate the image from that display, or to Swap Display Mapping - which means to exchange the displays mapped to your primary and secondary displays (i.e. make Display 1 become Display 2 and vice versa), and if you have two displays, the option to Disable one of the displays. If you cannot see a recently connected display device listed, click the 'Detect Displays' button and it should appear in the list. If it doesn't check the cabling and if possible use another type of connection (e.g. swap DVI for D-SUB or vice versa).
The currently selected (typically Main) display will be shown under the Selected Displays section of this screen, with details of the display's model name and connection type (e.g. DVI). You can select how big the Desktop Area will be by choosing a resolution for it. The Color Quality can also be changed, all the way from 32-bit, to 16-bit down to 8-bit. The lower the color quality, the less colors used to display the screen image, and 32-bit is recommended for all users. An important setting is the Refresh Rate box which shows the currently used refresh rate, and allows you to adjust it manually. See the Tidying Up section for more details on the refresh rate, and what you should and shouldn't do with it. If in doubt do not alter it.
Rotation provides the option to rotate the display through 4 preset angles, with 0 degrees being a normal image, 180 degrees being an upside down image, and either flipping the image 90 degrees to the left (ccw - counter-clockwise) or right (cw - clockwise). There is no reason to do this unless you have special requirements, such as correctly displaying an image on a display which is on its side.
The Force button contains a range of sub-options which allow you to manually force a wider range of settings to the Desktop Resolution, Color Quality, Refresh Rate, Rotation and HDTV properties. There is an inherent danger in doing this, as for example you may assign a refresh rate which exceeds your display's capabilities and thus get no image and perhaps even damage your display device. The main reason you would use these options would be to select a setting which you know works on your system or display but is not being correctly detected, especially if you want to force a specific HDTV resolution such as 1920x1080. Exercise caution, and don't mess with this setting unless you know what you're doing.
Display Options
The 3D Refresh Rate Override option when enabled allows you to force a game's refresh rate to exceed the default 60Hz. You can do this by selecting 'Same as Desktop', if your Desktop refresh rate is above 60Hz. You can find out much more Refresh Rates on page 4 of this guide. Do not alter this setting without first understanding what Refresh Rates do, as forcing a non-default refresh rate can result in some games not starting up at all.
The Display Detection Option simply determines at what point the Catalysts will attempt to detect all your display device(s). If you select 'Detect whenever Catalyst Control Center is opened' then it will do exactly that - go through a detection process for any attached displays whenever you open the Control Center. Unless you regularly connect and disconnect displays to your system, I recommend you select the second option 'Use manual detection only (I must click the Detect Displays button)' for quicker CCC startup.
The Display Management Options section here also allows for forced detection of any connected televisions (if 'Force TV detection' is ticked). If you display has limited resolution capabilities - that is, if it can only display in certain resolutions - then the default 'List only those modes supported by all displays' is the safest as it ensures you cannot select a display mode which is incompatible with one or more of the displays.
Monitor/Digital Panel Properties
Depending on whether you have a traditional CRT monitor or a Digital flat panel display (e.g. LCD) attached, the settings in this section may be different. See the relevant section below:
Monitor Properties
Attributes: The main area of the Monitor Properties section shows you the details of the particular CRT display(s) you have connected to your machine, including resolution and refresh rate limits. You can select whether you want to tick 'Use Extended Display Identification Data (EDID)', which is recommended if available. This allows your display device to accurately inform the Catalysts about its capabilities, reducing the change of any damage to the monitor from inappropriate resolutions and/or refresh rates. If your monitor doesn't support EDID (which is rare) or you are certain it is incorrectly identifying your monitor's capabilities, untick the box and manually set the maximum resolution and refresh rate.
Adjustments: You can use the arrows on this screen to adjust the screen position and size if the picture on your display is not reaching the edges of the monitor. I recommend resizing and repositioning the image on your screen to ensure that the image evenly touches the four edges of your monitor screen. However ideally you should use the controls on your monitor to resize, reshape and reposition the image to perfectly match the monitor screen. You may have to do this several times, at various resolutions and refresh rates. If then you reach some sort of limitation with the monitor controls, you can use these software controls for further adjustments.
The Horizontal and Vertical synchronization of your monitor are controlled by the settings here. You will typically see a '+' or a '-' sign against the Horizontal and Vertical settings. I strongly advise you not to alter these unless you are directed to by a technical support person, or you know precisely what you are doing. Clicking on the buttons can result in loss of video signal (black screen) and even potential damage to your monitor. In particular, the Composite Sync option combines the vertical and horizontal synchronization signals into one, and is only for composite monitors. Do not click on the blue Composite button unless you are certain you are using a composite monitor.
Troubleshoot: If you know your display device is capable of display modes such as 720p (720 horizontal lines progressive scan) and/or 1080i (1080 horizontal lines interlaced) then you can tick the relevant boxes here to add these modes to the Force button under the Displays Manager section. Do not select these modes if your display device is not capable of such resolutions (as most CRTs aren't), since attempting to use these resolutions may cause damage to your display device if not supported.
Digital Panel Properties
Attributes: This section shows the details of your digital panel's capabilities, including the panel name and connection type, and maximum supported resolution (usually called the 'native' resolution) and refresh rate.
Image Scaling: This section allows you to choose whether to have the images on the screen 'Scale to full panel size', or 'Use centered timings'. For most displays the 'Scale image to full panel size' is the best option, however the further away your current resolution is from your display's 'native' resolution, the blurrier the onscreen image will be. Note, you can use the free Microsoft ClearType (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/Step1.aspx) utility to make text in non-native resolutions much clearer. If you want to force all resolutions to display at your monitor's native resolution - hence providing the sharpest image quality - select the 'Use Centered Timings' option, however note that any resolutions below your native resolution will appear as a centered box on the screen with black borders.
DVI Settings: If your flat panel is connected via DVI cable, you can select the 'Reduce DVI frequency on high-resolution displays' and 'Alternate DVI operational mode' settings to reduce/remove any potential graphical anomalies if running your panel at resolutions above 1280x1024. For most panels however this is not necessary, and both these options should be unticked.
Avivo Color
This section is only available for ATI graphics cards which support per-display color settings, namely the X1000 series or newer. Here you can alter the Hue and Saturation for each display connected to your system. Hue refers to the gradation over the color range, while Saturation refers to the richness/vibrance of a particular color. To put this in simple terms, changing the Hue value changes the actual colors shown - and hence is best not altered. However Saturation is useful to change, as it operates similar to the 'Digital Vibrance' option for Alidia Forceware drivers - it alters the vibrance of a color. Raising this slightly can greatly improve the ATI Catalyst Control Center.
HDTV Support
This section allows you to add 720p, 1080i or 1080p modes to the Displays Manager section. If you are certain your monitor/digital panel supports these modes and they are not being detected properly, tick the relevant box(es) here and they will be added as available options under the Force button of the Display Options section of the CCC (See further above). If you then get display anomalies when running these higher resolution HDTV modes, you can use the utility at the bottom of this section to adjust the image size/resolution until it fits properly on your display. Remember, if you have any doubts don't enable these options as setting a resolution which exceeds your display's capabilities can damage it.
3D
Unlike the old ATI Control Panel, the Control Center doesn't distinguish between OpenGL and Direct3D for the majority of 3D-related settings. They are combined into one area called '3D', and whatever you select here will apply equally to all games and 3D applications - whether they be OpenGL or Direct3D - except for the API specific 'More Settings' section (see further below). The most interesting feature of the 3D section is that there is a 3D preview in the main panel, showing a typical game scene, with the scene shown differing based on the setting you are viewing. The graphics used for this preview will adjust in real time to reflect the changes you are making in the 3D settings. Pay particular attention to this 3D preview image to see changes in subtle details, like the way the tiles on the ground and textures on the walls become crisper into the distance as more Anisotropic Filtering is used, or the way the jagged lines become smoother with increasing Antialiasing.
There are several main settings under the 3D section, and each is covered below:
Standard Settings: If you are awfully lazy, and just don't have the time or patience to change a whole bunch of settings you can simply use this universal slider to adjust your graphics card's settings between either Performance or Quality modes. I don't recommend this method whatsoever - take the time to adjust all the settings individually for optimal performance and image quality: tick the 'Use custom settings box' and follow the advice below.
Anti-Aliasing: Antialiasing (AA) determines how jagged the outlines of objects appear to be. For a full description and screenshot comparisons, see this page (http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_11.html) of my Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide. It is recommended that you tick the 'Use application settings' box, so that the level of Antialiasing can be set within particular games and won't conflict with your Control Center settings. However if you really want to force a particular level of AA in all 3D games, disable any in-game AA then untick the box here and use the slider here to force a particular level of Antialiasing. From 2x to 4x to 6x sample rate (or higher depending on your graphics card), the higher the level of Antialiasing, the less jagged the lines in games and 3D applications will appear, however the lower your performance will be. Note that Crossfire users will see more options here if Crossfire mode is enabled.
Temporal Antialiasing: This setting is described in more detail here (http://tech-report.com/reviews/2004q2/radeon-x800/index.x?pg=22). Essentially it is a driver trick designed to give the effect of a higher level of Antialiasing, but with a lower performance hit. For example, if you select 2x on the Antialiasing sample slider and also tick the Temporal Antialiasing box, during a game given the right conditions (high framerates) it will look almost exactly like 4x Antialiasing, but with the performance impact of only 2x Antialiasing. Since the image quality of Temporal Antialiasing cannot be captured properly in a screenshot, the only way to determine if you like it or not is to try it yourself.
Remember, if you want to disable Antialiasing (for fastest performance), or if you simply want to determine the level of Antialiasing using the settings in a particular game, you should tick the 'Use application settings' box, and the ATI Control Center will not force any Antialiasing on any game or 3D app. This is the recommended option since most games now have separate Antialiasing settings, and often if you try to force Antialiasing on them using the Control Center it will cause conflicts and slowdowns. Furthermore some games simply cannot have Antialiasing forced on them due to the rendering method they use, such as HDR or Deferred Shading (e.g. games like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.).
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: This is an Antialiasing technique which improves the appearance of scenes which contain transparent textures. Enabling it will result in varying image quality and performance impacts depending on whether you choose the 'Quality' or 'Performance' mode. Some details and screenshots can be found here (http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/09/29/cat_59_taa/) and here (http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/11/10/ati_catalyst_511/). The 3D preview provided also shows the impact quite clearly. In general the performance impact should not be significant over normal Antialiasing, but it still does reduce FPS when enabled, so untick it if you need the additional framerate.
Anisotropic Filtering: This graphics method sharpens textures as they fade into the distance. Once again, you can find a full, easy-to-understand description of it at the bottom of this page (http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_11.html) of my Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide. Note that you can select the 'High Quality AF' mode which enables Trilinear Filtering, or disable it which enables Bilinear Filtering - the difference between them is negligible in terms of image quality, so if you need the extra FPS untick the High Quality AF box. If you wish to disable Anisotropic Filtering, or more importantly allow individual game settings to determine it, tick the 'Use application settings' box, which is recommended. Most recent games have some sort of 'Texture Filtering' or Anisotropic Filtering-related option which should be used instead of this setting to prevent conflicts or problems. If instead you wish to force a specific level of AF in every game, untick the box and select the sample rate to use, with higher rates provided clearer distant textures at the cost of some FPS.
Catalyst A.I: Catalyst A.I. allows users to determine the level of 'optimizations' the drivers enable in graphics applications. These optimizations are graphics 'short cuts' which the Catalyst A.I. calculates to attempt to improve the performance of 3D games without any noticeable reduction in image quality. In the past there has been a great deal of controversy about 'hidden optimizations', where both Nvidia and ATI were accused of cutting corners, reducing image quality in subtle ways by reducing image precision for example, simply to get higher scores in synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark. In response to this, both ATI and Nvidia have made the process transparent to a great extent. You can select whether you want to enable or disable Catalyst A.I. for a further potential performance boost in return for possibly a slight reduction in image quality in some cases. If Catalyst AI is enabled, you can also choose the aggressiveness of such optimizations, either Standard or Advanced on the slider. The Advanced setting ensures maximum performance, and usually results in no problems or any noticeable image quality reduction. If on the other hand you want to always ensure the highest possible image quality at all costs, disable Catalyst A.I. (tick the 'Disable Catalyst A.I.' box). I recommend leaving Catalyst A.I enabled unless you experience problems. ATI have made it clear that many application-specific optimizations for recent games such as Oblivion are dependent on Catalyst AI being enabled.
Note: As of the 6.7 Catalysts, Crossfire users should set Catalyst A.I. to Advanced to force Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR) mode in all Direct3D games for optimal performance. Once again, Catalyst A.I. should only be disabled for troubleshooting purposes, such as if you notice image corruption in particular games.
Mipmap Detail Level: This slider helps determine how good textures generally look, when combined with your game's own texture settings. By moving the slider to the right, textures should appear sharper and more detailed, but performance is reduced. By lowering this slider you may see texture anomalies in particular games, so increase the slider if that is the case. I recommend leaving this slider at the far right, and adjusting mipmap/texture detail levels in individual games to minimize graphical anomalies.
All Settings: If you find that changing settings with the Preview screen visible is annoying you, or if you simply want to see all the settings in one summary interface, then you might want to adjust your 3D settings using this option. Just click this option and in place of the Preview screen will appear all the setting sliders and tick boxes for you to adjust as discussed on the previous page. Importantly, there is a significant additional option under the All Settings section which is not available elsewhere in the Control Center:
Wait for Vertical Refresh: This option controls Vertical Synchronization (VSync) in games. VSync is the synchronization of your graphics card and monitor's abilities to redraw the screen a number of times each second (measured in FPS or Hz), and is explained in greater detail on this page (http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_9.html) of the Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide. There are four choices here: Always Off - Vertical Sync will always be set to Off, regardless of the setting in the game or 3D application. This provides fastest performance but may result in image 'tearing' which can be annoying to some.
Off, Unless Application Specifies - Vertical Sync will be off by default, however if you choose to enable it in a game or 3D application, it will be enabled for that game/app. This is the recommended mode.
On, Unless Application Specifies - Same as above, except Vertical Sync will be on by default unless otherwise disabled in a particular game or 3D application.
Always On - Vertical Sync will always remain on, regardless of the setting in the game or 3D application. This is not recommended, as it may reduce performance however it guarantees that there will never be any screen "tearing".
It is recommended you select the 'Off, Unless Application Specifies' option for the best performance, and this also allows you to set VSync Off/On in each individual game using the game's own settings if required. Generally speaking, VSync should be disabled for the best performance.
More Settings: Even though the Catalyst Control Center doesn't distinguish between OpenGL and Direct3D in the bulk of the 3D settings, there are still some settings which are unique to OpenGL and Direct3D respectively, and they are covered here: Direct3D Settings
Enable geometry instancing - Geometry instancing basically optimizes the rendering of objects which appear multiple times in a 3D scene by uploading one instance of the object and then replicating that as many times as needed. For example, with geometry instancing enabled, outdoor scenes with 3D objects like leaves, bushes and grass should be rendered faster, since the geometry for only one instance of a blade of grass is calculated and then reproduced over and over to create a field of grass. You should enable this option to improve performance in such cases, and only disable it if you notice graphical anomalies with multiple objects of the same type.
Support DXT texture formats - DXT is DirectX Texture Compression, which compresses textures into smaller sizes, making them easier to load into Video Memory and hence speeding up graphics performance with minimal loss in the quality of textures. It is strongly recommended that you make sure this option is enabled (ticked) to support DXT texture formats for maximum performance.
Alternate Pixel Center - This setting changes where the center of each pixel originates, and that can resolve problems such as texture or text anomalies in games. You should leave this Disabled unless you experience precisely those sort of problems.
OpenGL Settings
Triple Buffering - This setting is described in more detail on this page (http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_10.html) of my Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide. Set this option to Enabled to improve overall performance in OpenGL games if VSync is enabled. However using Triple Buffering may cause problems for graphics cards with lower Video RAM, so disable this option if you’re experiencing problems such as mouse or input lag, or if you don't enable VSync in OpenGL games. See the guide above as well as the Advanced Tweaking section for more details of how to enable Triple Buffering in Direct3D games.
Force 24-bit Z-Buffer depth- The Z-Buffer controls the rendering of depth in 3D games, such as which objects are hidden behind others when viewed at a distance. Greater precision for the Z-Buffer means less chance of visual errors, which often appear in the form of objects showing through each other, or having missing or flashing bits. This option allows you to force 24-bit Z-Buffer precision, however I don't recommend ticking this option, as the Z-Buffer precision should normally be left to be determined by each game. If you do see a lot of errors and glitches in distant objects in games, you can try forcing a higher Z-Buffer depth, but this typically reduces performance.
Color
If you believe you don't have appropriate color and brightness on your monitor when displaying the Windows desktop, or in particular games, you should firstly make sure you have the correct Color Profile for your monitor installed (See Color Management section). If this doesn't resolve the problem, you can manually change the color and brightness/contrast/gamma settings for your Desktop and/or 3D games in this section. The first choice you have to make is whether you want to adjust these settings for your Windows Desktop (Select the 'Desktop' option), or for 3D Applications (Select the 'Full Screen 3D' option).
Next, you can select whether you want to change the Gamma, Brightness and Contrast properties of the Red, Green and Blue colors individually (Select the Red, Green, or Blue option) or for all of them at once (Select 'All Channels'). For each color, or for all colors, you can then move the Gamma, Brightness and Contrast sliders to the left or right to adjust the properties as appropriate. If you want to reset your choice for a particular slider, click the Reset button next to it. If you want to reset all your changes back to the 'normal' values, click the Defaults button. For most people I recommend using the default values here and adjusting your monitor's controls to achieve optimal color and brightness/contrast.
(Avivo) Video
This section allows you to change the display properties of any video media which you may play through your PC. There is a video preview of a waving ATI flag which allows you to see the effects of your settings. There are three sub-sections to the Video Settings section, and each is covered below:
Video Basics: You can select a preset video playback configuration from here. The presets include Home, Office, and Theater. If you're not happy with one of the presets, use the Custom preset and adjust the relevant settings below.
Video Color: Basic: If you untick the 'Use application settings' box, the options in this section of the Control Center will determine the brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and gamma settings for any image which displays through a video overlay, such as DVD playback. Changing these sliders will adjust the properties of the image and you can immediately see the impact of these on the right side video preview. Set to suit your tastes, but if you don't like your changes, select the Discard button at the bottom and tick the 'Use application settings' box again to allow individual video playback applications use their own settings for video playback.
Theater Mode: These settings work if you have an ATI graphics card which is capable of supporting a Primary and Secondary display, and the secondary display is connected. You can see a preview of the impact of your choices on the Video Preview panel, so select a combination which suits your needs. If you select 'Theater Mode' from the list, you can select the aspect ratio of the video playback here. Aspect Ratio is the width of the image versus the height of the image. 4:3 ratio is standard TV/monitor size, while 16:9 is the standard Widescreen TV format, such as that used in most DVD movies and HDTVs. If you select 'Match the source video', then if the source is 4:3 aspect ratio, so too will the playback be in 4:3. Alternatively, if you want to change the video's aspect ratio to match to your display's aspect ratio, select the 'Scale to full screen' option, however note that this may cause skewing/distortion of the image.
Video Quality: The Catalysts come with software Deinterlacing (http://www.100fps.com/) which can help improve the image quality of videos depending on the method you choose. The options available are Auto-Detect, Bob, Motion Adaptive, Vector Adaptive, Adaptive and Weave (No deinterlacing). You will have to experiment to select the right type for your particular video source, but look at the preview display to see an indication of the various impacts. If in doubt, select 'Auto Detect'.
All Settings: This section is similar to that under the 3D section of the Control Panel - it allows you to view and change all the Video settings in one place, without a video preview. However it also contains an additional option 'Windows Media Video Acceleration'. If this option is ticked, it uses your graphics hardware to improve WMV-encoded video playback - which is recommended.
SmartGart
The settings here have a significant impact on your system stability, and to some degree on your performance, if you run an AGP graphics card.
Set AGP Speed: This setting only applies to AGP graphics cards, not PCI-E cards. AGP Speed is detailed under the Essential Optimization section of the guide. Your current AGP speed is shown here, and you can manually change it by using the slider. Note that certain AGP Speeds may be greyed out, either because they offer significantly lower performance, or because your motherboard and/or graphics card do not support those speeds. It is recommended that you set the highest available AGP Speed here for optimal performance. If at any time you begin experiencing lots of crashes, freezes and other problems, you can reduce the AGP Speed here in an attempt to increase system stability. Also make sure the AGP speed set here matches the one you set in your BIOS.
Fast Write: This setting is detailed under the BIOS section above, and is essentially the same as the BIOS setting of the same name. Your current Fast Write setting (On or Off) is shown here. As mentioned earlier, Fast Write is a major source of instability on most systems and provides little to no performance benefit, so it is strongly recommended that you select Off here to disable Fast Writes.
AGP Read, AGP Write, PCI Read, PCI Write: These settings are covered in detail under the Catalyst Installation section of the guide. For optimal performance you should ensure they are all set to On.
Retest: If you click this option next to any of these settings, or the 'Retest All' button, the SmartGart system will retest the setting(s) in an attempt to find the "best" settings. Of course this means it will revert the setting(s) to exactly the same as it was when you first opened the SmartGart tab, so there should be no reason for you to use this option unless you want to return to the default settings.
Importantly, if you have changed any of these settings, clicking the Apply button may require that you reboot your system to implement the changes. Once you reboot, come back into the ATI Control Center and check these settings under the SmartGart section. If they haven't changed, it is highly likely you will need to re-enable the ATI Smart service, install the latest motherboard AGP driver and alter other important settings such as those in your BIOS.
VPU Recover
Enable VPU Recover: VPU Recover attempts to stop any sort of graphics-related crashes or freezes from completely locking up or resetting your machine. While this is a valiant idea, in practice VPU Recover has been known to increase the probability of crashes and problems when enabled, and more importantly needing VPU Recover to kick in regularly is a sign that something is wrong with your system and you need to find the source of the problem. I recommend that you untick (disable) VPU Recover to increase system stability, and then seek out and remedy the source of any problems by using the tips in the rest of this guide and the tips in the TweakGuides Tweaking Companion (http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html). A stable system will never trigger VPU Recover. Note that this option doesn't exist in Windows Vista, since Vista's new driver model means that a form of VPU Recover is permanently in effect for all graphics cards.
Prepare an Error Report: If VPU Recover is enabled, this option will be available to be ticked. If ticked, it means that every time your system has an error which VPU Recover helps recover from, an email will be generated which you can send to ATI disclosing the details of the problem. While this may help ATI in determining the cause of certain issues, more often than not it is completely unnecessary and I recommend unticking this option, even if you do use VPU Recover.
ATI OverDrive
If you have a Radeon XT, X1X00 series or newer graphics card, you will find an ATI OverDrive item in the Control Center. The OverDrive panel provides information about the current temperature of your graphics card's Graphics Processing Unit (the GPU or Core) which is only possible due to the presence of a temperature sensor on your graphics cards. This is the reason why older cards do not have Overdrive, because it requires the physical presence of this temperature diode onboard the card itself.
If you tick the 'Enable ATI Overdrive' box, the OverDrive software will actively monitor your graphics card's temperature and allow you to manually overclock your video card's GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) core/engine speed as well as the memory, if it is safe to do so. This is a nice method of achieving some extra performance safely, since OverDrive will not allow your graphics card to fry by accidentally overclocking it to insane speeds. If you want to overclock your system see the Overclocking section for more details.
A common question asked by users is "What is a safe temperature for my graphics card?" This varies depending on the particular graphics card series you have, since each is based on a particular architecture and hence has different heat output and tolerances. Typically, under most circumstances the 50-60 degree (Celsius) range is considered quite normal at idle, increasing into the high 70s under load. These temperatures will rise when overclocking or when your system is not properly cooled, and can result in crashes and freezes when under load. See the Overclocking section for more information on cooling.
Finally, note that some ATI graphics cards don't come with OverDrive capability. If you believe you should be seeing the OverDrive tab in the Control Center but it's not there, remember that the ATI Hotkey Poller service needs to be set to Automatic (See Tidying Up section), and if necessary contact ATI Technical Support for more help.
Crossfire
If you have two ATI graphics cards, with at least one being a Crossfire Edition (http://ati.amd.com/technology/crossfire/index.html) graphics card, and they are installed in an appropriate Crossfire-supported motherboard (with both PCI-E Slots enabled in the BIOS), and you're using the correct connecting cable between the two cards, you should be able to see the Crossfire tab in the Catalyst Control Center. You can then tick the 'Enable Crossfire' box to enable Crossfire usage - it should be disabled for any games in which you notice performance problems or glitches. It is recommended that you then make sure Catalyst AI is enabled (See further above) so that the Catalyst drivers can automatically set the correct Crossfire mode for each game. Note that with Crossfire enabled, you will be able to access additional Crossfire Antialiasing modes under the Antialiasing section of the 3D options in the CCC - up to 14x Antialiasing.
Once you're done changing all the Catalyst Control Center settings to suit your preferences, make sure you click the Apply button at the bottom of the Control Center box to apply them. In fact get used to pressing the Apply button after almost every change so you can see the impacts of it more quickly. Now is also a good time to click the Profiles button and create a new profile called Default (or similar), to keep all your preferred original settings from being lost.
For Advanced settings of ATI Catalyst, go to following link below.
http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_9.html (http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_9.html)
The ATI Catalyst Control Center (CCC for short) is the user interface for the ATI Catalyst Drivers, and the replacement for the legacy ATI Control Panel. The Catalyst Control Center works on all ATI graphics cards and is constantly being refined by ATI to include new features. Since ATI have dropped official support for the legacy ATI Control Panel, I strongly recommend that you either install the latest Catalyst Control Center for maximum stability and functionality, or see the Advanced Tweaking section of this guide for an alternative interface using ATI Tray Tools.
The CCC provides access to a range of important graphics-related features, and this section of the guide covers these features in more detail. Before we look at the CCC however, it's important to note that for the CCC to work in XP, you must install the Microsoft .NET Framework. The ATI Catalyst Control Center will not function without .NET installed on your system. Vista already contains the .NET Framework. You can also remove a range of services, startup items and features which increase resource usage and are unnecessary - to find out more about both .NET and how to remove unnecessary resources, refer to the Tidying Up section of this guide.
There are several ways to access the Catalyst Control Center. You can go to Start>Control Panel and double-click on Display to open the Display Properties box, then click Settings>Advanced>Catalyst Control Center and click the ATI Catalyst Control Center button to launch it. Alternatively, you can right-click on an empty area of the Windows Desktop and select it from the top of the context menu, or use the 'CCC' shortcut placed in your Start>All Programs>Catalyst Control Center menu (or on your Desktop).
The first time you open the CCC you will be asked if you want to use Basic or Advanced view. I strongly recommend selecting the Advanced option and also ticking the 'Dont show this page again' box and clicking Next (and reconfirming if necessary). Basic view is only for extremely novice users and non-gamers, and does not contain the bulk of the settings required to optimize and configure your Catalysts. To confirm that you're in Advanced view, once the ATI CCC opens, click the Views button at the top and you will see the 'Advanced View' item is ticked. The settings of the CCC are each covered in detail below:
Views
Basic vs. Advanced View: As covered above, determines what type of things are displayed in the CCC. You should be using Advanced view at all times.
Custom View: If you want to customize which particular items appear in the Control Center, you can do so by selecting the 'Edit Custom View' option under the Views drop-down menu. This will open up the Custom View box, under which you will see a table of all the current items displayed in the Control Center (Click the small '+' sign to expand the list). You can then click the small tick mark next to any item to unselect it (remove it from the Control Center), or if a tick is present, it will be displayed. I recommend for the moment that you make sure a tick is placed against every item. In the future you can return to remove unneeded items as necessary.
If you've changed any of the items being displayed, the Control Center will automatically use your new Custom View. If you click the Views button you will see the 'Custom View' option is ticked. If you want to return to another view, e.g Advanced View, simply select it and all possible items will return to your Control Center. You can then switch between Custom View and another view as often as you like.
Hotkeys
If you wish to use a range of keyboard shortcuts for various functions of the CCC, you can assign them by clicking the Hotkeys button at the top of the Control Center and selecting 'Hotkey Manager'. This opens the Hotkeys Manager box, under which you can edit hotkey combinations for particular functions. Note that the 'Enable Hotkeys' option must be ticked for Hotkeys to work, and this is related to the ATI Hotkey Poller service discussed under the Tidying Up section of the guide. If you change Control Center functions on a regular basis, you may find hotkeys handy, but in general I believe they are an unnecessary option and can be left disabled on most systems, i.e. untick the 'Enable Hotkeys' item.
Profiles
If you want to use different graphics card settings in different circumstances, the profiles option might come in very handy. Click the Profiles button and select 'Profiles Manager' to bring up the Profiles Manager. You can save all your current Control Center settings under as many profiles as you like by entering a profile name in the box under 'Enter or select a profile name', and then click the Save button. However you can choose which particular settings are saved in the profile, and how they can be applied.
Composition: Under this tab you can select the particular Control Center settings to save for the current profile. If you click the small 'All Catalyst Control Center Settings' button all possible Control Center settings will be saved for the current profile. If you want to ignore certain settings, such as VPU Recover or Video Overlay settings for the current profile, click on the 'the following settings' button, and then you can double-click on the name of your graphics card (if you have only one display, select the first entry) and underneath it you can tick/untick the specific setting areas to add/remove.
Activation: Under this tab you can set the methods by which the profile can be activated (i.e the settings in the profile will be put into effect). There are four possible ways in which a profile can be activated: System Tray Menu - If you use the ATI Catalyst Control Center System Tray tool then if this option is ticked you can use it to quickly access and activate your profiles.
Hotkey Assignments - If you use the ATI Hotkeys function of the Control Center, then you tick this option to assign hotkeys to activate a profile. You must then select a Hotkey Modifier key, and enter a particular key in the 'Enter a Hotkeys selection' box. This is the key combination which will activate this profile.
Profiles Menu - This item should usually be ticked, as it allows you to access profiles and activate them using the drop-down menu next to the Profiles button in the ATI Control Center. Your profiles will be listed by name under the 'Activate Profile' item of the Profiles drop-down menu.
Desktop Shortcut - This is a very useful way of activating profiles, particularly profiles which apply to particular games or applications. If this option is ticked, when you save a profile this places a special ATI shortcut on your Windows Desktop, which when launched will activate the particular profile associated with it. See the Application tab description below for more details of how to use this feature to create and use different profiles for each game.
Applications: Under this tab you can associate a particular application or game with the profile. You can do this by putting a tick in the 'opens the following application, file or shortcut' box, and then inserting the full path and name of a executable or shortcut using the Browse button. I recommend you select the path to a shortcut, as the Control Center has some issues with launching certain executables properly (e.g Doom3.exe). Unfortunately this method doesn't mean that whenever you run that application or shortcut that the drivers will automatically detect this and run the appropriate profile. That would be extremely useful, but that's not what this does. The closest you can get to that sort of ease-of-use is to tick the 'Desktop Shortcut' option under the Activation tab, then save your profile. You will now find a shortcut on your desktop which, when launched, will start the application or game you've assigned to the profile, and implement all the profile's settings.
One last thing I can recommend in regards to profiles is that you should ideally save your regular "everyday" Control Center settings under a profile with a name like Default or Normal. That way you won't lose them. For more useful game profiles which are automatically detected and used when a game is launched, use ATI Tray Tools instead - see the Advanced Tweaking section for details.
Preferences
When you click the Preferences button, you will find several other options which are covered below: Always On Top - As the name implies, if ticked, this option forces the ATI Control Center to always remain on top of all other windows when open.
Hide Tooltips - Tooltips are the small grey popup boxes which appear every time you highlight a particular setting or option in the ATI Control Center. These give brief descriptions of each setting. If they annoy you, you can tick this option to remove them.
Hide Toolbar Text - If unticked, this option gives each of the five buttons at the top of the ATI Control Center a text label, such as 'View' and 'Preferences'. If ticked, the buttons remain but their text will be removed. I recommend leaving the text enabled (unticked), at least until you become extremely familiar with the Control Center.
Hide Splash Screen - If ticked, you will not see the 'ATI Catalyst Control Center' small intro screen/box which appears prior to the CCC being opened.
Enable System Tray Menu - The System Tray menu is another form of quick access to the ATI Control Center, however I personally feel it is an unnecessary use of resources and should be disabled. You can remove it by unticking this option, and instead I recommend using ATI Tray Tools (See Advanced Tweaking section). However if you really must use it, leave a tick here to ensure it loads into memory every time your system starts up and appears in your system tray area.
Select Language - If selected, brings up a language selection box, where you can choose the language used for all ATI Control Center interface text.
Select a Skin - If selected, brings up the Skin Select Form box, which allows you to choose a new "skin" (graphical appearance of the dialog boxes) for the ATI Catalyst Control Center. You can choose whichever suits your taste. Some skins may take up slightly more memory, but to be honest the entire Control Center takes up so much memory, another few MB won't make much of a difference. However for minimal resource usage choose the 'System Skin' option which uses the default skin.
Restore Factory Defaults - Selecting this option will restore all the default settings for the Control Center. I recommend you only use it if you run into a lot of problems and want to return to defaults settings to start from scratch.
Help
The Help button allows you to get more help about the Control Center functions, and also contains links for more help in troubleshooting your ATI graphics card.
Next we will examine the ATI Catalyst Control Center.
Welcome
This section only contains a range of ATI links. You can click on the links shown at the bottom right of the main panel to check for updates, contact ATI Customer Care, Send Feedback and so forth. None of these affect the performance or functionality of the ATI Catalysts on your system.
Information Center
The Information Center section contains details about your graphics card hardware and software. This is very handy for quickly finding out more details about your system, such as the core and memory clock speeds. Note that the information is not comprehensive, and on some systems may show up incorrectly. See the Overclocking section of this guide, as well as the System Specifications chapter of the TweakGuides Tweaking Companion (http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html) for a range of better tools for finding out much more about your ATI graphics card and your entire system.
Displays Manager
This section shows all the displays connected to your system and currently recognized by the drivers. A picture of the primary display will be under the Main box, and if another is connected, under the Secondary box. If you right-click on the picture of the display, you will see the options to Rotate the image from that display, or to Swap Display Mapping - which means to exchange the displays mapped to your primary and secondary displays (i.e. make Display 1 become Display 2 and vice versa), and if you have two displays, the option to Disable one of the displays. If you cannot see a recently connected display device listed, click the 'Detect Displays' button and it should appear in the list. If it doesn't check the cabling and if possible use another type of connection (e.g. swap DVI for D-SUB or vice versa).
The currently selected (typically Main) display will be shown under the Selected Displays section of this screen, with details of the display's model name and connection type (e.g. DVI). You can select how big the Desktop Area will be by choosing a resolution for it. The Color Quality can also be changed, all the way from 32-bit, to 16-bit down to 8-bit. The lower the color quality, the less colors used to display the screen image, and 32-bit is recommended for all users. An important setting is the Refresh Rate box which shows the currently used refresh rate, and allows you to adjust it manually. See the Tidying Up section for more details on the refresh rate, and what you should and shouldn't do with it. If in doubt do not alter it.
Rotation provides the option to rotate the display through 4 preset angles, with 0 degrees being a normal image, 180 degrees being an upside down image, and either flipping the image 90 degrees to the left (ccw - counter-clockwise) or right (cw - clockwise). There is no reason to do this unless you have special requirements, such as correctly displaying an image on a display which is on its side.
The Force button contains a range of sub-options which allow you to manually force a wider range of settings to the Desktop Resolution, Color Quality, Refresh Rate, Rotation and HDTV properties. There is an inherent danger in doing this, as for example you may assign a refresh rate which exceeds your display's capabilities and thus get no image and perhaps even damage your display device. The main reason you would use these options would be to select a setting which you know works on your system or display but is not being correctly detected, especially if you want to force a specific HDTV resolution such as 1920x1080. Exercise caution, and don't mess with this setting unless you know what you're doing.
Display Options
The 3D Refresh Rate Override option when enabled allows you to force a game's refresh rate to exceed the default 60Hz. You can do this by selecting 'Same as Desktop', if your Desktop refresh rate is above 60Hz. You can find out much more Refresh Rates on page 4 of this guide. Do not alter this setting without first understanding what Refresh Rates do, as forcing a non-default refresh rate can result in some games not starting up at all.
The Display Detection Option simply determines at what point the Catalysts will attempt to detect all your display device(s). If you select 'Detect whenever Catalyst Control Center is opened' then it will do exactly that - go through a detection process for any attached displays whenever you open the Control Center. Unless you regularly connect and disconnect displays to your system, I recommend you select the second option 'Use manual detection only (I must click the Detect Displays button)' for quicker CCC startup.
The Display Management Options section here also allows for forced detection of any connected televisions (if 'Force TV detection' is ticked). If you display has limited resolution capabilities - that is, if it can only display in certain resolutions - then the default 'List only those modes supported by all displays' is the safest as it ensures you cannot select a display mode which is incompatible with one or more of the displays.
Monitor/Digital Panel Properties
Depending on whether you have a traditional CRT monitor or a Digital flat panel display (e.g. LCD) attached, the settings in this section may be different. See the relevant section below:
Monitor Properties
Attributes: The main area of the Monitor Properties section shows you the details of the particular CRT display(s) you have connected to your machine, including resolution and refresh rate limits. You can select whether you want to tick 'Use Extended Display Identification Data (EDID)', which is recommended if available. This allows your display device to accurately inform the Catalysts about its capabilities, reducing the change of any damage to the monitor from inappropriate resolutions and/or refresh rates. If your monitor doesn't support EDID (which is rare) or you are certain it is incorrectly identifying your monitor's capabilities, untick the box and manually set the maximum resolution and refresh rate.
Adjustments: You can use the arrows on this screen to adjust the screen position and size if the picture on your display is not reaching the edges of the monitor. I recommend resizing and repositioning the image on your screen to ensure that the image evenly touches the four edges of your monitor screen. However ideally you should use the controls on your monitor to resize, reshape and reposition the image to perfectly match the monitor screen. You may have to do this several times, at various resolutions and refresh rates. If then you reach some sort of limitation with the monitor controls, you can use these software controls for further adjustments.
The Horizontal and Vertical synchronization of your monitor are controlled by the settings here. You will typically see a '+' or a '-' sign against the Horizontal and Vertical settings. I strongly advise you not to alter these unless you are directed to by a technical support person, or you know precisely what you are doing. Clicking on the buttons can result in loss of video signal (black screen) and even potential damage to your monitor. In particular, the Composite Sync option combines the vertical and horizontal synchronization signals into one, and is only for composite monitors. Do not click on the blue Composite button unless you are certain you are using a composite monitor.
Troubleshoot: If you know your display device is capable of display modes such as 720p (720 horizontal lines progressive scan) and/or 1080i (1080 horizontal lines interlaced) then you can tick the relevant boxes here to add these modes to the Force button under the Displays Manager section. Do not select these modes if your display device is not capable of such resolutions (as most CRTs aren't), since attempting to use these resolutions may cause damage to your display device if not supported.
Digital Panel Properties
Attributes: This section shows the details of your digital panel's capabilities, including the panel name and connection type, and maximum supported resolution (usually called the 'native' resolution) and refresh rate.
Image Scaling: This section allows you to choose whether to have the images on the screen 'Scale to full panel size', or 'Use centered timings'. For most displays the 'Scale image to full panel size' is the best option, however the further away your current resolution is from your display's 'native' resolution, the blurrier the onscreen image will be. Note, you can use the free Microsoft ClearType (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/Step1.aspx) utility to make text in non-native resolutions much clearer. If you want to force all resolutions to display at your monitor's native resolution - hence providing the sharpest image quality - select the 'Use Centered Timings' option, however note that any resolutions below your native resolution will appear as a centered box on the screen with black borders.
DVI Settings: If your flat panel is connected via DVI cable, you can select the 'Reduce DVI frequency on high-resolution displays' and 'Alternate DVI operational mode' settings to reduce/remove any potential graphical anomalies if running your panel at resolutions above 1280x1024. For most panels however this is not necessary, and both these options should be unticked.
Avivo Color
This section is only available for ATI graphics cards which support per-display color settings, namely the X1000 series or newer. Here you can alter the Hue and Saturation for each display connected to your system. Hue refers to the gradation over the color range, while Saturation refers to the richness/vibrance of a particular color. To put this in simple terms, changing the Hue value changes the actual colors shown - and hence is best not altered. However Saturation is useful to change, as it operates similar to the 'Digital Vibrance' option for Alidia Forceware drivers - it alters the vibrance of a color. Raising this slightly can greatly improve the ATI Catalyst Control Center.
HDTV Support
This section allows you to add 720p, 1080i or 1080p modes to the Displays Manager section. If you are certain your monitor/digital panel supports these modes and they are not being detected properly, tick the relevant box(es) here and they will be added as available options under the Force button of the Display Options section of the CCC (See further above). If you then get display anomalies when running these higher resolution HDTV modes, you can use the utility at the bottom of this section to adjust the image size/resolution until it fits properly on your display. Remember, if you have any doubts don't enable these options as setting a resolution which exceeds your display's capabilities can damage it.
3D
Unlike the old ATI Control Panel, the Control Center doesn't distinguish between OpenGL and Direct3D for the majority of 3D-related settings. They are combined into one area called '3D', and whatever you select here will apply equally to all games and 3D applications - whether they be OpenGL or Direct3D - except for the API specific 'More Settings' section (see further below). The most interesting feature of the 3D section is that there is a 3D preview in the main panel, showing a typical game scene, with the scene shown differing based on the setting you are viewing. The graphics used for this preview will adjust in real time to reflect the changes you are making in the 3D settings. Pay particular attention to this 3D preview image to see changes in subtle details, like the way the tiles on the ground and textures on the walls become crisper into the distance as more Anisotropic Filtering is used, or the way the jagged lines become smoother with increasing Antialiasing.
There are several main settings under the 3D section, and each is covered below:
Standard Settings: If you are awfully lazy, and just don't have the time or patience to change a whole bunch of settings you can simply use this universal slider to adjust your graphics card's settings between either Performance or Quality modes. I don't recommend this method whatsoever - take the time to adjust all the settings individually for optimal performance and image quality: tick the 'Use custom settings box' and follow the advice below.
Anti-Aliasing: Antialiasing (AA) determines how jagged the outlines of objects appear to be. For a full description and screenshot comparisons, see this page (http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_11.html) of my Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide. It is recommended that you tick the 'Use application settings' box, so that the level of Antialiasing can be set within particular games and won't conflict with your Control Center settings. However if you really want to force a particular level of AA in all 3D games, disable any in-game AA then untick the box here and use the slider here to force a particular level of Antialiasing. From 2x to 4x to 6x sample rate (or higher depending on your graphics card), the higher the level of Antialiasing, the less jagged the lines in games and 3D applications will appear, however the lower your performance will be. Note that Crossfire users will see more options here if Crossfire mode is enabled.
Temporal Antialiasing: This setting is described in more detail here (http://tech-report.com/reviews/2004q2/radeon-x800/index.x?pg=22). Essentially it is a driver trick designed to give the effect of a higher level of Antialiasing, but with a lower performance hit. For example, if you select 2x on the Antialiasing sample slider and also tick the Temporal Antialiasing box, during a game given the right conditions (high framerates) it will look almost exactly like 4x Antialiasing, but with the performance impact of only 2x Antialiasing. Since the image quality of Temporal Antialiasing cannot be captured properly in a screenshot, the only way to determine if you like it or not is to try it yourself.
Remember, if you want to disable Antialiasing (for fastest performance), or if you simply want to determine the level of Antialiasing using the settings in a particular game, you should tick the 'Use application settings' box, and the ATI Control Center will not force any Antialiasing on any game or 3D app. This is the recommended option since most games now have separate Antialiasing settings, and often if you try to force Antialiasing on them using the Control Center it will cause conflicts and slowdowns. Furthermore some games simply cannot have Antialiasing forced on them due to the rendering method they use, such as HDR or Deferred Shading (e.g. games like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.).
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: This is an Antialiasing technique which improves the appearance of scenes which contain transparent textures. Enabling it will result in varying image quality and performance impacts depending on whether you choose the 'Quality' or 'Performance' mode. Some details and screenshots can be found here (http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/09/29/cat_59_taa/) and here (http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/11/10/ati_catalyst_511/). The 3D preview provided also shows the impact quite clearly. In general the performance impact should not be significant over normal Antialiasing, but it still does reduce FPS when enabled, so untick it if you need the additional framerate.
Anisotropic Filtering: This graphics method sharpens textures as they fade into the distance. Once again, you can find a full, easy-to-understand description of it at the bottom of this page (http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_11.html) of my Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide. Note that you can select the 'High Quality AF' mode which enables Trilinear Filtering, or disable it which enables Bilinear Filtering - the difference between them is negligible in terms of image quality, so if you need the extra FPS untick the High Quality AF box. If you wish to disable Anisotropic Filtering, or more importantly allow individual game settings to determine it, tick the 'Use application settings' box, which is recommended. Most recent games have some sort of 'Texture Filtering' or Anisotropic Filtering-related option which should be used instead of this setting to prevent conflicts or problems. If instead you wish to force a specific level of AF in every game, untick the box and select the sample rate to use, with higher rates provided clearer distant textures at the cost of some FPS.
Catalyst A.I: Catalyst A.I. allows users to determine the level of 'optimizations' the drivers enable in graphics applications. These optimizations are graphics 'short cuts' which the Catalyst A.I. calculates to attempt to improve the performance of 3D games without any noticeable reduction in image quality. In the past there has been a great deal of controversy about 'hidden optimizations', where both Nvidia and ATI were accused of cutting corners, reducing image quality in subtle ways by reducing image precision for example, simply to get higher scores in synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark. In response to this, both ATI and Nvidia have made the process transparent to a great extent. You can select whether you want to enable or disable Catalyst A.I. for a further potential performance boost in return for possibly a slight reduction in image quality in some cases. If Catalyst AI is enabled, you can also choose the aggressiveness of such optimizations, either Standard or Advanced on the slider. The Advanced setting ensures maximum performance, and usually results in no problems or any noticeable image quality reduction. If on the other hand you want to always ensure the highest possible image quality at all costs, disable Catalyst A.I. (tick the 'Disable Catalyst A.I.' box). I recommend leaving Catalyst A.I enabled unless you experience problems. ATI have made it clear that many application-specific optimizations for recent games such as Oblivion are dependent on Catalyst AI being enabled.
Note: As of the 6.7 Catalysts, Crossfire users should set Catalyst A.I. to Advanced to force Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR) mode in all Direct3D games for optimal performance. Once again, Catalyst A.I. should only be disabled for troubleshooting purposes, such as if you notice image corruption in particular games.
Mipmap Detail Level: This slider helps determine how good textures generally look, when combined with your game's own texture settings. By moving the slider to the right, textures should appear sharper and more detailed, but performance is reduced. By lowering this slider you may see texture anomalies in particular games, so increase the slider if that is the case. I recommend leaving this slider at the far right, and adjusting mipmap/texture detail levels in individual games to minimize graphical anomalies.
All Settings: If you find that changing settings with the Preview screen visible is annoying you, or if you simply want to see all the settings in one summary interface, then you might want to adjust your 3D settings using this option. Just click this option and in place of the Preview screen will appear all the setting sliders and tick boxes for you to adjust as discussed on the previous page. Importantly, there is a significant additional option under the All Settings section which is not available elsewhere in the Control Center:
Wait for Vertical Refresh: This option controls Vertical Synchronization (VSync) in games. VSync is the synchronization of your graphics card and monitor's abilities to redraw the screen a number of times each second (measured in FPS or Hz), and is explained in greater detail on this page (http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_9.html) of the Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide. There are four choices here: Always Off - Vertical Sync will always be set to Off, regardless of the setting in the game or 3D application. This provides fastest performance but may result in image 'tearing' which can be annoying to some.
Off, Unless Application Specifies - Vertical Sync will be off by default, however if you choose to enable it in a game or 3D application, it will be enabled for that game/app. This is the recommended mode.
On, Unless Application Specifies - Same as above, except Vertical Sync will be on by default unless otherwise disabled in a particular game or 3D application.
Always On - Vertical Sync will always remain on, regardless of the setting in the game or 3D application. This is not recommended, as it may reduce performance however it guarantees that there will never be any screen "tearing".
It is recommended you select the 'Off, Unless Application Specifies' option for the best performance, and this also allows you to set VSync Off/On in each individual game using the game's own settings if required. Generally speaking, VSync should be disabled for the best performance.
More Settings: Even though the Catalyst Control Center doesn't distinguish between OpenGL and Direct3D in the bulk of the 3D settings, there are still some settings which are unique to OpenGL and Direct3D respectively, and they are covered here: Direct3D Settings
Enable geometry instancing - Geometry instancing basically optimizes the rendering of objects which appear multiple times in a 3D scene by uploading one instance of the object and then replicating that as many times as needed. For example, with geometry instancing enabled, outdoor scenes with 3D objects like leaves, bushes and grass should be rendered faster, since the geometry for only one instance of a blade of grass is calculated and then reproduced over and over to create a field of grass. You should enable this option to improve performance in such cases, and only disable it if you notice graphical anomalies with multiple objects of the same type.
Support DXT texture formats - DXT is DirectX Texture Compression, which compresses textures into smaller sizes, making them easier to load into Video Memory and hence speeding up graphics performance with minimal loss in the quality of textures. It is strongly recommended that you make sure this option is enabled (ticked) to support DXT texture formats for maximum performance.
Alternate Pixel Center - This setting changes where the center of each pixel originates, and that can resolve problems such as texture or text anomalies in games. You should leave this Disabled unless you experience precisely those sort of problems.
OpenGL Settings
Triple Buffering - This setting is described in more detail on this page (http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_10.html) of my Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide. Set this option to Enabled to improve overall performance in OpenGL games if VSync is enabled. However using Triple Buffering may cause problems for graphics cards with lower Video RAM, so disable this option if you’re experiencing problems such as mouse or input lag, or if you don't enable VSync in OpenGL games. See the guide above as well as the Advanced Tweaking section for more details of how to enable Triple Buffering in Direct3D games.
Force 24-bit Z-Buffer depth- The Z-Buffer controls the rendering of depth in 3D games, such as which objects are hidden behind others when viewed at a distance. Greater precision for the Z-Buffer means less chance of visual errors, which often appear in the form of objects showing through each other, or having missing or flashing bits. This option allows you to force 24-bit Z-Buffer precision, however I don't recommend ticking this option, as the Z-Buffer precision should normally be left to be determined by each game. If you do see a lot of errors and glitches in distant objects in games, you can try forcing a higher Z-Buffer depth, but this typically reduces performance.
Color
If you believe you don't have appropriate color and brightness on your monitor when displaying the Windows desktop, or in particular games, you should firstly make sure you have the correct Color Profile for your monitor installed (See Color Management section). If this doesn't resolve the problem, you can manually change the color and brightness/contrast/gamma settings for your Desktop and/or 3D games in this section. The first choice you have to make is whether you want to adjust these settings for your Windows Desktop (Select the 'Desktop' option), or for 3D Applications (Select the 'Full Screen 3D' option).
Next, you can select whether you want to change the Gamma, Brightness and Contrast properties of the Red, Green and Blue colors individually (Select the Red, Green, or Blue option) or for all of them at once (Select 'All Channels'). For each color, or for all colors, you can then move the Gamma, Brightness and Contrast sliders to the left or right to adjust the properties as appropriate. If you want to reset your choice for a particular slider, click the Reset button next to it. If you want to reset all your changes back to the 'normal' values, click the Defaults button. For most people I recommend using the default values here and adjusting your monitor's controls to achieve optimal color and brightness/contrast.
(Avivo) Video
This section allows you to change the display properties of any video media which you may play through your PC. There is a video preview of a waving ATI flag which allows you to see the effects of your settings. There are three sub-sections to the Video Settings section, and each is covered below:
Video Basics: You can select a preset video playback configuration from here. The presets include Home, Office, and Theater. If you're not happy with one of the presets, use the Custom preset and adjust the relevant settings below.
Video Color: Basic: If you untick the 'Use application settings' box, the options in this section of the Control Center will determine the brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and gamma settings for any image which displays through a video overlay, such as DVD playback. Changing these sliders will adjust the properties of the image and you can immediately see the impact of these on the right side video preview. Set to suit your tastes, but if you don't like your changes, select the Discard button at the bottom and tick the 'Use application settings' box again to allow individual video playback applications use their own settings for video playback.
Theater Mode: These settings work if you have an ATI graphics card which is capable of supporting a Primary and Secondary display, and the secondary display is connected. You can see a preview of the impact of your choices on the Video Preview panel, so select a combination which suits your needs. If you select 'Theater Mode' from the list, you can select the aspect ratio of the video playback here. Aspect Ratio is the width of the image versus the height of the image. 4:3 ratio is standard TV/monitor size, while 16:9 is the standard Widescreen TV format, such as that used in most DVD movies and HDTVs. If you select 'Match the source video', then if the source is 4:3 aspect ratio, so too will the playback be in 4:3. Alternatively, if you want to change the video's aspect ratio to match to your display's aspect ratio, select the 'Scale to full screen' option, however note that this may cause skewing/distortion of the image.
Video Quality: The Catalysts come with software Deinterlacing (http://www.100fps.com/) which can help improve the image quality of videos depending on the method you choose. The options available are Auto-Detect, Bob, Motion Adaptive, Vector Adaptive, Adaptive and Weave (No deinterlacing). You will have to experiment to select the right type for your particular video source, but look at the preview display to see an indication of the various impacts. If in doubt, select 'Auto Detect'.
All Settings: This section is similar to that under the 3D section of the Control Panel - it allows you to view and change all the Video settings in one place, without a video preview. However it also contains an additional option 'Windows Media Video Acceleration'. If this option is ticked, it uses your graphics hardware to improve WMV-encoded video playback - which is recommended.
SmartGart
The settings here have a significant impact on your system stability, and to some degree on your performance, if you run an AGP graphics card.
Set AGP Speed: This setting only applies to AGP graphics cards, not PCI-E cards. AGP Speed is detailed under the Essential Optimization section of the guide. Your current AGP speed is shown here, and you can manually change it by using the slider. Note that certain AGP Speeds may be greyed out, either because they offer significantly lower performance, or because your motherboard and/or graphics card do not support those speeds. It is recommended that you set the highest available AGP Speed here for optimal performance. If at any time you begin experiencing lots of crashes, freezes and other problems, you can reduce the AGP Speed here in an attempt to increase system stability. Also make sure the AGP speed set here matches the one you set in your BIOS.
Fast Write: This setting is detailed under the BIOS section above, and is essentially the same as the BIOS setting of the same name. Your current Fast Write setting (On or Off) is shown here. As mentioned earlier, Fast Write is a major source of instability on most systems and provides little to no performance benefit, so it is strongly recommended that you select Off here to disable Fast Writes.
AGP Read, AGP Write, PCI Read, PCI Write: These settings are covered in detail under the Catalyst Installation section of the guide. For optimal performance you should ensure they are all set to On.
Retest: If you click this option next to any of these settings, or the 'Retest All' button, the SmartGart system will retest the setting(s) in an attempt to find the "best" settings. Of course this means it will revert the setting(s) to exactly the same as it was when you first opened the SmartGart tab, so there should be no reason for you to use this option unless you want to return to the default settings.
Importantly, if you have changed any of these settings, clicking the Apply button may require that you reboot your system to implement the changes. Once you reboot, come back into the ATI Control Center and check these settings under the SmartGart section. If they haven't changed, it is highly likely you will need to re-enable the ATI Smart service, install the latest motherboard AGP driver and alter other important settings such as those in your BIOS.
VPU Recover
Enable VPU Recover: VPU Recover attempts to stop any sort of graphics-related crashes or freezes from completely locking up or resetting your machine. While this is a valiant idea, in practice VPU Recover has been known to increase the probability of crashes and problems when enabled, and more importantly needing VPU Recover to kick in regularly is a sign that something is wrong with your system and you need to find the source of the problem. I recommend that you untick (disable) VPU Recover to increase system stability, and then seek out and remedy the source of any problems by using the tips in the rest of this guide and the tips in the TweakGuides Tweaking Companion (http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html). A stable system will never trigger VPU Recover. Note that this option doesn't exist in Windows Vista, since Vista's new driver model means that a form of VPU Recover is permanently in effect for all graphics cards.
Prepare an Error Report: If VPU Recover is enabled, this option will be available to be ticked. If ticked, it means that every time your system has an error which VPU Recover helps recover from, an email will be generated which you can send to ATI disclosing the details of the problem. While this may help ATI in determining the cause of certain issues, more often than not it is completely unnecessary and I recommend unticking this option, even if you do use VPU Recover.
ATI OverDrive
If you have a Radeon XT, X1X00 series or newer graphics card, you will find an ATI OverDrive item in the Control Center. The OverDrive panel provides information about the current temperature of your graphics card's Graphics Processing Unit (the GPU or Core) which is only possible due to the presence of a temperature sensor on your graphics cards. This is the reason why older cards do not have Overdrive, because it requires the physical presence of this temperature diode onboard the card itself.
If you tick the 'Enable ATI Overdrive' box, the OverDrive software will actively monitor your graphics card's temperature and allow you to manually overclock your video card's GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) core/engine speed as well as the memory, if it is safe to do so. This is a nice method of achieving some extra performance safely, since OverDrive will not allow your graphics card to fry by accidentally overclocking it to insane speeds. If you want to overclock your system see the Overclocking section for more details.
A common question asked by users is "What is a safe temperature for my graphics card?" This varies depending on the particular graphics card series you have, since each is based on a particular architecture and hence has different heat output and tolerances. Typically, under most circumstances the 50-60 degree (Celsius) range is considered quite normal at idle, increasing into the high 70s under load. These temperatures will rise when overclocking or when your system is not properly cooled, and can result in crashes and freezes when under load. See the Overclocking section for more information on cooling.
Finally, note that some ATI graphics cards don't come with OverDrive capability. If you believe you should be seeing the OverDrive tab in the Control Center but it's not there, remember that the ATI Hotkey Poller service needs to be set to Automatic (See Tidying Up section), and if necessary contact ATI Technical Support for more help.
Crossfire
If you have two ATI graphics cards, with at least one being a Crossfire Edition (http://ati.amd.com/technology/crossfire/index.html) graphics card, and they are installed in an appropriate Crossfire-supported motherboard (with both PCI-E Slots enabled in the BIOS), and you're using the correct connecting cable between the two cards, you should be able to see the Crossfire tab in the Catalyst Control Center. You can then tick the 'Enable Crossfire' box to enable Crossfire usage - it should be disabled for any games in which you notice performance problems or glitches. It is recommended that you then make sure Catalyst AI is enabled (See further above) so that the Catalyst drivers can automatically set the correct Crossfire mode for each game. Note that with Crossfire enabled, you will be able to access additional Crossfire Antialiasing modes under the Antialiasing section of the 3D options in the CCC - up to 14x Antialiasing.
Once you're done changing all the Catalyst Control Center settings to suit your preferences, make sure you click the Apply button at the bottom of the Control Center box to apply them. In fact get used to pressing the Apply button after almost every change so you can see the impacts of it more quickly. Now is also a good time to click the Profiles button and create a new profile called Default (or similar), to keep all your preferred original settings from being lost.
For Advanced settings of ATI Catalyst, go to following link below.
http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_9.html (http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_9.html)