If something should
be said about ATI, is the impressive way they managed to
accomplish many things in a relatively short timeframe.
Beyond releasing the first truly DirectX 9 graphics card,
they also got to beat NVIDIA in terms of performance and
drivers development, which still happens to come along
extremely well, and that last thing is something we probably
never have thought just a couple of years back.
This guide will take
you through configuring your system for best
compatibility/performance along with your ATI Radeon
graphics card, covering options available with the latest
Catalyst Drivers. For reference sake, this guide was
prepared using an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro AGP videocard using an
Abit NV7-133R nForce (AGP 4X) and later an Abit NF7-S nForce
2 (AGP 8X) motherboards running Windows XP Service Pack 1
and Catalyst 3.5/3.6 Drivers.
We will start by covering basic
troubleshooting steps and general settings, then in the next
few pages we will extend onto more
specific Direct3D &
OpenGL settings, performance
comparison between settings and image quality
shots to showcase differences in better detail.
Troubleshooting
Putting first things
first, initially you should make sure you have the latest
drivers installed for your graphics card. You can find links
to manufacturers in our
own drivers section, although should you wish to stick
with
reference drivers, here you have a direct
link to those instead. You should check you have
installed the latest version of
Microsoft's DirectX installed.
It is also highly
important to have the latest Drivers for your Motherboard
installed as well, particularly the AGP Drivers (If you’ve
an AGP Graphics card that is). Installing any available BIOS
update for your Motherboard may also be of some help. You
can verify your AGP Drivers are functioning correctly
download & run NVIDIA’s
AGP Memory utility.
If the values shown
are 0 you’ll likely need to update them. You can find
links to updated Motherboard Chipset Drivers at our
OS Updates section.
In the system BIOS it
is recommended to disable the following settings, if
available - Hidden refresh, VGA palette snoop,
DAC snoop & any Caching/Shadowing
options, e.g. Video BIOS Shadowing.
General Settings
Open Display
Properties, click on the Settings tab then the
Advanced button. Now select the Options tab.
You may set these
options to your own preference: Re-activate all warning
messages, Enable ATI taskbar icon application,
Show ATI icon on taskbar & Disable quick resolution
feature.
Reduce DVI
frequency on high-resolution displays.
If you are experiencing display corruption when connected to
a DVI Flat Panel display via the DVI-Output at high
resolutions (1024x768 +) try Ticking this option to
resolve the issue. In all other instances you can leave this
Unticked.
Alternate DVI
operational mode. If you are
experiencing display corruptions when connected to a DVI
Flat Panel display via the DVI-Output try ticking
this option to resolve the issue. In all other instances you
can leave this Unticked.
Now select the
SMARTGART tab.
SMARTGART is a
diagnostic program that determines your bus (PCI/AGP)
capabilities & adjusts settings to their most optimal
(Stability wise) based on the results obtained. This is done
everytime you install/update your Graphics Drivers via
installer & as such you (generally) shouldn’t need to adjust
the options available here. That said I’ll cover them for
sake of completeness.
Set AGP Speed.
Available options here can vary depending on the AGP
implementation of your motherboard, e.g. with the Abit
NV7-133R nForce (AGP 4X) motherboard only AGP 4X is
available at highest despite, whereas with Abit NF7-S nForce
2 (AGP 8X) motherboard 8X is available. As SMARTGART
does, it would be best to set this to whatever the most
stable mode of operation your motherboard supports is.
Currently for the most part there is little, if any,
noticeable performance variance between available AGP modes
– 1X, 2X, 4X & 8X so it is not
necessary to select the highest mode to achieve best
performance. Be sure to also have the AGP mode is the BIOS
set to the same value also if available. SMARGART verifies
the new AGP mode after a reboot is done.
Fast Write.
Fast writes allows the CPU to send data to the Graphics card
without having to go through RAM, making it a far more
optimal approach. That said in reality most benchmarks done
on this have shown it to be of little actual benefit, in
some cases performing slower, not mention on other systems
it causes stability problems. As a result you might want to
run a few benchmarks before choosing whether or not to leave
this On or Off. On some systems this can cause
stability problems & where it does you should set Off.
Retest All.
Click this button to have SMARTGART retest your graphics bus
capabilities & adjust available options based on the
results. Generally you shouldn’t need to do this beyond when
installing newer Drivers (Which it does so automatically),
though should you start experiencing problems try selecting
this to allow SMARTGART to detect more appropriate settings.
To access Advanced
SMARTGART options click on Start, Run,
type in smartgart & hit Ok (Again, these
settings are automatically determined whenever SMARTGART is
run & are covered more for sake of completeness).
PCI Write/Read.
These features allow the PCI Graphics card to write/read to
system memory (As opposed to Video memory).
AGP Write/Read.
These features allow the AGP Graphics card to write/read to
system memory (As opposed to Video memory).
Retest PCI/AGP
Write/Read. Using these options you can test
individual AGP/PCI features using SMARTGART without
affecting any other graphics bus options.
Retest All.
Click this button to have SMARTGART retest your bus
capabilities & adjust available options based on the
results. Generally you shouldn’t need to do this beyond when
installing newer Drivers (Which it does so automatically),
though should you start experiencing problems try selecting
this to allow SMARTGART to detect more appropriate settings.
