For more a greater
amount of advanced options, I recommend downloading
Rage3D Tweak. Once installed, you can select the
(inspiringly titled) Rage3DTweak tab. Expand the
Tweaker section and set the Select Tweaker Mode
option to Advanced and then select Apply –
this will give access to a more complete set of options.
(Note – If you can’t
adjust an option in Rage3DTweak, be sure to select the box
icon for the option before attempting to adjust a slider –
the option description should change to Data: (Edit)
if done correctly).
Direct3D Settings
Now expand the
Direct3D menu.
# of Samples.
FSAA is used to alleviate a variety of image artefacts that
can occur, such as texture shimmering, jagged edges or
crawling jagged edges (Something which using higher
resolutions cannot resolve). This option specifies the
number of samples to be used when performing FSAA, options available will
vary depending on Radeon installed, though with the 9700 Pro
options available are App Pref, 2
Samples, 4 Samples & 6 Samples. Ticking
the App Pref box allows Direct3D applications to
determine which FSAA mode to use (Assuming they allow
selection of FSAA in their configuration, e.g. as Enter The
Matrix does), otherwise FSAA will be disabled.
Screenshots & performance comparisons/conclusions between
the various modes are available in the OpenGL section
of this guide.
Alternate Pixel
Center. This option can be
left Unticked unless you find an application
displaying vertical & horizontal lines around textures or
display text incorrectly, in which case try Ticking
this to resolve the issue. When not using the affected title
be sure to Untick this however.
Anisotropic
Filtering. Anisotropic
filtering provides reduced texture aliasing &
improved texture sharpness over greater distances by using a
greater number of samples per pixel - with higher samples
improving the effectiveness of the filtering but as a result
of an increased number of samples performance will be
reduced. Options available will vary depending on Radeon
installed, though with the 9700 Pro options
available are By Application, 2:1 Forced,
4:1 Forced, 8:1 Forced & 16:1 Forced.
Selecting By Application allows Direct3D applications
to determine which anisotropic filtering level to use
(Assuming they allow selection of anisotropic filtering in
their configuration, e.g. as Enter The Matrix does),
otherwise anisotropic filtering will be disabled.
Screenshots & performance comparisons/conclusions between
the various modes are available in the OpenGL section
of this guide, suffice it to say for now that if you can
afford the frame rate hit then I’d recommend selecting at
least 4:1 Forced.
Anisotropic Mode.
This setting
allows you to specify whether Bilinear (Performance)
or Trilinear (Quality)
filtering are to be used in conjunction with Anisotropic texture filtering. Trilinear texture
filtering operates by taking 4 samples (texels) from 2
neighbouring Mipmaps, applies a bilinear filter to them &
then interpolates the results. This results in improved
image quality, with more seamless transitions between Mipmap
levels & enhanced texture detail as compared to Bilinear
filtering. In most instances selecting
Performance should
only provide a slight frame rate improvement (Particularly
with newer Radeon models) & as such I’d recommend selecting
Quality if
available.
Bump Mapping.
Bump Mapping is a process for simulating enhanced depth
without requiring additional geometry. This takes several
forms, e.g. Dot3 & Environment Bump Mapping, though they
must be specifically supported by an application. The images
beneath illustrate the effects this has in Giants: Citizen
Kabuto.
Bump Mapping
Disabled
Bump Mapping
Enabled
As you can see the
ground & cliff clearly have much greater detail when Bump
mapping is applied and feel coarser than before. Ticking
this option will enable support for bump mapping,
which is recommended for improved image quality where
supported. Unticking this will disable Bump
mapping support, which may improve performance somewhat in
some titles (Depending on how extensively it’s used), though
most such applications allow you to enable/disable
Bump mapping & as such it should not be necessary to
Untick this.
Colorfill.
Ticking this feature can have the effect of making
the display appear more vibrant, this shouldn’t haven’t an
effect on performance either. Untick this option if
your are happy with the current colour levels in Direct3D
applications.
Compressed
Textures. Ticking this
option allows the use of DXT1-5 texture formats in
supporting applications/games & it is highly recommended you
select this option given its common usage in games now
whereby it provides improved performance by reducing texture
memory requirements, with minimal image quality loss.
Unticking this will disable DXT1-5 texture
formats & is not recommended for either compatibility or
performance reasons, nor should it be necessary for
troubleshooting purposes either.
Disable
Hierarchical Z. Unticking
this option enables the use of a hierarchical
Z-Buffer. In which case the Z-Buffer is divided into several
levels of tiles upon which depth tests are then carried out
to determine visibility of objects & whether rendering
should occur or not. Performance gains from this are
rendering order dependent, with front to back rendering
achieving most benefit & back to front least. Most games
though use a random rendering order where the benefit lies
somewhere in-between. You should only need consider
disabling (Ticking) this feature if you wish to
benchmark the performance advantage this feature offers & it
shouldn’t be necessary to do so for compatibility reasons.
Enable W Buffer.
W-Buffering is an alternative to Z-Buffering, though in
general you shouldn’t need to use it unless experiencing
Z-Buffering errors & the title itself supports it.
Ticking this option enables support for the use
of a W-Buffer when specifically requested by an
application, e.g. Operation Flashpoint, Enter The Matrix &
Giants: Citizen Kabuto allow you to use a W-Buffer. You
shouldn’t need to disable (Untick) support for
this feature.
Fast Z Clear.
Normally clearing the Z-Buffer (which needs to be done for
each frame rendered) is performed by writing 0s
throughout it. With this option Ticked this process
is made significantly more efficient by tagging blocks of
the Z-Buffer as cleared (ATI claims this uses only 1/64 the
resources over Fast Z Clear disabled). You should
only really consider disabling (Unticking)
this feature if you wish to benchmark the performance
advantage this feature offers & it shouldn’t be necessary to
do so for compatibility reasons either.
Force Pixel Shader
Version & Force Vertex
Shader Version. These options allow you to specify which
Pixel/Vertex Shader version is to be used by the Driver for
performing shading operations. Leave this set to Driver
Default for best compatibility.
Guard Band
Clipping. Guard band clipping
can improve performance by reducing the amount of frustum
clipping calculations the CPU performs by allowing polygons
which aren’t entirely visible in the current viewpoint to be
accepted. While this may sound like it has much the opposite
effect, it isn’t as clipping calculations can be very CPU
intensive, particularly when the polygons in question are
only partially visible (Which is where frustum clipping
comes into use). For optimal performance Tick this
option, though should you experience any rendering errors in
certain games/applications (unlikely) Untick it for
those titles.
