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Mipmap Detail
Level. This slider controls
the LOD parameter used for textures, whereby moving the
position of the slider can increase the sharpness of
Mipmapped textures or vice versa. Options available for this
setting are High Performance, Performance,
Quality, High Quality. As the settings indicate,
each mode offers progressively sharper or more blurred
textures, which will yield improved image quality or frame
rate respectively. The images beneath illustrate the effect
of High Performance & High Quality setting in
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.
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High
Performance |
High Quality |
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The image quality
differences are fairly distinct as can be clearly seen,
certainly when using FSAA select High Quality to
counter the slight blurring that can occur with FSAA
enabled.
Support 32Bit
Z-Buffer. Ticking this
option enables the use of a 32-Bit Z-buffer depth
where specifically requested by an application. When
Unticked the Z-Buffer depth will be determined as
normal, i.e. 24-Bit for 32-Bit colour depth & 16-Bit for
16-Bit colour depth. The use of a 32-Bit Z-Buffer provides
greatest Z-Buffer precision for performing depth
calculations & will minimize rendering errors as a result -
even more so than 24-Bit does. Performance is however be
further reduced as compared with a 24-Bit Z-Buffer depth.
Table Fog.
Ticking this option will enable the Graphics
card to emulate fog table support, which is only required
for applications which fail to correctly query the hardware
for vertex fog or table fog support. Apparently 1 such
afflicted titled was Shadows of the Empire. If nostalgic
gaming isn’t your thing you can leave this Unticked
without issue.
TCL Back Face
Culling. Back face culling is
a process for removing polygons not facing the viewer (i.e.,
You). When Ticked this can provide improved
performance as unseen polygons need not be rendered. You
should only Untick this option if you experience
display artefacts as a result.
TCL Hardware.
Leave this Ticked.
Texture Preference.
Unfortunately since posting this guide initially I’ve still
been unable to find out exactly what this option does (As
before neither FIC responded nor anyone at
Rage3D's Forums). Then again, I cannot see any
difference in image/performance in the latest build3D Mark
2003 either (With High Quality V High Performance only
yielding a 3 point difference). As such the only
recommendation I can give is to set this to High Quality
& adjust texture detail settings via in-game options.
TRUFORM.
TRUFORM provides support for Higher Order Surfaces (via
N-Patch tessellation & with newer ATI Radeons Displacement
Mapping as well) which in supported applications yields more
complex appearing shapes with not too noticeable a
performance hit. When set to App. Preference this
enables Direct3D applications to use supported TRUFORM
features of the Radeon Graphics card as appropriate, this is
the recommended choice as most supporting applications allow
you to set which TRUFORM features are to be used (If they
are supported at all). Selecting Always Off
disables OpenGL/Direct3D applications from using TRUFORM
features, which would be recommended for ensuring optimal
performance instead (Though, again, most supporting
applications will allow you to enable/disable
TRUFROM features anyway).
Vertex Blend Opt.
Vertex blending is a technique, introduced in DirectX 7,
that can be used to smooth out joints in objects –
particularly useful for animated character models.
Ticking this setting will optimize the rendering
performance of vertex buffers, & it is recommended that you
do so for optimal performance.
VertexBlendUseProjMat.
Ticking this option enables vertex blending to
use projection matrices. Though I’m not particularly aware
of Direct3D applications that currently support this, there
should be no harm having it enabled.
Volume Textures.
Unlike standard 2D textures, volume textures (Introduced in
DirectX 8) have depth to them, i.e. 3D textures. This
can be used for producing more realistic appearing fog,
explosions, etc. than 2D textures can. Ticking this
setting will enable support for such 3D textures in
the Radeon Drivers, which is recommended for improved visual
quality where used in supporting applications. Unticking
this will disable this feature, which might improve
performance in certain areas of some titles, possibly useful
for those of you with much older/lower end Radeon Graphics
cards or comparatively very slow CPUs.
Wait for VSync.
V-sync limits the highest possible frame rate to your
Monitors refresh rate at any resolution. Setting this to
App. Pref. will allow the Application/Game to determine
whether V-sync is to be enabled or disabled
(Defaulting to it being on in most instances). Setting this
to Always Off will disable V-sync in all
Direct3D Games/Applications, which can improve performance
(Frames are rendered as fast as they can be regardless of
refresh rate), although you may experience image tearing
&/or input device/controller lag as a result. Setting this
to Always On will enable V-sync & should
provide best image quality (As there should be no visible
tearing associated with it being disabled) & no controller
lag should occur either, though the maximum frame rate will
be limited as described earlier. I’d recommend leaving this
set to Always On for best visual quality as a result
unless you intend to benchmark Game performance. The
OpenGL section illustrates the effect of TRUFORM in a
game.
Z Compression.
The Z-Buffer contains depth information for every pixel to
be rendered. Thus, using higher resolutions not only
consumes more fill rate, it also requires a larger Z-Buffer
as more pixels are to be rendered. Hyper Z III however
supports compression of the Z-Buffer, which reduces the size
of this data & therefore will save on bandwidth needed for
Z-Buffer reads/writes. With FSAA enabled colour
compression is also supported. As such this compression
helps makes the Radeon a highly efficient card when
rendering with FSAA (particular with FSAA enabled) &
ATI claims that at best it offers at 24:1 compression ratio
using 6X FSAA (4:1 with FSAA disabled). Perhaps most
critically Z Compression is lossless when set to Driver
Default & there should be no adverse effect on image
quality as a result. Personally I’d not recommend selecting
any of the other available options except for experimental
purposes, perhaps.
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