The Graphics Card - Tweaking Features
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Most graphics cards give you control over their feature sets so you can adjust them for a nice mix of visual quality and high-frame-rate playability. Furthermore, games themselves usually offer various display modes to help you further tailor your experience in specific titles.
Change the graphics card settings by right-clicking an empty portion of the Windows desktop. Click Properties in the pop-up menu to open the Display Properties window shown in Figure 3-13. Select the Settings tab, and then click the Advanced button.
Figure 3-12 Display Properties window
With an ATI-based Radeon 9500/9700, some of the tabs in the next dialog will look like those shown in Figure 3-13. You can adjust settings for OpenGL and Direct3D accelerated games separately. Adjustable settings include anti-aliasing (2X to 6X), anisotropic filtering (2X to 16X), texture detail levels and MIP mapping levels (both carry a range, balancing performance and quality), and vsync (off or on).
Figure 3-13 ATI’s OpenGL Properties sheet; the Direct3D sheet is nearly identical.
Nvidia’s interface used to resemble ATI’s, but recently Nvidia revamped it, as shown in Figure 3-14. We didn’t have a GeForce FX to play with, but we expect its driver controls to be similar to the GeForce4 family’s. When you click the GeForce Ti 4x00 tab, a menu pops out of the side. It includes a performance and quality page, which lets you tweak overall performance (application preference to aggressive), anti-aliasing (off to 4XS, a special Direct3D-only mode that balances performance and visual quality), and anisotropic filtering (off to 8X). OpenGL (Figure 3-15) and Direct3D pages let you tweak vsync and a few other options that are best left at their default settings.
Figure 3-14 The Coolbits registry DWORD enables GeForce overclocking.
Figure 3-15 The Nvidia OpenGL properties sheet
 This chapter is from Build Your Own High Performance Gamers' Mod PC, by Chen and Durham (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2004, ISBN: 0072229012). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today. Buy this book now. |
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