Hey if you have a radeon, post some tips here

[Ravens Nest]

Right thought i'd post my tips to get the most out of your radeon so here go's..

I use a tweak program to alter some of the catalyst driver's hidden settings.
I use rage3dtweak to do this
http://www.rage3d.com/index.php?node=r3dtweak

And then change these settings in rage3dtweak as follows.

DIRECT3D

Colorfill - enabled (Improve the colour saturation in games)
Enable wbuffer - enabled (Helps improve speed in Gothic2 on my pc)
Guard band clipping - enabled
W fog - enabled
Z compression - High (Setting this high improves perfomance but might cause artifacting)
Z fog - enabled
Z mask - enabled (Improves 3d speed)

OPENGL

3Dnow! - enabled (Only for AMD cpu's)
Force 16bit textures - disabled (Obviously you want 32bit colour not 16)
SSE - enabled (Optimizations for P3 or above \ AMD xp or above)
SSE2 - enabled (Optimizations for P4 or AMD64)

[Ravens Nest]

Also i use Radlinker to allow me to specify exactly what graphics settings i want each game to use.

http://www28.brinkster.com/chrisww1942/

What you have to do is install the program and then find each games .exe file and press RMB then you will see a option called 'create radlink'

Press this and then it will create a radlinked shortcut to the game, you can stick this where ever you like as it is only a shortcut.

Then press the RMB on the shortcut pick DirectX or OpenGL depend on what the game uses and change the setting to what you like

Press the shortcut to start the game with your custom settings

[SilentDeath]

Also omega drivers are better than the officail ATI cats. Improved image quality etc.. and I think have those settings you mentioned already done. They come with usefull apps aswell which are optional - artifact tester5, radlinker/radclocker, reforce and few others.
www.omegacorner.com

[oshta]

but they (omega drivers) screw up my comp!!

[Korky]

cat 3.9's for 3dmark2k1 generally speaking, latest cat's for 2k3 generally speaking.
whip of that poor excuse for a cooler and put some real socket a style cooling on it if ur pushing the card to its limits.
Dont forget to plug the power cable in ;-) and it isnt only used to power the fan...
Omega or Catalyst, most people say Omegas are better but as oshta has just pointed out.. they are not for everyone. If you dont want hastle catalyst is the way to go, omegas for the adventurer

[BUFF]

Omega's are the Catalyst drivers - just different settings than standard ATI cats.

[Korky]

yes Buff i know that, but they arent official so thats why i said to play it safe choose cats (official), etc..

[oshta]

yeah - that maybe - but there settings bust my PC ever time!!

[BUFF]

yeah - that maybe - but there settings bust my PC ever time!!

Don't know why oshta
I've got 3 nForce2 PC's here that have been used with ATI 95/97/9800 series cards & Omega's drivers the vast majority of the time. Haven't had any more problems than with the base ATI Cats (earlier versions of ATI cats did crash regularly).


Omega's are semi-official
"The author of these drivers is part of the CATALYST beta driver testing team, and also in direct contact with ATI. In fact we would go so far as to say that if a user chooses to go the mod driver route, they go with the Omega Drivers."

[Spud1]

i just use the omegas, they alredy have all the tweaks done

[BUFF]

Don't know why oshta
I've got 3 nForce2 PC's here that have been used with ATI 95/97/9800 series cards & Omega's drivers the vast majority of the time. Haven't had any more problems than with the base ATI Cats (earlier versions of ATI cats did crash regularly).

& Omega's are semi-official
" The author of these drivers is part of the CATALYST beta driver testing team, and also in direct contact with ATI. In fact we would go so far as to say that if a user chooses to go the mod driver route, they go with the Omega Drivers."

[Ravens Nest]

i just use the omegas, they alredy have all the tweaks done

Just wondering Spud1, how do you know they have all the tweaks already?
Is there a way of find that out?

If they do have all the tweaks included with the omegas, then i suppose my recommended setting are only good if you dont want to install the omegas and/or if you're like oshta and have problems with the omegas.

But the Radlinker program now thats pure class every one who is serious about gaming should have them installed.

[Howard]

Do these Omega drivers actually make a noticeable difference in games or is it just the power of suggestion?

[Ravens Nest]

Do these Omega drivers actually make a noticeable difference in games or is it just the power of suggestion?

Personally i found they made quite a difference up until the 3.9 drivers i.e. sharper image, i had problems with Arx fatalis where the menu didnt appear but with thomegas they worked and there was less stuttering as well.

But from the 3.10 drivers onwards i havent seen any difference between them and the catalyst drivers nice utilities though

[Spud1]

ok so they might not have ALL the tweaks but my that i meant lots of tweaks, cos thats all they arereally, tweaked drivers.