Help for those with ATI cards suffering from slow performance

OK, having helped out Colin with his graphics issues last night. I thought I'd post this quick tutorial on how to setup your ATI card to get the maximum performance out of it. Now, to be clear, we are talking about performance in terms of framerate rather than graphical quality.

1) Follow THIS LINK to the ATI drivers website.

2) Select the appropriate operating system, card family, and specific card from the list and press GO (as in the image below).

3)Once you have downloaded and installed the appropriate and latest drivers, you need to launch the ATI Catalyst Control Center. There should be an icon for it on your desktop. If not, you can access it through right-clicking on the ATI symbol in your taskbar. If you've managed with either of these options move on to point 4.

If, for some inexplicable reason, you aren't capable of either of those options then the surefire way to get to it is as follows:

a) Right-click on the desktop and choose 'Properties' and click on the Settings tab. That should bring up a screen like this.



b) Click on the 'Advanced' button and then the 'CATALYST(R) Control Center' tab and you should see this screen:



c) Click the 'CATALYST(R) Control Center' button.


4) You may be presented with an option screen such as this:

Make sure you choose the Advanced option and then click 'Next'.


5) You should now be presented with a screen that looks something like this:

The section we are concerned with is the '3D' section (as shown above). All you need to do now is follow the next steps and apply the settings I have suggested. Don't worry if you don't have all the settings options I mention as different cards are capable of more or fewer of these options depending on specification.

In the Standard Settings section make sure the slider is set as far to the Performance end as possible.


6) Now, moving on to the Anti-Aliasing (or AA for short) section:

Make sure you set the Anti-Aliasing option to 'Let the application decide'.


7)Make sure that Adaptive Anti-Aliasing is NOT enabled.

8) Moving on to the Anisotropic Filtering (or AF for short) section:

Make sure that this is set to 'Let the application decide'


9) Disable Catalyst AI

10) Move the Mip-Map Detail Level slider as far to the 'Performance' end as possible.

11)Make sure that in the API Specific section that you turn on 'Enable Geometry Instancing' and 'Support DXT texture formats'.

Make sure you press the Apply button before pressing OK to exit.

You're all done!

It never hurts to restart your machine at this point and then double-check that all of the settings have been applied afterwards. All being well, your game should now run smoother.

Nicely done BF
Reps for you ( I've heard that you like being showered in glory )

I think i'll knock one similar one for nVIdia

I get this error message when I try to open 'ATI Catalyst Control Center'



Can someone please help?!

-Which card do you have?

-Have you installed all of the latest Mircrosoft .NET frameworks from the Windows Update site?

1. Radeon X600

2. ?

Go to the Windows Update site and make sure that if there is anything there that makes reference to Microsoft .NET framework that you download and install it.

For example:




If you keep your Windows up to date regularly then you should already have the necessary updates. If you don't keep your Windows up to date regularly, you really should.

Yeah it's alright, I figured it out myself, it runs much smoother now BF. Thanks a bunch

i got a question. do we need to uninstall the old driver before installing the new one? also i have a xp media center edition with a x1400 hypermemory(laptop ofcourse). but there is no option fo it in media center edition. but there is one in xp/home section under mobility radeon. should i select this one. sorry if these are stupid questions.

isrararrafi said:

i got a question. do we need to uninstall the old driver before installing the new one?

Click to expand...

With the older versions of the Catalyst Control Center one would have to uninstall the old version first. However, the newer versions don't require that so you needn't worry.

isrararrafi said:

also i have a xp media center edition with a x1400 hypermemory(laptop ofcourse). but there is no option fo it in media center edition. but there is one in xp/home section under mobility radeon. should i select this one.

Click to expand...

An option for what? This isn't very clear to me I'm afraid. Can you explain it in a little more detail please?

oh ok i will explain it here a bit more. when i try to select my driver i go like this

media center edition(this is what i have dont know if it is professional or home)>>radeon>>then i cant find my card(x1400)


but if i go like this

xp home/pro>>mobility radeon>>x1400. i found it here

i am talking about my laptop here and i am using windows xp media center. so i am little confused. hope i have made sense this time

If you are talking about selecting the driver from the lists on the ATI website, the reason you can't find it in that list is because the X1400 is a Mobility Radeon. It's actually listed under the XP Pro/Home section because presumably they can't imagine why one would install Media Center on a laptop.

Here's the link you need.

oh ok thnanks a lot

P.S. i got the media center edition because it was cheaper

Before I do this, may I ask if it would be worth it with a heavily dated and unsupported Radeon X300 card?

Nope, I tried it and it did not work.

Thanks BF, works a treat! Although I'd rather not have lost to Australia on the last ball...

Awsome job mate, I was very impressed.