ATI Technologies RADEON X1950 XTX User manual

ATI
Radeon
®
X1950 XTX
User’s Guide
P/N 137-41074-10

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Copyright © 2006, ATI TechnologiesInc. All rights reserved.
ATI, the ATI logo, and ATI product and product-feature names are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ATI Technologies Inc. All other company and/or product names are trademarks and/or
registeredtrademarksoftheirrespective owners.Features,performanceandspecificationsaresubject
to change without notice. Product may not be exactly as shown in diagrams.
Reproductionofthismanual,orpartsthereof,inanyform,withouttheexpresswrittenpermissionofATI
Technologies Inc. is strictly prohibited.
Disclaimer
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this document, ATI Technologies Inc.
assumes no liability with respect to the operation or use of ATI hardware, software or other products
and documentation described herein, for any act or omission of ATI concerning such products or this
documentation, for any interruption of service, loss or interruption of business, loss ofanticipatory
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Macrovision
Apparatus Claims of U.S. Patent Nos.4,631,603; 4,819,098; 4,907,093; and 6,516,132 licensed for
limited viewing uses only.
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Note: This graphics card is for use only with compatible UL Listed
personal computers that have Installation Instructions detailing user
installation of card cage accessories.
LIMPORTANT SAFETY INSTRUCTIONS
•Read Instructions - All the safety and operating instructions should
be read before the product is operated.
•Retain Instructions - The safety and operating instructions should be
retained for future reference.
•Heed Warnings - All warnings on the product and the operating
instructions should be adhered to.
•Compatibility - This option card is for use only with IBM AT or
compatible UL Listed personal computers that have Installation
Instructions detailing user installation of card cage accessories.
•Grounding - For continued protection against risk of electric shock
and fire, this accessory should be installed only in products equipped
with a three-wire grounding plug, a plug having a third (grounding) pin.
This plug will only fit into a grounding-type power outlet. This is a
safety feature. If you are unable to insert the plug into the outlet,
contact your electrician to replace the obsolete outlet. Do not defeat
the safety purpose of the grounding-type plug.
•Secure Attachment - All card securement pins shall be completely
tightened as to provide continuous bonding between the option card
and the PC chassis.
•Lightning - For added protection for this product during a lightning
storm, or when it is left unattended and unused for long periods of
time, unplug it from the wall outlet, and disconnect the antenna or
cable system. This will prevent damage to the product due to lightning
and power-line surges.
•Power Lines - An outside antenna system should not be located in
the vicinity of overhead power lines or other light or power circuits, or
where it can fall into such power lines or circuits.
•Antenna Installation - When installing an outside antenna system,
extreme care should be taken to keep from touching such power lines
or circuits, as contact with them may be fatal.

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Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Radeon® X1950 XTX Features 1
Before You Begin 4
Installing Hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Connecting Devices 9
Using Multiple Displays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Connecting Your Monitors 11
Display Configurations 13
Installing Software and Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Installing Drivers and Software in Windows®15
Monitor Configuration 16
To set up a multi-monitor display 17
Reinstalling Drivers 17
Installing the Catalyst™Software Suite 18
Catalyst™Control Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Help 21
Displays Manager 21
Video 22
Display Options 22
Color 23
Monitor Properties 23
CrossFire™23
Component Video Properties 24
Digital Panel Properties 24
Hotkeys Manager 25
Profiles Manager 25
Preferences 25
CrossFire™26
Profiles Manager 27

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Using TV Display and Capture Features . . . . . . . 29
Using TV Out 29
Connecting to HDTV 31
Using the Radeon® X1950 XTX
with CrossFire™. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
CrossFire™Overview 35
CrossFire™Rendering Modes 35
Super Anti-aliasing Mode 39
CrossFire™FAQ. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Troubleshooting 49
Product Registration 53
Customer Care 53
Additional Accessories 55
Compliance Information 55
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Radeon® X1950 XTX Features 1
CHAPTER 1:
Introduction
Congratulations on the purchase of your ATI Radeon® X1950 XTX
graphics card. We hope that you will enjoy countless hours of trouble-free
computing.
Radeon® X1950 XTX Features
Graphic Features
• Native PCI Express®X16 bus support.
• 256MB or 512 MB GDDR4\GDDR3 on-board memory.
• Full support for Microsoft ® DirectX®Shader Model 3.0.
• High performance Ultra-Threaded shader engine.
• Eight vertex shader processors.
• Forty-eight pixel shader processors.
• 512-bit internal ring-bus memory controller.
• 256-bit 8-channel memory interface.
• Native PCI Express®x16 bus interface.
SmoothVision™
• Full-scene anti-aliasing method that smooths uneven edges and
improves blurred images.
• 2x/4x/6x Anti-aliasing modes with a loss-less compression up to a
ratio of 6:1 at all resolutions.
• 2x/4x//8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes with up to 128-tap
texture filtering.
HyperZ™
• Ensures optimal hardware performance by discarding irrelevant
object data that is not visible to the user.

2 Radeon® X1950 XTX Features
• Conserves video memory bandwidth.
• Loss-less Z-buffer compression
• Z Cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering.
VideoShader™
• Seamlessly integrates pixel shaders with video in real time.
• All format DTV/HDTV decoding.
• Adaptive Per-Pixel- De-interlacing and Frame Rate Conversion.
512-bit Ring Bus Memory Controller
• Programmable intelligent arbitration logic.
• New fully associative texture, color, and Z/stencil cache designs.
• Hierarchal Z-buffer with Early Z test.
• Lossless Z Compression (up to 48.1)
• Fast Z-Buffer Clear.
• Z Cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering.
• Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, including
widescreen HDTV resolutions.
Ultra-Threaded Shader Engine
• Support for Microsoft ® DirectX®9.0 Shader Model 3.0
programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware.
• Full speed 128-bit floating point processing.
• Up to 512 simultaneous pixel threads.
• Dedicated branch execution units for high performance dynamic
branching and flow control.
• Dedicated texture address units for improved efficiency.
• High resolution texture support (up to 4k x 4k).
• Up to 1,536 instructions per rendering pass.
• 3Dc+ texture compression
• High quality 4:1 compression for normal maps and luminance
maps.
• Works with any single-channel or two-channel data format.
• Multiple Render Target (MRT) support.

Radeon® X1950 XTX Features 3
• Render-to-vertex buffer support.
• Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL®2.0
High Dynamic Range (HDR) Rendering
• 64-bit floating point HDR supported throughout the pipeline
• Includes support for blending and multi-sample anti-aliasing.
• High precision 10:10:10:2 integer format support.
• Includes support for blending and multi-sample anti-aliasing.
• 2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes
• Sparse multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction,
programmable sample patterns, and centroid sampling.
• New Adaptive Anti-Aliasing modes.
• Temporal Anti-Aliasing mode.
• Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1) at all resolutions,
including widescreen HDTV resolutions.
• 2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes
• Up to 128-tap texture filtering.
• Adaptive algorithm with performance and quality options.

4 Before You Begin
System Requirements
Before You Begin
Before you begin installing your new graphics card, please do the
following.
Hardware • Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon®.
• 512MB of system memory; 1GB or more for best
performance.
• Optical drive for installation software (CD-ROM or
DVD-ROM drive).
• Specialized PCI Express® 550 watt or greater power
supply recommended. Consult your computer system
manual to ensure the power supply is designed to
accommodate a high-end graphics card with a peak
dissipation above 75 watts.
Operating
System • Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2).
• Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition.
• Windows® 2000.
•Windows®Vista.
Monitor • High-resolution MultiSync or multi-frequency monitors
or any other type of VGA monitor.
• Digital flat-panel (DFP) displays or digital CRT display.
CrossFire™
Compatibility If you are planning on using this graphics card as part of a CrossFire™ system, the following is required:
• A CrossFire™ certified motherboard with two (2) PCI
Express® X16 slots and correct PCIe™ chipset driver.
(See ati.com/crossfire for a list of CrossFire™
certified motherboards.)
• a CrossFire™ Edition graphics card from the same
product series that works as the Master graphics card.
More information on the requirements for each of these
components can be found within the CrossFire™ FAQ.