ATI Technologies X1900GT - Radeon 256MB Pcie User manual

Radeon®X1900 GT
User’s Guide
P/N 137-?????-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
profits, or for punitive,incidental or consequential damages in connection with the furnishing,
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herein.
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but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-
infringement.
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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intellectual property rights. Use of this copyright protection technology must be authorized by
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by Macrovision. Reverse engineering or disassembly is prohibited.

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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® X1900 GT Features 1
Graphic Features 1
System Requirements 4
External Connectors 4
Using Multiple Displays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Connecting Your Monitors 5
Display Configurations 7
Catalyst™ Control Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Launching Catalyst™ Control Center 9
Launching Catalyst™ Control Center Using the Start Menu 9

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Other Quick Launch Access Points 10
Catalyst™ Control Center Dashboard 12
Create a Custom View 13
Hotkeys Manager 13
Profiles Manager 15
Preferences 17
Help 19
Information Center 20
Displays Manager 22
Displays Manager Advanced View 23
Monitor Properties 30
Monitor Attributes 31
Digital Panel Properties 32
Attributes 33
Avivo™ Color 35
HDTV Support 36
3D 39
Standard Settings 40
Anti-aliasing 42
Set the Anti-Aliasing preference manually 42
Adaptive Anti-aliasing 44
Anisotropic Filtering 44
Catalyst™ A.I. 46
Mipmap Detail Level 48
All Settings 50
API Specific 53
Color 55
Color Desktop 56
Color - FullScreen 3D 59
Avivo™ Video for Radeon® Series starting from 9500 60
Standard Settings 61
Adjustments 62
Video Overlay Theater Mode 64
Deinterlacing 65
VPU Recover 70
Using TV Display and Capture Features . . . . . . . 79
View Your PC’s Display on a TV 79
Using SCART Connectors for European TVs 80
How TV Display Cannot Be Used 82
Using a Monitor vs. Using TV Display 82
Viewing Text on a TV 82
Reducing Edge Distortion 83
Using a TV as the Only Display 83

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Using Games and Applications 83
Windows® Volume Control 83
Capturing Video Using Windows® Movie Maker 84

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Radeon® X1900 GT Features 1
CHAPTER 1:
Introduction
Congratulations on the purchase of your ATI Radeon® X1900 GT graphics
card. We hope that you will enjoy countless hours of trouble-free
computing.
Radeon® X1900 GT 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.
• Conserves video memory bandwidth.
• Loss-less Z-buffer compression

2 Radeon® X1900 GT Features
• 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.
• Render-to-vertex buffer support.
• Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® 2.0

Radeon® X1900 GT Features 3
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 System Requirements
System Requirements
External Connectors
• Dual DVI-I output.
• S-Video output or Video In/Video Out (VIVO) connection.
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® 450 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.

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CHAPTER 2:
Using Multiple Displays
Connecting Your Monitors
Your Radeon® X1900 GT graphics card provides hardware support for
two DVI-I monitors and a VGA monitor using the supplied DVI-I-to-VGA
adapter. It also provides TV output via an S-Video Out connector.
Connections and Adapters for the Radeon® X1900 GT Card
1 Standard VGA Monitor Connector. To connect a VGA monitor
to the DVI-I connector, plug the supplied DVI-I-to-VGA adapter
into the DVI-I connector, then plug your monitor cable into the
adapter.
2DVI-I-to-VGA Adapter.
3 DVI-I Connection. To connect a digital display.

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Note: If you use multiple monitors, the Radeon® X1900 GT card must
be the primary graphics card. Normally, the system BIOS determines
which graphics card will be the primary.
To connect your monitors
1Power off your computer and monitors.
2Plug the monitor cables into their appropriate connectors.
3Power on your monitors first, and then restart your computer so that
Windows® can detect the new hardware settings.
4When the New Hardware Found Wizard appears, at the appropriate
prompt insert the ATI Installation CD to load the drivers for your
Radeon® X1900 GT card.
To set up a multi-monitor display
1From the Start button click Control Panel, then Display. Click the
Settings tab to access the basic multi-monitor configuration settings.
Note: ATI provides Catalyst™ Control Center software that
provides many additional configuration features. It can be accessed
by clicking the Advanced button from the Display Properties >
Settings tab.
2Select the Monitor icon identified by the number 2.
3Click Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor.
4Set the Screen Resolution and Color Quality as appropriate for the
second monitor. Click Apply or OK to apply these new values.
• Refer to your Windows® online help and documentation for
further information on using the Settings tab.
Note: When you use multiple monitors with your card, one monitor
will always be Primary. Any additional monitors will be designated
as Secondary.

Display Configurations 7
Display Configurations
Your Radeon® X1900 GT graphics card provides dual display
functionality. The following table lists the different ways you can connect
displays to your card.
Note: * Both DVI ports support dual-link DVI output compatible
with single-link DVI flat panel displays as well as ultra-high
resolution dual-link DVI flat panel displays.
Display
Configuration Connector(s) Used Comments
Single DFP
display DVI-I connector DFP - digital flat panel display.
DFP Display* +
DFP Display DVI-I connectors
DFP Display +
HDTV DVI-I connector + S-Video-to-
Component
adapter
Using supplied S-Video to
Component adapter.
Single CRT
display DVI-I connector with DVI-I-to-VGA
adapter
CRT - cathode ray tube analog
display.
CRT display +
HDTV DVI-I-to-VGA adapter +
Componet Adapter
to HDTV (YPbPr)
cable
DFP display +
HDTV DVI-I connector + HDTV cable
(YPbPr)
HDTV (YPrPb) adpater
CRT display +
DFP display DVI-I-to-VGA adapter + DVI-I
connector
CRT display +
CRT display DVI-I-to-VGA adapter + DVI-I-to-
VGA adapter
The DVI-I connector can support a
CRT display using the DVI-I-to-VGA
adapter

8 Display Configurations

Launching Catalyst™ Control Center 9
CHAPTER 3:
Catalyst™ Control Center
The Catalyst™ Control Center is a graphical user application providing
access to the display features contained within the installed ATI hardware
and software. Use the Catalyst™ Control Center to fine-tune your graphics
settings, enable or disable connected display devices, and change the
orientation of your desktop. Many of the features show you a preview of
the changes before they are applied.
The Catalyst™ Control Center offers you two views of the software:
• Basic View is a simplified view that includes wizards to get the
inexperience user up and running.
• Advance View allows the advanced user to access and configure
the complete feature set of the software.
The Catalyst™ Control Center can be customized for easy access to the
features you use most.
Use the Catalyst™ Control Center to access a comprehensive online help
system, or connect to the ATI Web site.
Launching Catalyst™ Control Center
Launch Catalyst™ Control Center from one of the following access points:
• Windows® Start Menu
• Windows® System Tray
• Desktop shortcuts
• Predefined hot keys
Launching Catalyst™ Control Center Using the Start
Menu
From the Windows® task bar, click Start:
•ClicktoPrograms > Catalyst™ Control Center > ATI
Catalyst™ Control Center.

10 Launching Catalyst™ Control Center
Other Quick Launch Access Points
Launching Catalyst™ Control Center Using the System Tray
1Right-click the ATI icon in the Windows® System Tray.
2Select Catalyst™ Control Center from the popup menu.
Launching Catalyst™ Control Center Using the Desktop
Shortcut
When you first installed Catalyst™ Control Center the setup wizard
provided you with the option of placing a shortcut on the desktop.
• Double-click the Catalyst™ Control Center desktop shortcut.
Launching Catalyst™ Control Center Using Hot Keys
• You can press the predefined combination of keys Ctrl+Alt+C to
launch Catalyst™ Control Center,or you can define your own hot
key sequence by using the Catalyst™ Control Center’s Hotkey
Manager.

Launching Catalyst™ Control Center 11
Catalyst™ Control Center Dialog
(may not appear exactly as shown)

12 Catalyst™ Control Center Dashboard
Catalyst™ Control Center Dashboard
The Catalyst™ Control Center Dashboard is a graphical representation of
the display features of the installed ATI hardware and software. Use the
Dashboard to fine-tune your graphic settings, enable or disable connected
display devices, and change the orientation of your desktop. Many features
present you with a preview of your changes before they are applied.
The Dashboard is only available in Advanced View and Custom View, if
selected.
Use the Dashboard to access a comprehensive online help system, create a
hot key, or customize the way you view the Catalyst™ Control Center.
The Dashboard includes:
•Views
Catalyst™ Control Center: Advanced View
(may not appear exactly as shown)