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,
performance, or use of the ATI hardware, software, or other products and documentation provided
herein.
ATI Technologies Inc. reserves the right to make changes without further notice to a productor system
described herein to improve reliability, function or design. With respect to ATI products which this
document relates, ATI disclaims all express or implied warranties regarding such products, including
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.
This product incorporates copyright protection technology that is protected by US patents and other
intellectual property rights. Use of this copyright protection technology must be authorized by
Macrovision,andisintendedfor home andother limited viewing uses only unlessotherwiseauthorized
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