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Core & Memory Sliders

They control the speed at which the onboard Memory and Core (the TNT chip itself) will run. As the clock for the Memory and Core are decoupled on the TNT (meaning they can have different values), you can set each independently.  Default values are 110 Mhz. for the Memory and 90 Mhz. for the Core.

The color of the numeric values at the right of the sliders indicate the risk involved in setting that speed, but that’s just an approximation and varies for each board, depending on the manufacturer, quality of the components, etc. With active cooling (a heatsink/fan on the chip) you will achieve more stable operation at higher frequencies for the Core, also memory chips with lower markings (7nS) or better manufacturing process has the same impact on Memory.

Safe Procedure: You should increase one value at a time (Memory or Core) in a small increment, and use that setting for a while, specially using 3D accelerated games. Once you’re sure your board can handle that frequency with no side effects (lockups, frozen screens or strange artifacts), increase the value another notch and repeat the testing. When you hit the frequency that causes the already mentioned side effects, lower the value two Mhz. and thats the limit for your board.

CAUTION: Be very careful as overclocking may cause permanent damage to the board if it’s not done correctly, specially the memory.  A well-ventilated case and a 486 fan on top of the regular heatsink (if your board doesn’t come already with a fan) will help A LOT. Off course I’m not responsible in any way of any damage produced to any component of your PC by the use of this program. USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK.


Cancel Button

It will terminate the program without applying any changes made to any controls except resolution changes and the program preferences (Confirm resolution changes and Autostart with Windows).

If you want to hide the window without quiting the program use the “X” button in the window title bar.


Restore Defaults Button

It will restore the default settings for the actually visible tab. You still need to APPLY for the changes to take effect.


Apply Button

It will apply all settings you’ve changed. At startup the program shows your actual settings, any changes made are applied when you push this button.

Note: Memory and Core Frequencies need a Reboot or full-screen D3D/OGL application to occur for changes to take effect, depending on your drivers.


Direct 3D Settings

Groups settings that affect only Direct3D accelerated applications.


Number of automatically generated Mipmap Levels

The TNT driver can auto-generate from 0 to 12 mipmap levels automatically to conserve bandwith. Mipmap levels are downsampled textures that are applied to far away objects in replacement of the original (and bigger) texture.

This method conserves bandwith (the amount of data that flows through AGP/PCI bus and Memory to Core bus) and can increase the application performance in certain cases. Also can produce better or worst image quality depending on the application. Games usually use their own mipmapping and disable the auto generation (or not).

If an application shows far away objects with pixelated textures you can increase the value and try again.  Also you can increase this value if you want to check if an application performance goes up a little with no visual degradation.


Auto Mipmap Method

Lets you select the way automatic mipmaps are generated. Bilinear is faster than trilinear, while trilinear gives better image quality (hardly noticeable).


Automipmap Detail Llevel

Lets you select the LOD (Level Of Detail) used to generate the automatic mipmaps, being each choice very self-explanatory.


Allow Mipmap Dithering

Checking this box makes the creation of Trilinear mipmaps use a less expensive (in terms of performance) process. Instead of true trilinear you get a faked one called mipmap dithering.

Application performance can jump considerably, while image quality suffers a lot. Depending on the application you may want to make the trade off, especially in fast moving games such as racing simulations, whereas the screen is far but static. In that cases you will hardly notice any difference.

Note: The TNT drivers will always default to mipmap dithering in multitexturing applications. The TNT can’t do single-pass multitexturing + trlinear (as for now only the S3 Savage can do that), so to preserve performance it uses mipmap dithering when working in multitexturing mode.


Enable Anti-Aliasing in Hardware

Anti-aliasing is a way to smooth rough edges by modulating the surrounding pixels. The TNT can cooperate in hardware (at least they say so), but a lot of work is done through software (meaning your CPU does it). Very few applications support antialiasing (if any), and it cost too much in terms of performance. Checking this box will not make a non antialiasing-ready application use it, but will enable the support for apps. that can use it (when the drivers are queried for antialiasing support they answer yes dude!).


Anti-Aliasing Method

Lets you select the method used for antialiasing. Only valid if the “Enable Antialiasing in hardware” checkbox is checked. The method refers to the amount of surrounding texels weighted and modulated in the operation. More texels gives better image quality but performance suffers a lot. Less texels gives much better performance but the image quality is far but good.


OpenGL Settings

Groups Settings that affect only OpenGL accelerated applications.


Enable Buffer Region Extension

Checking this box will make the drivers report support for the GL_KTX_Buffer_Region extension. Applications that make use of this extension (if present) will have a performance jump. Applications that do not use this extension will have no benefit.


Allow dual planes extensions to use video memory

When Enable Buffer Region Extension is checked, checking this box allows the use of local video memory . If there is less than 8Mb of local memory, support for dual-plane extensions will not be enabled.


Enable Buffer Flipping for full-screen applications

Buffer Flipping refers to changing the buffers (replacing the front with the back).  When a buffer flip occurs, the frame being displayed (which resides in the front buffer) is discarded and replaced with the frame contained in the back buffer, thus you get to see the next frame. The back buffer contains the frame being rendered (drawn), and when the rendering is finished, buffers are flipped after a V-sync (Vertical Sync: when the electron beam of the monitor gets to the bottom-right corner of the screen and resets to the upper-left corner. Also called V-Blank or Vertical Retrace). This method is usually called v-sync enabled or v-blank enabled. Another method is waiting for the H-sync (Horizontal Sync: When the electron beam gets to the right of the screen and resets to the left, one line below). This method is usually called v-sync disabled.

Waiting for V-sync makes a frame appear in its entirety on screen, while waiting for H-sync may cause two different frames to be displayed causing visual artifacts (the screen appears to be cut as after one particular line the topmost is displaying one frame while the bottom displays another).

On the other hand when V-Sync is disabled frame rates can be higher than the Refresh Rate of your monitor (the times the screen gets updated per second).

Both checkboxes disabled: Wait for V-Sync enabled.

Only the first checked: Wait for V-Sync disabled.

None checked: The application indicates when the flipping occurs.


Monitor Timing

Let’s you chose the monitor timing technique:

General Timing Formula (GTF): It’s the standard for newer monitors. This is the default setting.

Discrete Monitor Timings (DMT): It’s the previous standard, still used by some hardware (rarely). Chose this method only if your monitor manual specify this.


Display Driver Options

These options are mostly for compatibility with older applications and solving rare symptoms.  They all need a reboot to take effect.

Disable Cursor Caching: If your mouse pointer behaves strangely during the execution of some applications (gets garbled or corrupted) check this box.

 Do not filter stretched bitmaps images: Check this box to avoid the driver filtering stretched images. The driver defaults to filtering stretched images to produce less aliased (blocky) images.

Disable hardware acceleration drawing of curves: The TNT has hardware support for GDI curves drawing

 (circles, ellipses etc). If you check this box curves will be drawn by Windows (software) which is far slower.


Resolution Change

The monitor lets you chose one from all available resolutions/color depths your system reports. The Set New Mode button changes the desktop to the selected resolution. You can also do the same by right clicking on the system tray icon and selecting the new resolution from the menu.

NOTE: The refresh rate will remain the same, so if you are bumping up the resolution be sure your monitor can handle that refresh at the new resolution, or lower the refresh rate first. If you screw up things, you can go back as long as Confirm Changes checkbox is checked.


Refresh Rate Changing

The list lets you chose a refresh rate and the Set Refresh Rate button applies the new selected Refresh Rate. You can do the same by right clicking on the system tray icon, in the Refresh Rate menu.

NOTE: Be careful as the list DOES NOT indicate the monitor’s supported refresh values. It only lists the TNT supported values, which may be too high fore some monitors. If your monitor loses sync. (black screen or distorted image) hit escape or enter or wait for 10 sec. and the screen will automatically return to the previous setting (If Confirm Changes Checkbox is checked).


Confirm Resolution/Refresh Rate Changes

When checked, after each resolution or refresh rate change a message box will ask you to confirm the changes. If you’re not satisfied with the change (or the monitor loosed sync) you can hit Escape, Enter or wait for 10sec. and the screen will go back to the previous setting. Very recommended unless you know very well what you're doing.


Autostart with Windows

Will make the program run each time Windows starts.


Compatibility Options

Enable Fog Table Emulation: The TNT gives support for fog vertex. By checking this box you will emulate fog table through fog vertex. Check it if some game (generally older) have trouble when displaying fog.

Use DirectX5 Compatibility Mode: It disables all DirectX 6 specific functions of the driver (such as multitexturing). Though a DirectX 5 game should run well on Direct X6 drivers, some older ones may have difficulties. If that’s the case checking this box will correct the problems.

Also useful if you want to enhance the visual quality of multitexturing games with true trilinear instead of mipmap dithering (at the expense of some performance degradation).

Disable CPU advanced Instructions: Disables built in support for special instruction sets such as 3Dnow! (found in AMD K6 3D processors) or KNI/SECC (found in Pentium III processors). Not really useful except for performance comparisons.


Texel Alignment

It defines the position of the texel element that indicates the texture origin. The value is from the top left of the texture to the center (in diagonal). Some games may not attach to the standard Direct3D convention and the origin in another texel. Use the slider to change the origin and enhance the visuals of such games. The default value is 3 (Direct3D standard).


Disable Wait for V-Blank

Disables waiting for VBlank (or Vertical Retrace) for buffer flipping, and changes to waiting for HBlank. The performance improves, as the maximum frame rate does not depend on the monitors refresh rate, at the expense of visual degradation.


Render no more than XXX frames ahead

When waiting for V-Blank is disabled it prevents the application to render more than the selected quantity of frames ahead previous of being displayed. It can improve visual quality (already degraded by disabling wait for VBlank) only on games that run really fast if you limit the value to 1 or 2 frames.