Anilrgowda

One of the success stories of the year besides NVIDIA has been PowerVR; reportedly selling over 1 million Kyro 1/2 based Graphics Cards. This guide will take you through setting up your PC for best compatibility with these Graphics Cards & then through the mass of options available in the Drivers to get the most out of Games/Applications with them. Drivers/ Troubleshooting/ BIOS Settings
Initially you should ensure you have the latest Drivers installed for your Graphics Card. You can find links to Manufacturers of such Graphics Cards on our Drivers page, although should you wish to stick with reference Drivers then go to PowerVR Driver page instead (In most instances the PowerVR Drivers will be the first to be updated & most Manufacturers will only really be changing logos when they release new Drivers). To a lesser extent you may also want to check into getting any available BIOS update for the Graphics card, although these only fix certain issues & none currently have been released that fix any problems with Games/Applications or improve performance.
Be sure to install Microsoft’s have DirectX 8.1 as well.
It is also highly important to have the latest Drivers for your Motherboard installed as well, particularly the AGP Drivers (If you have an AGP Kyro Graphics card at least). You can find links to updated Motherboard Chipset Drivers on OS Updates. Installing any available BIOS update for your Motherboard may also be of some help.
In the system BIOS it is recommended to disable the following settings, if available - Hidden refresh, Byte merge, VGA palette snoop, DAC snoop & any Caching/Shadowing options, e.g. Video BIOS Shadowing. The Video Memory Caching Mode should be set to UC rather than UCSW also. If you have a Kyro 2 Graphics card set the AGP Transfer mode to AGP X2 at most as it doesn’t support AGP X4 (This mode can be used with Kyro 1 Graphics cards however).
Should you experience problems between the Kyro & any Game/Application check the Developers website for any patches, or apply some of the compatibility settings as described in this guide.
For further information/tips check out the ParaKnowYa FAQ, which covers other potential issues/queries you may have or contact your Manufacturer of Technical support.
Display settings
Click on Start, Settings, Control Panel. Open Display, then select the Settings tab, then the Advanced button. Each of the following sub sections will describe what can be done in the available tabs.
Display
Select the Display tab. Although you might not think it, if you adjust your brightness levels correctly you can improve visual quality a lot. You may be able to reduce the effect of colours/textures being too dark, or too washed out this way.
The Centre, Horizontal Size & Vertical Size sections may be used to adjust the position & size of the current display window. Most Monitors however have built-in controls to allow you adjust this also.
Coarse Adjust. When Ticked this will allow for greater movement distance of the screen when using the Centre controls, this can make more precise changes awkward however.
Gamma Correction. This is an alternative method to adjust the brightness level of your monitor rather than using the built-in Gamma controls most Monitors already have. Tick this setting if you wish to enable using the Drivers Gamma Correction ability. This may be of some use if you can’t adjust the brightness/darkness level of Games, although it should be best to leave it Unticked at all other times.> >
Now select the Advanced button. This contains more in-depth options for tuning your display output.> >
Tick the Advanced Settings option in order to adjust the settings available here.
Gamma. This slider can be used to adjust the RGB colour intensity. Move the sliders (Or slider) to the Right to increase this level, this can reduce detail by brightening up the image too much & vice versa. Tick the Link option if you wish any adjustments to be made to the Red, Green & Blue colour sliders globally, or Untick the setting to independently adjust them.
Contrast. Use this slider to adjust the contrast level of your display. Move the slider to the Right to the image brighter & vice versa. The brighter the image the more washed out it can appear. Adjust this to suit your own needs.
Brightness. This slider controls the brightness (glare) level. Move this slider to the Right to increase the brightness level, which can cause the image to appear washed out if moved too far & vice versa. Adjust this as you see fit.
Use the Reset button should you wish to restore the default options for these controls. Once finished, hit the Ok button.
Application Profiles
The Kyro 1/2 Drivers allow you to create separate profiles for use with OpenGL/Direct3D Applications & Games (Many already have Profiles set in the Drivers). This is extremely useful as you may customize each of your games settings here for performance, compatibility, visual quality or a combination. This is the recommended way to customize Driver settings rather than changing the Global profile settings that will ignore the Custom Profiles.
To create a profile first select the 3D Optimisation tab then the appropriate API tab, i.e. OpenGL or Direct3D. Now select the Right arrow in the Profile section & select New.
In the Executable tab point to the location of the Game/Applications exe file, e.g. in the shot above that would be to where I have Operation Flashpoint installed. Click Ok once you have created a profile. Now using the Profile drop-down menu you can select what profile to assign settings to, with Global applying to everything, while selecting Operation Flashpoint, for example, will only apply any changes to that Game alone.
Fast mode Trilinear filtering> >
In conjunction with DXT1 texture compression the Kyro 1/2 uses a fast Trilinear texture filtering mode (As compared to the traditional mode of operation used when DXT1 is not in use). In this mode the lower detail Mipmap is auto-generated from the higher detail Mipmap, rather than getting the samples needed for it from the actual lower detail Mipmap. This reduces the need for the Kyro to access memory & as such improves performance even further than using texture compression alone does.> >
To test this out I used PowerVR's Villagemark benchmark test. Bilinear tests are included to give you a more complete indication of how the fast mode Trilinear filter improves performance.> >
The results need little explanation. With texture compression enabled the frame rate has slightly more than doubled using Trilinear texture filtering. While in the case of using Bilinear filtering there is only a minor frame rate improvement.> >
The screenshots beneath from Soldier Of Fortune illustrate the difference in image quality between Bilinear & Trilinear texture filtering.
As you can see, compared to the Bilinear filtered image, Trilinear texture filtering offers some greater texture detail in certain areas of the image, as well as smoother Mipmap transitions.
In conclusion the one recommendation I can strongly advise is to enable texture compression in Games if supported (Or force it via a Game profile) & similarly enable Trilinear texture filtering for your Games also (Again, force it via a Game profile if not an available choice in-game). This will yield improved image quality in Games & much improved performance. You should bear this information in mind when setting the options for Game/Application Profiles.
Direct3D Settings
Select the 3D Optimisation tab, then the Direct3D tab.
Control Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing. Kyro 1/2 Graphics cards support FSAA using the OGSS (Ordered Grid Super Sampling) implementation. This option allows you to select the FSAA level, if any, to use in Direct3D Games/Applications. Regardless of the option selected, the horizontal resolution cannot exceed 2048 pixels, i.e. FSAA will be disabled at resolutions beyond 1280 x 1024. Options available are as follows;
Force 4x (2x2) Anti-aliasing. With this option Ticked the Horizontal & Vertical resolutions are both up-sampled by a factor of 2, then down-sampled by averaging the colours of a 2x2 pixel block to form 1 pixel across the entire image. This will provide best overall FSAA image quality, with greatest performance hit. This can be used up to a resolution of 1024x768 otherwise it will be disabled.
Force 2x Horizontal Anti-aliasing. With this option Ticked the Horizontal resolution is up-sampled by a factor of 2, then down-sampled by averaging the colours of a 2x1 pixel block to form 1 pixel across the entire image. This will provide improved FSAA image quality but for Horizontal lines only, although may perform slightly slower than Force 2x Vertical Anti-aliasing. This can be used up to a resolution of 1024x768 otherwise it will be disabled.
Force 2x Vertical Anti-aliasing. With this option Ticked the Vertical resolution is up-sampled by a factor of 2, then down-sampled by averaging the colours of a 1x2 pixel block to form 1 pixel across the entire image. This will provide improved FSAA image quality but for Vertical lines only, although may perform slightly faster than Force 2x Horizontal Anti-aliasing. This can be used up to a resolution of 1280x1024 otherwise it will be disabled.
Application Specified Anti-aliasing. This options allows the application to choose the FSAA level, basically this means disabled. Select this option if you wish to disable FSAA support (default). This will yield best overall performance.> >
Here’s a shot of Sacrifice with Force 4x (2x2) Anti-aliasing in operation (Click on the image for the full size version).> >
Disable Waiting for Vertical Sync. Using this setting you may disable Vsync in all Direct3D Games/Applications or let in-game settings determine whether Vsync is enabled/disabled. Vsync effectively limits the frame rate to your current refresh rate at a given resolution. Performance can improve with Vsync disabled, Ticking this setting (Frames are rendered as fast as they can be regardless of refresh rate), although you may experience image tearing &/or controller lag as a result. With Vsync enabled, Unticked, you won’t experience either image tearing nor controller lag, although frame rate will be limited to your refresh rate. As such I’d recommend enabling Vsync for best image quality & disabling it when you intend to benchmark system/game performance.
NOTE – With this setting Unticked it may still be possible to disable Vsync using in-game settings, if available.
Defer Render until Flip. When Ticked rendering of a scene is deferred until the full scene is supplied. This can solve some image artefacts although may cause others to appear instead. In some cases performance can improve too.