Copyright: Copyright (c) 2001 Imagination Technologies Limited


PowerVR Tools

The PowerVR Tools software gives you precise control over your monitor’s display, provides diagnostics and support information, and lets you optimise the way KYRO accelerates 3D games.

Display tab
3D Optimisation tab
TV tab
How do I...?


Display tab

The Display tab gives you control over the look and feel of your monitor’s display.

You can also list technical details about your system and KYRO.

Current Display Mode
Image Control
Gamma Correction
Overclocking
Reset
Support Centre
Refresh Rate (Win 95 only)
How do I...?


PowerVR Support Centre

The PowerVR Support Centre shows more technical details about your system, and the PowerVR product you are running. You can access the PowerVR Support Centre from the Display tab. It contains four tabs:

Product shows the version number and release date of the KYRO drivers you are running. You can compare this to the version number of the drivers on our web site to see whether you are running the latest drivers - often, if you have a hardware problem, the easiest and quickest fix is to install the latest drivers. The Product tab also enables you to turn the PowerVR logo on or off. Show logo on Windows startup displays the logo when you start Windows, and Show logo in game displays it in the corner of the screen when you are playing a game.

System shows you details of your PC including processor specification and RAM. You can also save a summary of this information to a text file for reference by clicking the Save button.

Display shows details of your display system including display settings and type of monitor. You can also save a summary of this information to a text file for reference by clicking the Save button.

Version shows the version numbers of the individual driver files. You can click the Integrity Check button to check that you have no missing driver files, no duplicate driver files in incorrect locations and that the product version numbers of all the driver files match. You can also save a summary of this information to a text file for reference by clicking the Save button.


Image Control

Image Control lets you centre or resize the display on your monitor. For all of the controls, to auto-repeat, hold the mouse button or the keypad buttons down; move more quickly by holding down the CTRL key or selecting the Coarse Adjust check box.

Centre your monitor’s display by clicking the up, down, left and right arrows, or the arrow keys on your numeric keypad.

Expand your display’s Horizontal size by clicking the out arrows, or contract it by clicking the in arrows. You can also use the right or up arrow keys to expand and left or down arrow keys to contract.

Expand your display’s Vertical size by clicking the out arrows, or contract it by clicking the in arrows. You can also use the right or up arrow keys to expand and left or down arrow keys to contract.

If you don’t like the changes you have made to the display, click Cancel to discard your changes, or click Reset to return to the default values.


Current Display Mode

Current Display Mode shows the display mode currently selected in the Settings and Advanced tabs of Display Properties.

The display mode is made up of the resolution, the refresh rate and the colour depth.


Resolution

The resolution shows the number of picture elements (‘pixels’) displayed on your monitor. Together with your monitor size, it defines the size of your Windows desktop and the sharpness of your display.

Generally, higher resolutions work best on large monitors.


Refresh rate

The refresh rate shows how many times your display is being redrawn each second, expressed in Hertz (Hz).

A higher rate is usually easier on the eye, while low rates can flicker. The refresh rates you can select depend on the resolution, colour depth, and your monitor’s capabilities.

When playing games, a high refresh rate isn’t as necessary as when working with static text or graphics, as the flicker isn’t as noticeable and may even waste system resources. For this reason, the generally recommended optimum rate for running games is 85 Hz, which you can set in the Advanced tab of Display Properties or on the Display tab (Windows 95 only).


Colour depth

Colour depth shows how many colours your graphics card is displaying, also called the ‘bit depth’. The more colours in your display, the better the image quality, but this may slow down your display. We recommend a 16-bit colour depth (65 thousand colours) for general use.


Centre

Centre your monitor’s display by clicking the up, down, left and right arrows, or the arrow keys on your numeric keypad.

Hold the mouse button or the keypad buttons down to auto-repeat.


Horizontal Size

Expand your display’s Horizontal size by clicking the out arrows, or contract it by clicking the in arrows.


Vertical Size

Expand your display’s Vertical size by clicking the out arrows, or contract it by clicking the in arrows.


Gamma Correction

Gamma describes how KYRO and your monitor interact.

To change the gamma value, select the Enable check box, and adjust the brightness of your monitor using the Gamma correction control.

If you don’t like the changes you have made to the display, click Cancel to discard your changes, or click Reset to return to the default values.


Overclocking

Overclocking enables you to alter the default processor clock speed of your graphics card.

WARNING Changing the clock speed is not recommended. An incorrect value could overheat and/or permanently damage your graphics card. Higher clock speeds can also cause display corruption or cause your PC to freeze.

Note Use of the Overclocking slider will void your warranty.

If you want to cancel any changes you make using the Overclocking slider click Cancel to discard your changes, or click Reset to return to the default value.


Gamma

The gamma of a monitor defines how much a pixel changes in intensity when given a signal.

Due to the way phosphor in your monitor behaves, changes in weak signals produce much smaller changes in pixel intensity, while changes in strong signals produce a much greater change in intensity.

To correct this, you can specify a gamma correction value. This smoothes out the monitor’s response, making pixels change their intensity more proportionally to the signals sent by the card. It also means you don’t need to change the brightness or intensity controls on your monitor, because the gamma correction does this for you.


Pixel

A pixel is the basic unit of programmable colour on a computer display or in a computer image. Think of it as a logical - rather than a physical - unit. The physical size of a pixel depends on how you've set the resolution for the display screen. If you've set the display to its maximum resolution, the physical size of a pixel will equal the physical size of the dot size of the display. If, however, you've set the resolution to something less than the maximum resolution, a pixel will be larger than the physical size of the screen's dot (that is, a pixel will use more than one dot).


Reset

The reset facility enables you to reset your display after making changes to the centring, size, gamma correction or overclock speed.

1.	Click the Reset button on the Display tab.

2.	Check the boxes of the settings you want to reset.

3.	Click the OK button to reset the settings to default.


How do I...?

This page gives the answers to some questions you might have about PowerVR Tools.

Optimizing

How do I make games run better?
How do I make games look better?
How do I make colours appear correctly?
How do I centre my display?
How do I resize my display?
How do I find out which drivers I am running?

Troubleshooting

My screen is always too dark or too light.
What’s the best way to correct most problems?


My screen is always too dark or too light.

Use the gamma correction setting to change the gamma value.


What's the best way to correct most problems?

Make sure you have installed the latest drivers. To do this, click the Support Centre button on the Display tab and compare the driver version shown with the latest version on our web site. If your drivers aren’t the latest, download and install them.


How do I make games run better?

Use the 3D Optimisation tab to see if any settings used by the game can be turned on or off.


How do I make games look better?

Use the 3D Optimisation tab to see if any settings used by the game can be turned on or off.


How do I make colours appear correctly?

Usually, problems with colours come about because your gamma value isn’t set correctly. You can do this in PowerVR Tools using the gamma correction setting.


How do I centre my display?

Use the Centre control.


How do I resize my display?

Use the Horizontal Size and Vertical Size controls.


How do I find out which drivers I am running?

Click the Support Centre button to see your current driver version number. To get the latest drivers, go to our web site. Make sure your Internet connection is ready before you do this.


3D Optimisation tab

The 3D Optimisation tab gives you control over how KYRO accelerates your games.

KYRO accelerates games based on Direct3D and OpenGL. You can control how KYRO does this by creating a profile of settings.

Direct3D
You can select from the following two main options:

•	Default – select this option for maximum graphics quality, ideal for games with rich scenery or high–quality graphics work.

•	Custom – select this option to customise the advanced Direct3D settings available. Note if you select this option after selecting Default you can view the advanced settings for that selection.

OpenGL
You can select from three main options:

•	Default – select this option for maximum graphics quality, ideal for games with rich scenery or high quality graphics work.

•	Troubleshooting – select this option if you have problems with certain games or applications. If this option does not solve your problems try the Custom advanced OpenGL settings.

•	Custom – select this option to customise the advanced OpenGL settings available. Note if you select this option after selecting Default or Troubleshooting you can view the advanced settings for that selection.


Advanced Direct3D settings

These are the advanced Direct3D settings that you can turn on or off. The following settings are available:

Control Full-Scene Anti-aliasing
Disable Waiting for Vertical Sync
Defer Render until Flip
Force Anisotropic Filtering
Force Texture Compression
Force Trilinear Texture Filtering
Force W Buffering
Enable Soft Edges on Cut-out Textures
Enable External Depth/Stencil Buffer


Control Full-Scene Anti-aliasing (Direct 3D)

Four settings are provided to enable you to control Full Scene Anti-aliasing, you may want to try different settings depending on the type of graphics or movement you are displaying:

•	Force 4x (2x2) Anti-aliasing – this generates a 2x2 pixel block and averages to one pixel.

•	Force 2x Horizontal Anti-aliasing – this generates a 2x1 pixel block and averages to one pixel.

•	Force 2x Vertical Anti-aliasing – this generates a 1x2 pixel block and averages to one pixel. This may be particularly effective if you are using a TV screen.

•	Application Specified Anti-aliasing – this is the default setting.


Disable Waiting for Vertical Sync

Vertical Sync synchronises KYRO to your monitor’s refresh rate.

By turning Disable Waiting for Vertical Sync on, you are disabling this synchronisation between KYRO and your monitor. This means KYRO can run at top speed because it isn’t waiting for the next screen image to be displayed, but this may result in the image ‘tearing’.


Force Anisotropic Filtering

Force Anisotropic Filtering provides anti-aliasing for all filtered textures within a scene. It resolves detail on textures that are ‘tilted’ on the screen, such as notices on walls or half-open doors that are at an angle to your viewpoint.

Turning this on improves image quality, but will reduce performance.


Defer Render until Flip

Defer Render Until Flip waits until a full scene has been supplied before rendering it.

Turning this on may remove artefacts from the display and improve performance, but it may also create unusual artefacts.


Force W Buffering

RHW (Reciprocal Homogenous W) is an alternative method to Z for creating depth comparisons.

Turning Force W Buffering on may improve the accuracy of the game’s depth comparisons by using KYRO’s RHW calculation, but may introduce artefacts to the display.


Enable Soft Edges on Cut-out textures

Soft Edges on Cut-out textures improve the quality of ‘punch-through’ objects. This is where a texture has some parts rendered so that it looks like a shape has been ‘punched’ through it and is used for objects like leaves.

Turning this on should soften the edges of these objects but may also introduce some artefacts on the edges of some objects. Performance should not be adversely affected.


Force Trilinear Texture Filtering

Trilinear filtering blends between texture maps for a smoother transition between distances, and is especially noticeable as an object moves towards or away from you. It also resolves detail on textures that are ‘tilted’ on the screen, such as notices on walls or half-open doors that are at an angle to your viewpoint.

Turning on Force Trilinear Texture Filtering in conjunction compressed textures doubles the speed of this filtering technique.


Force Texture Compression

Texture compression forces textures to be compressed using the ‘DXT’ texture compression format where possible, even if the application does not attempt to use texture compression.

Turning Force Texture Compression on might enhance performance but can introduce some visual artefacts.


Enable External Depth/Stencil Buffer

Turning on Enable External Depth/Stencil Buffer causes the generation of an external depth buffer and causes KYRO to use it. There are three sub-options you can enable to further tweak this option to suit your application:

1.	Enable Direct 3D Depth/Stencil Buffer Format

2.	Enable Depth/Stencil Buffer Storing

3.	Enable Depth/Stencil Buffer Loading

The following combinations of the above are recommended:

3+2 enables loading and storing of depth buffer to handle games which break render into multiple passes with direct manipulation of the frame buffer between passes.

1+3 enables games to preload their own depth buffer values.

2+1 enables games to access to the depth buffer results from rendering.

1+2+3 provides a combination of the above two points.


Enable Depth/Stencil Buffer Loading

Turning Enable Depth/Stencil Buffer Loading on causes hardware to load the depth buffer from an external source before rendering.


Enable Depth/Stencil Buffer Storing

Turning Enable Depth/Stencil Buffer Storing on causes hardware to store the depth buffer to an external source after rendering.


Enable Direct 3D Depth/Stencil Buffer Format

Turning Enable Direct 3D Depth/Stencil Buffer Format on enables translation of PowerVR’s Depth Buffer format to standard Direct 3D format for use by applications and enables applications to apply advanced effects such as volumetrics.


Advanced OpenGL settings

Your KYRO card ships with drivers tuned to provide a great gaming experience, however there may be games that do not behave correctly or perform a little slowly. Using the advanced OpenGL settings enables you to further tune the drivers for these games.

Control Full-Scene Anti-aliasing
Disable Waiting for Vertical Sync
Use Application Specified Buffering
Force Single Buffer
Force Anisotropic Filtering
Force Scissor Support Off
Force Texture Compression
Enable Scene Manager
Enable Fast Colour Calculations
Enable Internal Depth/Stencil Buffer Storing


Control Full-Scene Anti-aliasing (Open GL)

Four settings are provided to enable you to control Full Scene Anti-aliasing, you may want to try different settings depending on the type of graphics or movement you are displaying:

•	Force 4x (2x2) Anti-aliasing – this generates a 2x2 pixel block and averages to one pixel.

•	Force 2x Horizontal Anti-aliasing – this generates a 2x1 pixel block and averages to one pixel.

•	Force 2x Vertical Anti-aliasing – this generates a 1x2 pixel block and averages to one pixel. This may be particularly effective if you are using a TV screen.

•	Application Specified Anti-aliasing – this is the default setting.


Use Application Specified Buffering

Under OpenGL applications can only request single or double buffering. Normally the PowerVR drivers will try to improve on this where possible by using triple buffering instead of double buffering. This may allow full screen applications to run with improved frame rate, but without loss of visual quality.  If you select Use Application Specified Buffering PowerVR will match the application request, this can sometimes correct issues where the whole screen may not update correctly.


Force Single Buffer

This makes the application render to the front buffer only. If Force Single Buffer is turned on, there should be an increase in performance but ‘cut line’ (tearing) may be visible. Only PowerVR can usefully render to the front buffer, and this ability can also make significant extra amounts of memory available for textures.


Force Anisotropic Filtering

Force Anisotropic Filtering increases the quality of textures that are bi-linearly filtered, whether they are mip-mapped or not. It resolves detail on textures that are ‘tilted’ on the screen, such as notices on walls or half-open doors that are at an angle to your viewpoint.

Turning this on improves image quality, but will reduce performance.


Force Scissor Support Off

Scissoring is a method by which objects are drawn in a restricted rectangle on the screen. Selecting Force Scissor Support Off may provide an increase in performance but you may see objects being drawn in parts of the screen where they do not belong.


Enable Scene Manager

Enabling the Scene Manager option may help if your application appears to be missing sections of geometry or nothing at all appears. This enables scenes with very large numbers of polygon to be rendered correctly. Unselecting Enable Internal Depth/Stencil Buffer also may be required for the Scene Manager option to entirely fix application issues.


Enable Fast Colour Calculations

Fast Colour Calculations may marginally improve the performance of some games. You should not select Enable Fast Colour Calculations if colours that were bright now appear dark or black.


Enable Internal Depth/Stencil Buffer

The default mode of operation for KYRO is to render the scene using an internal tile sized depth buffer. This has great performance advantages compared to other cards. When operating in this mode the contents of the depth buffer are discarded after each tile, and are not available to the rest of the computer. Some applications may require access to the contents of the depth buffer and in this case Enable Internal Depth/Stencil buffer should be un-checked to make KYRO create a depth buffer image accessible to the rest of the computer. When this option is un-checked the following sub-options are available which may help mitigate the performance degradation caused by the external depth buffer.

•	Enable Depth/Stencil Buffer Storing

•	Enable Asynchronous Depth/Stencil Buffer Access


Enable Depth/Stencil Buffer Storing

With this option checked the driver stores the depth buffer every frame. Un-checking this will mean the driver will only store the depth buffer when it thinks the application wants to access it. This will not be infallible, and so may result in visual errors.


Enable Asynchronous Depth/Stencil Buffer Access

If this option is checked the driver will immediately return what is currently present in the depth buffer rather wait for the current frame to be completely up to date.


Creating a new profile

To create a new profile:

1.	Click the [image] button, then click New on the menu. If you have previously run a Direct3D or OpenGL game which is not already in the profiles list, PowerVR Tools asks whether you want to create a new profile for that game.

2.	Type in the name of the game as you want it to appear on the list.

3.	The Executable field is for specifying the file that is used to run the game. Files of this type usually have the .EXE extension. You can either type the name of the file that runs the game, or browse to the file.

4.	Click OK to add the new profile to the list.

The list of settings is displayed.

•	To turn a setting on, click it once to show a black tick.

•	To turn a setting off, click it again to show an empty box.

If you want to reset all the settings back to their default settings, click Reset.

After you have chosen the settings you can select this profile when you want to play that game.


Editing a profile

To edit an existing profile:

1.	Click the [image] button, and select the profile you want to edit.

2.	Click the [image] button, then click Edit on the menu.

3.	Edit the game’s details as you want them to appear in the list.

4.	Click OK.

If you want to change the settings for this game, click the check boxes:

•	A black tick means it is turned on.

•	An empty box means it is turned off.

If you want to reset all the settings back to their default settings, click Reset.

After you have chosen the settings you can select this profile when you want to play that game.


Resetting a profile

To reset all the 3D settings for a profile back to their default settings, click Reset.


Deleting a profile

To delete a profile:

1.	Click the [image] button, and select the profile you want to delete.

2.	Click the [image] button, then click Delete on the menu.

3.	Confirm that you want to delete the profile.

Don’t forget that, if you have turned settings on or off in the Global profile, that will still control how KYRO accelerates the game.


Editing the Global profile

A Global profile controls how KYRO accelerates all games.

If you create a new profile for a game, that overrides the Global profile. If you delete a profile for a game, the Global profile takes over control of how KYRO accelerates that game.

You can edit the Global profile, but you can’t delete it.

To edit the Global profile:

1.	Click the [image] button, and select the Global profile.

2.	Click the [image] button, then click Edit on the menu.

3.	Click OK.

If you want to change Global profile, click the check boxes:

•	A black tick means it is turned on.

•	An empty box means it is turned off.

If you want to reset all the settings back to their default settings, click Reset.

After you have set all the settings, then whenever you use KYRO to accelerate a game, it uses this profile unless you have set up a specific profile for the game you are playing.


Selecting a profile

If you want to edit or delete a profile, you need to select it first.

To select a profile, click the [image] button, and select the profile you want to edit or delete.


Using Profiles

A profile contains the settings you want turned on or off for each game.

For example, if you set up a profile for a Direct3D game, then when you play that game, the Direct3D settings that you set in the profile are used.

Note that a profile can override the settings chosen by a game developer, so if you set one up it is largely on an experimental basis. This is because some settings may improve KYRO’s performance for some games, but actually reduce it for others.

You can select, create, edit or delete a profile for a game, and you can also edit the Global profile, which KYRO uses for all games.

The settings are grouped into Direct3D and OpenGL settings.

Click here to display the Direct3D settings list.
Click here to display the OpenGL settings list.


What is Direct3D?

Direct3D is Microsoft's API for 3D games, providing a powerful, generic platform to run games on a Direct3D-compatible card such as KYRO.


What is OpenGL?

OpenGL allows you to play games such as Quake. OpenGL is an Application Programming Interface (API) that allows programmers to write platform-independent 2D and 3D software that uses high-quality graphics.

OpenGL is also suited to graphical applications such as Computer Aided Design (CAD).


Website

Our web site holds the latest software and support pages, as well as news, product details and other PowerVR-related information.

To go to it, make sure your Internet connection is ready, then either browse to http://www.powervr.com/ in your Internet browser, or make sure your browser is closed and click here.


TV tab

The TV tab enables you to control settings for your TV. You can view and adjust the following settings:

Image Control

The following settings control the image quality and position. To adjust the settings, select the setting in the list and adjust using the slider bar below the list.

•	Brightness adjusts the brightness of your TV display

•	Contrast controls the difference between dark and light on your TV

•	Flicker Filter alters the information in the odd and even lines of the TV picture, so that the alternating lines are more similar to each other, reducing flicker.

•	Gamma Correction adjusts the gamma value on your TV and monitor if connected.

The following settings control the image position.

•	Centre click use the arrows to centre the TV display.

•	Coarse Adjust select to enable larger movements when using the Centre arrow controls.

Output Mode

The following output modes are available. Select one from the list:

•	TV & monitor (duplicate) outputs the signal to both your monitor and your TV

•	TV off (monitor only) outputs signal to you monitor only

Note To use the TV out facility you may have to reduce your screen resolution. The TV Out tab will display a message asking you to alter your display size if necessary.

Advanced Settings

This enables you to adjust the following advanced TV settings:

•	Scan Mode

•	TV Format Standard

The following buttons are also available on the TV tab:

•	Reset All resets all screen settings in the Image Control section listed above to the default values.

•	Support Centre opens the Support Centre.

•	Advanced provides access to the advanced settings described above.

•	Details available if advanced settings are displayed, this button enables precise selection of the TV Format Standard to be used.


Scan Mode

This shows how the display on your TV or TV monitor looks, in the format specified in TV Format Standard. There are two options:

Bordered screen is like that on your PC monitor, with a black border around the picture. This is also known as underscan.

Full Screen setting is like that on a TV picture, with no black border and the picture reaching to the very edges of the display, sometimes extending beyond it. This is also known as overscan.


TV Format Standard

This shows what kind of signal KYRO is sending to the TV, such as PAL or NTSC. Different regions use different standards, for example, a lot of equipment in Europe uses PAL, France uses SECAM, whereas America and Japan use NTSC.

If your TV is not showing a display of any kind or is just showing interference, and you’re sure it is switched on and properly connected, then changing the format standard might correct this.

The Details button enables you to further specify the TV format by selecting a country

If Use Automatic Settings option is selected, the country setting is taken automatically from your Windows regional setting. To override this uncheck the Use Automatic Settings checkbox and select the Country you require. The Format sub-type is then displayed next to the Current Format selector.