Forthcoming Interview with ATI VP of software: Ben Bar Haim

Zardon · Jan 4, 2003, 06:45 PM

My recent interview with Terry Makedon in ATI was a very informative interview and it is great to see ATI getting more involved with the end user and also the increased support regarding drivers.

Driverheaven has a forthcoming interview with Ben Bar Haim, ATI's VP of software, but this time im going to open the questions to YOU, our members.

So if you have any questions you wish to ask Ben, from drivers, hydravision, multimedia centre -- in other words, everything that falls under Catalyst, even mobile drivers, post your questions in this thread on the forum.

In a few days, ill gather the questions I feel are most relevant and present them to Ben, then shortly afterward ill detail the interview on the front page of Driverheaven.

This is YOUR chance to get a question or two directly to Ben Bar Haim in ATI, so get your thinking caps on !!!

SsP45 · Jan 4, 2003, 06:57 PM

Here's one, and it might sound dumb.

Will all of ATI's forthcoming drivers require DirectX 9 to be installed on the user's machine?

hobs0n · Jan 4, 2003, 07:25 PM

I would like a definite answer if it IS officially needed to do a "clean install" of drivers when you install new ones or is it just can one just install the new driver set?

AlfredENeumann · Jan 4, 2003, 07:27 PM

- When will Fullstream supportet by the MMC ?
- When will Truform supportet in Hardware ? Until now it is only Supportet in Software.

toddsmack2k · Jan 4, 2003, 07:42 PM

Is there an official release date yet for DOOM III?

~~David~~ · Jan 4, 2003, 07:59 PM

Any chance of SSAA on the R300? Ati said the card can do it. When can we see it?

Romulus · Jan 4, 2003, 07:59 PM

Does the current version of the catalyst drivers for the 9700 pro support hardware trueform? If not then when will it?

Romulus

~~David~~ · Jan 4, 2003, 07:59 PM

Also Skins for ATI mmc would be nice.

SsP45 · Jan 4, 2003, 08:02 PM

Will MMC 8 be available to download for those who don't have an AIW 9700? I have a "normal" 9700 Pro and I would like the new MMC.

sinjin · Jan 4, 2003, 08:05 PM

perhaps he'd let me go over to the office as DH photographer to produce 'The Women of ATI' pictorial?

seriously...ask him about employee demographics...race/gender/locale....women in the workforce (topless or not)...recruitment overseas...etc.

goodluck z!

MACport · Jan 4, 2003, 08:07 PM

When will ATI come out with the Unified Driver Architecture that has been promised ?

Renegade[CSR] · Jan 4, 2003, 08:42 PM

Heres a question: Will The Catalysts for the 9700 Pro support both multisampling and supersampling anti-aliasing in the near future?

~~David~~ · Jan 4, 2003, 09:13 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by MACport
When will ATI come out with the Unified Driver Architecture that has been promised ?

It already is........ All non-beta drivers are unifed. While beta`s are not.

Xp2000 · Jan 4, 2003, 09:54 PM

Here are my questions.
1) Is the Frame Rate drop that we all see in the 9700 due to hardware or due to drivers.
We all know that in games the bottom falls out of the frame rate and This causes pausing in our games and even stutters at times.
2) If it is software related when can we expect to see it fixed?
3) If it is hardware related does ati have any plans on making this right with its customers who payed 400 usd for a card that cannot hold a frame rate above 20?

These questions really need to be ask, Not because Im the one asking them but because there are tons of threads everywhere with people having this problem. This problem happens under all types of hardware configurations. Not just one.
So it has to be the card that is responsible for it.
It really would help the people with this card and that problem, again there are many.

Thank you

aauyeung · Jan 4, 2003, 09:59 PM

Any plan of driver update for All-in-wonder 128 pro?

JameXman · Jan 4, 2003, 10:01 PM

Can Multisample antialiasing (maybe via software-driver) can be added to the R8500?? as with supersampling the Framerates take a HUGE performance hit. Maybe Multisample masking.

I have an idea: Maybe "PERFORMANCE" means MULTISAMPLEand "QUALITY" antialiasing means SUPERSAMPLE in an new drivers update. Would be nice to have nice antialiasing without such performance hit.

Also, you should add the options in a near Catalyst release to FORCE ON and FORCE OFF anisotropic filtering, why?, because i.e the R8500 does not support aniso with Trilinear filtering, if a 3D application forces the use of Trilinear, ANISO will be turned off (and that happens a lot), some 3D apps. doesn´t even allow you to turn off Trilinear filtering an use bilinear.

Thanks??

dartgeek · Jan 4, 2003, 10:23 PM

Why aren’t the mobile drivers integrated into the cat set. To my knowledge they aren’t. People still have to hack driver sets to run their 9000 mobility’s with the latest drivers. While the site states that they are customize for each laptop manufacture, the NVIDIA offerings allow simple download of the Togo drivers from their sites.

This is the man factor that is stopping me from buying an ATi powered laptop. I want to know that my GPU will be supported with the frequent driver updates the desktop counterpart gets.

GUNNIX · Jan 4, 2003, 10:35 PM

How does smartgart work ? for example : how does it decide wether to have fastwrites on or off ?

DcibeL · Jan 4, 2003, 10:46 PM

How do you feel about people changing their video bios to make their video cards run at higher clock rates?

For example:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDA5
http://www.xcl-clan.com/download2.php3?id=62

The flash utility available from XCL clan has allowed me to run my OEM 8500 LE card, that has a stock speed of 230/230, to run at the retail 8500 speed of 275/275 without any problems whatsoever.

Is ATI doing anything to prevent users from overclocking their cards?

King_Tweaker · Jan 4, 2003, 11:35 PM

Will ATI ever make the Radeon 8500 and other gaming cards, work faster in 3d Dev applications like 3dsmax.

There have been many "hacked" FireGL drivers, that show absolute massive improvements over standard drivers, in 3d dev apps and dont show any slowdowns in games.

Please ask this question!!!

Also will they ever fix the problem that has been there for years, when 3dsMax is closed, (all versions of it), it is still in memory and doesnt unload properly, only on ATI cards and not on NVidia ones.

digitalwanderer · Jan 4, 2003, 11:42 PM

When is Duke Nukem Forever going gold? (Heck, he might know...)

EnDlEsS · Jan 4, 2003, 11:49 PM

Well, all R300 based cards run pretty slowly when Truform was turn on. What is the problem of that?? Will it be fixable?? And if it is fixable, when will it be fixed~~?

Thanks~~!!

teddyv · Jan 5, 2003, 12:28 AM

when can users of the Tv wonder expect to recieve some real win xp drivers!!! i mean common, the retail box stated winxp compatability but all we get so far after 1.5 years is beta drivers.....i supprised there aint a lawsuit yet!!!

DP! · Jan 5, 2003, 12:44 AM

When will this feature be implemented in the Catalyst Driver suite for Radeon 9700pro boards ? I am a developer and i want to use the fastest possible transfer FROM agp ram TO system ram to use the R300 as a nice DSP for speacial calculations. Regards, DP!

scion3 · Jan 5, 2003, 01:16 AM

My questions.

1. Will ATi increase its cooperation with game developers so that their games are rendered without issues from ATi video cards?

2. Will ATi improve its driver releases so that people wont be confused? For example they have a Catlyst 3.0 release yet when I go to find a driver page it still has Catalyst 2.5, I have a Radeon 9000 PRO.

3. When will ATi release new OFFICIAL unified drivers for the Radeon 8500, 9000, and 9100 series video cards?

4. Why ATi dont have screensavers or wallpaper to download based on their video cards? Every ATi customer should have screensaver images based on their video card or some other ATi graphic image that can be downloaded.

Pressure · Jan 5, 2003, 01:17 AM

This is gonna be a specific graphic engine question: Will there be made some driver optimizations for the NetImmerse engine from NDL Inc? (Dark Age of Camelot and Shrouded Isles uses a 3D graphics proprietary engine developed by Mythic which is built upon that graphic engine).

Users are getting better performance with a Geforce3/4 than with Radeon 9700/Pro and Radeon 9500/Pro based product eg. higher frames and less "stuttering" ...

<---------------------------------------The actual question is above this line------------------------------------------>

Dark Age og Camelot: Shrouded Isles has that famous (dreaded?) "The way it is meant to be played" icon from a certain company, does that imply that the graphic engine itself is optimized for one particular IHV...

AlfredENeumann · Jan 5, 2003, 01:19 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Romulus
Does the current version of the catalyst drivers for the 9700 pro support hardware trueform? If not then when will it?

Romulus

Questions for ATi only please - David

AlfredENeumann · Jan 5, 2003, 01:23 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by EnDlEsS
Well, all R300 based cards run pretty slowly when Truform was turn on. What is the problem of that?? Will it be fixable?? And if it is fixable, when will it be fixed~~?

Thanks~~!!

Questions for ATi only please - David

Uriel_is_UndaC · Jan 5, 2003, 01:42 AM

1. When will we get the promised SSAA and SSAA+MSAA combinations as advertized here: http://mirror.ati.com/vortal/r300/educational/main.html

2. What type of performance increase can we expect at most from the (semi?) software driver N-patch/PN-triangles implementation on R300? (And since TRUFORM performance is so bad on the R300 how will this effect Displacement Mapping).

3. Does ATi support what Matrox calls "Gigait Color", ie 10 bit precision per color channel instead of 8 bits?
If so when will this be realized in software? (In games, forced or via in game options, and what about Windows?)

4. When will Open GL refreshrate overrider be availible?

5. Is it possible that ATi will grant users controll over 8x FSAA and/or make FSAA availible at resolutions over 1600x1200.
(There certainly seems to be horsepower to do 8x FSAA at least at medium resolutions.)

6. How do you feel about a 256 MB Radeon 9700 aimed at consumer level. Is it worth while? (Yeah I know not software really

)

7. Will ATi ever bring us users true Stero Drivers for 3D-glasses?

8. When will the problems with hardware acceleration on the second monitor go away?

9. What's the status on the problem with video overlay at high res and refreshrates?

DIJIK · Jan 5, 2003, 03:00 AM

After emailing ATI tech-support numerous times, I'm still left with this question:

Is there ANY way to adjust the CONTRAST setting of the ATI 9700 Pro?

Let me C-L-A-R-I-F-Y in layman's terms. (Since ATI's tech support doesn't seem to know what CONTRAST is.) The setting that changes the difference between "black and white" levels.

THIS QUESTION IS NOT A JOKE NOR AM I BEING SARCASTIC.

EVERY game I play, EVERY application I use, EVERY "Full Motion Video Clip" I watch, is TOO "BLACK".

This setting should be independant of any "in game" settings.
I DO NOT want to adjust the "Gamma" of my desktop or "in game" I CAN do that already. I ALREADY know how to adjust the "Overlay" controls for playing back video- (DOES NOT AFFECT IN GAME CINEMATICS!)

I have a Sony Trinitron Monitor which is a high contrast monitor, therefore I need to adjust the contrast settings. Some games I can not EVEN PLAY because I can't see ANYTHING !!!

I apologize for seeming idiotic about this, however I really can not think of any more ways to explain my incredibly simple question that ATI tech support can not answer.

PLEASE-PLEASE-PLEASE if anyone knows how to do this, I'm on my knees BEGGING for you to let me (and ATI) know.

Thank you for your time and just MAYBE your interview could shed some light on this "mystery".

PS: ATI if you don't know what it is- ask NVIDIA I'm sure they will be able to explain it further, or just download ANY of their drivers and you will see a small controller in their panel for "CONTRAST".

Jan 4, 2003, 06:45 PM	#1
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 179	Forthcoming Interview with ATI VP of software: Ben Bar Haim My recent interview with Terry Makedon in ATI was a very informative interview and it is great to see ATI getting more involved with the end user and also the increased support regarding drivers. Driverheaven has a forthcoming interview with Ben Bar Haim, ATI's VP of software, but this time im going to open the questions to YOU, our members. So if you have any questions you wish to ask Ben, from drivers, hydravision, multimedia centre -- in other words, everything that falls under Catalyst, even mobile drivers, post your questions in this thread on the forum. In a few days, ill gather the questions I feel are most relevant and present them to Ben, then shortly afterward ill detail the interview on the front page of Driverheaven. This is YOUR chance to get a question or two directly to Ben Bar Haim in ATI, so get your thinking caps on !!!

Jan 4, 2003, 07:25 PM	#3
hobs0n DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Stockholm, Sweden Posts: 11 Rep Power: 0	I would like a definite answer if it IS officially needed to do a "clean install" of drivers when you install new ones or is it just can one just install the new driver set? __________________ My effe is your effe

Jan 4, 2003, 07:27 PM	#4
AlfredENeumann DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 3 Rep Power: 0	- When will Fullstream supportet by the MMC ? - When will Truform supportet in Hardware ? Until now it is only Supportet in Software. Last edited by AlfredENeumann; Jan 5, 2003 at 01:18 AM.

Jan 4, 2003, 07:42 PM	#5
toddsmack2k It Never..... Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Kentucky Posts: 3,173 Rep Power: 0	Is there an official release date yet for DOOM III? __________________ [color=blue]*Bleeding From the Inside Pouring Out, The* *DriverHeaven* Spiral, We Shall Never Let Go Of.[/color]

Jan 4, 2003, 08:05 PM	#10
sinjin the last samurai Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 1,086 Rep Power: 0	perhaps he'd let me go over to the office as DH photographer to produce 'The Women of ATI' pictorial? seriously...ask him about employee demographics...race/gender/locale....women in the workforce (topless or not)...recruitment overseas...etc. goodluck z! __________________

Jan 4, 2003, 06:57 PM	#2
SsP45 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 6 Rep Power: 0	Here's one, and it might sound dumb. Will all of ATI's forthcoming drivers require DirectX 9 to be installed on the user's machine?

Jan 4, 2003, 07:59 PM	#6
~~David~~ Banned Join Date: May 2002 Location: Atlanta Posts: 959 Rep Power: 0	Any chance of SSAA on the R300? Ati said the card can do it. When can we see it?

Jan 4, 2003, 07:59 PM	#7
Romulus DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Does the current version of the catalyst drivers for the 9700 pro support hardware trueform? If not then when will it? Romulus

Jan 4, 2003, 08:02 PM	#9
SsP45 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 6 Rep Power: 0	Will MMC 8 be available to download for those who don't have an AIW 9700? I have a "normal" 9700 Pro and I would like the new MMC.

Jan 4, 2003, 08:07 PM	#11
MACport DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	9xxx series When will ATI come out with the Unified Driver Architecture that has been promised ?

Jan 4, 2003, 08:42 PM	#12
Renegade[CSR] DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Undisclosed Renegade Location Posts: 396 Rep Power: 0	Heres a question: Will The Catalysts for the 9700 Pro support both multisampling and supersampling anti-aliasing in the near future?

Jan 4, 2003, 09:54 PM	#14
Xp2000 DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 51 Rep Power: 0	Here are my questions. 1) Is the Frame Rate drop that we all see in the 9700 due to hardware or due to drivers. We all know that in games the bottom falls out of the frame rate and This causes pausing in our games and even stutters at times. 2) If it is software related when can we expect to see it fixed? 3) If it is hardware related does ati have any plans on making this right with its customers who payed 400 usd for a card that cannot hold a frame rate above 20? These questions really need to be ask, Not because Im the one asking them but because there are tons of threads everywhere with people having this problem. This problem happens under all types of hardware configurations. Not just one. So it has to be the card that is responsible for it. It really would help the people with this card and that problem, again there are many. Thank you

Jan 4, 2003, 09:59 PM	#15
aauyeung DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Any plan of driver update for All-in-wonder 128 pro?

Jan 4, 2003, 10:01 PM	#16
JameXman DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Radeon 8500 Can Multisample antialiasing (maybe via software-driver) can be added to the R8500?? as with supersampling the Framerates take a HUGE performance hit. Maybe Multisample masking. I have an idea: Maybe "PERFORMANCE" means MULTISAMPLEand "QUALITY" antialiasing means SUPERSAMPLE in an new drivers update. Would be nice to have nice antialiasing without such performance hit. Also, you should add the options in a near Catalyst release to FORCE ON and FORCE OFF anisotropic filtering, why?, because i.e the R8500 does not support aniso with Trilinear filtering, if a 3D application forces the use of Trilinear, ANISO will be turned off (and that happens a lot), some 3D apps. doesn´t even allow you to turn off Trilinear filtering an use bilinear. Thanks??

Jan 4, 2003, 10:23 PM	#17
dartgeek DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	Why aren’t the mobile drivers integrated into the cat set. To my knowledge they aren’t. People still have to hack driver sets to run their 9000 mobility’s with the latest drivers. While the site states that they are customize for each laptop manufacture, the NVIDIA offerings allow simple download of the Togo drivers from their sites. This is the man factor that is stopping me from buying an ATi powered laptop. I want to know that my GPU will be supported with the frequent driver updates the desktop counterpart gets. __________________ Rage3d represent! Last edited by dartgeek; Jan 4, 2003 at 10:32 PM.

Jan 4, 2003, 10:35 PM	#18
GUNNIX DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 157 Rep Power: 0	How does smartgart work ? for example : how does it decide wether to have fastwrites on or off ?

Jan 4, 2003, 10:46 PM	#19
DcibeL DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 43 Rep Power: 0	How do you feel about people changing their video bios to make their video cards run at higher clock rates? For example: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDA5 http://www.xcl-clan.com/download2.php3?id=62 The flash utility available from XCL clan has allowed me to run my OEM 8500 LE card, that has a stock speed of 230/230, to run at the retail 8500 speed of 275/275 without any problems whatsoever. Is ATI doing anything to prevent users from overclocking their cards? __________________ [D-cibeL]

Jan 4, 2003, 11:35 PM	#20
King_Tweaker DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 32 Rep Power: 0	3d Dev Applications Will ATI ever make the Radeon 8500 and other gaming cards, work faster in 3d Dev applications like 3dsmax. There have been many "hacked" FireGL drivers, that show absolute massive improvements over standard drivers, in 3d dev apps and dont show any slowdowns in games. Please ask this question!!! Also will they ever fix the problem that has been there for years, when 3dsMax is closed, (all versions of it), it is still in memory and doesnt unload properly, only on ATI cards and not on NVidia ones.

Jan 4, 2003, 11:42 PM	#21
digitalwanderer Colour Commentator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Highland, IN USA Posts: 5,619 Rep Power: 0	When is Duke Nukem Forever going gold? (Heck, he might know...) __________________ WTF is up with the sigs?

Jan 4, 2003, 11:49 PM	#22
EnDlEsS DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 19 Rep Power: 0	Truform on R300 Well, all R300 based cards run pretty slowly when Truform was turn on. What is the problem of that?? Will it be fixable?? And if it is fixable, when will it be fixed~~? Thanks~~!!

Jan 5, 2003, 12:28 AM	#23
teddyv DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	when can users of the Tv wonder expect to recieve some real win xp drivers!!! i mean common, the retail box stated winxp compatability but all we get so far after 1.5 years is beta drivers.....i supprised there aint a lawsuit yet!!!

Jan 5, 2003, 12:44 AM	#24
DP! DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	DMA data transfer FROM agp ram TO system ram When will this feature be implemented in the Catalyst Driver suite for Radeon 9700pro boards ? I am a developer and i want to use the fastest possible transfer FROM agp ram TO system ram to use the R300 as a nice DSP for speacial calculations. Regards, DP!

Jan 5, 2003, 01:16 AM	#25
scion3 HardwareHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Tha rock Posts: 6 Rep Power: 0	My questions. 1. Will ATi increase its cooperation with game developers so that their games are rendered without issues from ATi video cards? 2. Will ATi improve its driver releases so that people wont be confused? For example they have a Catlyst 3.0 release yet when I go to find a driver page it still has Catalyst 2.5, I have a Radeon 9000 PRO. 3. When will ATi release new OFFICIAL unified drivers for the Radeon 8500, 9000, and 9100 series video cards? 4. Why ATi dont have screensavers or wallpaper to download based on their video cards? Every ATi customer should have screensaver images based on their video card or some other ATi graphic image that can be downloaded. __________________ STRYKE ARD!

Jan 5, 2003, 01:17 AM	#26
Pressure DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Dark Age of Camelot and Shrouded Isles support.... This is gonna be a specific graphic engine question: Will there be made some driver optimizations for the NetImmerse engine from NDL Inc? (Dark Age of Camelot and Shrouded Isles uses a 3D graphics proprietary engine developed by Mythic which is built upon that graphic engine). Users are getting better performance with a Geforce3/4 than with Radeon 9700/Pro and Radeon 9500/Pro based product eg. higher frames and less "stuttering" ... <---------------------------------------The actual question is above this line------------------------------------------> Dark Age og Camelot: Shrouded Isles has that famous (dreaded?) "The way it is meant to be played" icon from a certain company, does that imply that the graphic engine itself is optimized for one particular IHV... __________________ Never Argue With An Idiot. They´ll Lower You To Their Level And Then Beat You With Experience.

Jan 5, 2003, 01:42 AM	#29
Uriel_is_UndaC DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Sweden, Lund Posts: 35 Rep Power: 0	1. When will we get the promised SSAA and SSAA+MSAA combinations as advertized here: http://mirror.ati.com/vortal/r300/educational/main.html 2. What type of performance increase can we expect at most from the (semi?) software driver N-patch/PN-triangles implementation on R300? (And since TRUFORM performance is so bad on the R300 how will this effect Displacement Mapping). 3. Does ATi support what Matrox calls "Gigait Color", ie 10 bit precision per color channel instead of 8 bits? If so when will this be realized in software? (In games, forced or via in game options, and what about Windows?) 4. When will Open GL refreshrate overrider be availible? 5. Is it possible that ATi will grant users controll over 8x FSAA and/or make FSAA availible at resolutions over 1600x1200. (There certainly seems to be horsepower to do 8x FSAA at least at medium resolutions.) 6. How do you feel about a 256 MB Radeon 9700 aimed at consumer level. Is it worth while? (Yeah I know not software really ) 7. Will ATi ever bring us users true Stero Drivers for 3D-glasses? 8. When will the problems with hardware acceleration on the second monitor go away? 9. What's the status on the problem with video overlay at high res and refreshrates?

Jan 5, 2003, 03:00 AM	#30
DIJIK DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	ATI Control Panel- "CONTRAST" Setting After emailing ATI tech-support numerous times, I'm still left with this question: Is there ANY way to adjust the CONTRAST setting of the ATI 9700 Pro? Let me C-L-A-R-I-F-Y in layman's terms. (Since ATI's tech support doesn't seem to know what CONTRAST is.) The setting that changes the difference between "black and white" levels. THIS QUESTION IS NOT A JOKE NOR AM I BEING SARCASTIC. EVERY game I play, EVERY application I use, EVERY "Full Motion Video Clip" I watch, is TOO "BLACK". This setting should be independant of any "in game" settings. I DO NOT want to adjust the "Gamma" of my desktop or "in game" I CAN do that already. I ALREADY know how to adjust the "Overlay" controls for playing back video- (DOES NOT AFFECT IN GAME CINEMATICS!) I have a Sony Trinitron Monitor which is a high contrast monitor, therefore I need to adjust the contrast settings. Some games I can not EVEN PLAY because I can't see ANYTHING !!! I apologize for seeming idiotic about this, however I really can not think of any more ways to explain my incredibly simple question that ATI tech support can not answer. PLEASE-PLEASE-PLEASE if anyone knows how to do this, I'm on my knees BEGGING for you to let me (and ATI) know. Thank you for your time and just MAYBE your interview could shed some light on this "mystery". PS: ATI if you don't know what it is- ask NVIDIA I'm sure they will be able to explain it further, or just download ANY of their drivers and you will see a small controller in their panel for "CONTRAST".