ATI Catalyst Question

bladephoenix

Senior member
Sep 28, 2002
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I know alot of you have ATI cards running with DVI connectors, so I wanted to ask you all this question:

Yesturday I was getting all this snowflaking / artifacting on my new Viewsonic VP201s at 1600x1200 @ 60 HZ resolution. I am using this monitor in DVI-D mode. It was just fine at 1024x768, but anything more than that and there would be huge amounts of static. I was trying to figure out what the problem was, since it was appearing in BIOS and in Windows desktop.

Then I tried checking the "Reduce DVI Frequency for High Resolution Displays" in the Catalyst driver of my ATI card. Voila! The problem disappeared!

Now, I am guessing that this option does what it says...reduce the DVI frequency for high res displays. However, I was wondering that the difference between this and reducing the refresh rate is, because whether I have this option checked or not, the I still have the resolution of my monitor at 1600x1200 @ 60 HZ. Just when I check this option there is no artifacting, and when I don't, there is.

What exactly is the difference between DVI frequency and refresh rate??

I am wondering because, while this fix seems to have worked in the windows destop, I still have A LOT of artifacting in BIOS (which obviously would be the case, since the Catalyst drivers are not loaded until Windows loads). Is there a way that I can reduce DVI frequency in BIOS / POST startup?