Force refresh rates in Catalyst drivers?

[Fallengod]

Basically for the first time ever(for a gaming anyways), I decided to try an ATI card. I somewhat anticipated this issue, which is one of the reasons I have stayed away from ATI cards. Do amds cat drivers not allow you refresh rate override specific resolutions? After poking around in the control panel, I was fairly amazed to see that ATI drivers, in the 21st century, do not have a feature that nvidia drivers have had for years. Is there really no way to force refresh rate override specific resolutions in the drivers themselves?

I have had many problems in the last 3 hours since buying the card just to change my monitor refresh rate past the "max" it detects it as. I installed 11.7 drivers first for this 4670 and I couldnt even get 100hz out of it even when it was set to 120. I had to uninstall those and had to load up the cards driver disc with 9.4's on it.

I then had to load up ATI Tray Tools which allows overriding specific refresh rates. It seems to be working with ati tray tools but, I still cannot even run the latest drivers with this. Really? I have to use some third party app just to override refresh rates....

 

[KingFatty]

You can use the existing monitor information and change the max refresh rate for your desired resolution, then create a new INF file. in your situation it should be pretty straightforward because you'd only be changing one number. Then, you just "upgrade" the driver for your monitor to the modified INF file, and voila the driver should recognize the new higher refresh rate and allow you to select it in whatever current or future drivers. And if you don't like it, it's simple to upgrade the monitor INF to whatever windows autodetects if you want to revert back.

 

[Phynaz]

Edit: Nevermind, thought better of what I posted.

 

[wanderer27]

Not sure if this is what you want, but if you're running XP you can do DxDiag from a CMD prompt and goto the "More Help" Tab.
There you can set an Override refresh rate.

Not sure if Vista/Win7 Dx has this or not.

 

[Fallengod]

Yes, I am on WinXP. I am aware of that. But I believe that also resets upon reboot doesnt it? In addition, id want different refresh rate overrides for different resolutions.

Also, I tried dxdiag last night and I dont remember that working anyways. I just today figured out that you need to turn off the EDID crap in cat drivers to allow custom refresh rates and such so, that might have been what was preventing it from working.

I found an ATI refresh rate tool I am going to try out. I also was pointed to a website out modifying refresh rates and resolutions from registry as well.

 

[Ben90]

For those curious on Vista/7, Powerstrip is the only way to create truly custom refresh rates or resolutions for ATi cards. No idea why ATi can't just allow their cards to actually force resolutions without the help of third party drivers.

It just sucks that modern LCDs don't overclock that well because they are programmed to just not accept a refresh rate after a certain point. My old FW900 took custom refresh rates like a beast. Until it died, that is.

 

[KingFatty]

For those curious on Vista/7, Powerstrip is the only way to create truly custom refresh rates or resolutions for ATi cards. No idea why ATi can't just allow their cards to actually force resolutions without the help of third party drivers.

It just sucks that modern LCDs don't overclock that well because they are programmed to just not accept a refresh rate after a certain point. My old FW900 took custom refresh rates like a beast. Until it died, that is.

There is another way, because the makers of Powerstrip also make another program called Moninfo, that you can use with Phoenix EDID designer as follows:

http://widescreengamingforum.com/forum/11731/solved-custom-eyefinity-group-resolutions?page=2

The shortcut that makes it easy is you 1) grab the info from your existing monitor, 2) change the number for the refresh rate, and 3) save it as an INF file to upgrade the monitor's driver. It's completely reversible by deleting the monitor's driver that you upgraded, and allowing windows to autodetect the "official" driver.

Or, you could make multiple INF files with different combinations of resolution/refresh rates, and "upgrade" the driver to the monitor accordingly. Just make sure to reboot the computer after each time you upgrade the monitor driver, so that windows can initialize the monitor with the new settings.

I used this method to drive my monitor at an unsupported resolution/refresh: my monitor supported 1600x1200 @ 60 Hz, but I used this procedure to drive it at 1600x900 @ 85 Hz.

 

[Phynaz]

No idea why ATi can't just allow their cards to actually force resolutions without the help of third party drivers.

Most likely you don't want people destroying their displays.

 

[WelshBloke]

For those curious on Vista/7, Powerstrip is the only way to create truly custom refresh rates or resolutions for ATi cards. No idea why ATi can't just allow their cards to actually force resolutions without the help of third party drivers.

It just sucks that modern LCDs don't overclock that well because they are programmed to just not accept a refresh rate after a certain point. My old FW900 took custom refresh rates like a beast. Until it died, that is.

Does this not work anymore?

 

[Fallengod]

Most likely you don't want people destroying their displays.

That doesnt make any sense and is completely false.... If a particular res does not support a refresh rate, the monitor will give a "out of bounds" or whatever it says error. In addition, Catalyst drivers do allow you to force a refresh rate, you just cannot do it for specific resolutions. Nvidia has had it in their drivers for what, 8 years? So....that doesnt really answer the question as to why ATI hasnt implemented it. Has nvidia users been frying their monitors due to nvidia adding the feature in the drivers? lol, no.

Does this not work anymore?

No. 1) I tried that and it didnt work. 2) Even if it did work, if you look closely, it is limited to 99hz. I couldnt figure out how to make it 120, it looks like it only accepts 2 digits? The entire point of forcing a refresh rate is to get beyond 100hz, which if you cannot add 3 digits, makes that method completely pointless. ATI tray tools is the easiest way. There is another way someone else linked to regarding editing the actual monitor inf files. I am sure that works but, id have to get a tutorial on exactly how to do that.


To be quite honest, as a consumer and being a gamer for maybe 12 years, it is quite mind boggling that we are still having to worry about refresh rates these days. I am not sure who to blame, if it is graphic card companies or monitor companies, but how have we not yet figured out that people actually want to game at the highest possible refresh rating of their monitor. Why do they not just make it so drivers automatically put your refresh rate to maximum when a game or 3D app is launched. I really dont understand it. At least an option in the drivers to force all refresh rates maxed when launching a game or 3D app. This sure would have saved lots of users trouble over the past decade....Well here we are in 21st century and still having to worry about refresh rates, derp.

 

[Ben90]

No. 1) I tried that and it didnt work. 2) Even if it did work, if you look closely, it is limited to 99hz. I couldnt figure out how to make it 120, it looks like it only accepts 2 digits?

To be quite honest, as a consumer and being a gamer for maybe 12 years, it is quite mind boggling that we are still having to worry about refresh rates these days. I am not sure who to blame, if it is graphic card companies or monitor companies, but how have we not yet figured out that people actually want to game at the highest possible refresh rating of their monitor. Why do they not just make it so drivers automatically put your refresh rate to maximum when a game or 3D app is launched. I really dont understand it. At least an option in the drivers to force all refresh rates maxed when launching a game or 3D app. This sure would have saved lots of users trouble over the past decade....Well here we are in 21st century and still having to worry about refresh rates, derp.

First 4 values are for horizontal resolution, next 4 are for verticle, next is something with colors, and last 4 make up refresh rate. So 9999Hz would be the max using DALnonstandardmodes.

It doesn't fix the root problem though, DALnonstandard modes doesn't force a refresh rate, it is best thought of as VGA card asking the monitor if it supports it or not. With Vista/7 being such a scary thing, sometimes the monitor forgets that it does in fact support the requested resolution.

Powerstrip is like: "Yo monitor, run this now". Then it is up to the monitor to decide if it wants to play along or not.

Nvidia's driver is probably the best compromise for the majority of users. We still have the options to force a refresh rate, but it asks it a lot more nicely. It still won't push something as far as Powerstrip, but it basically always gets the job done.

 

[Fallengod]

Interesting. So what youre saying is it is possible to add 3 digits for refresh rate? So if I wanted 150 id have to do "01 50"?

Also at the bottom of his post he says:
the first 8 numbers is your resolution – then have 3 sets of 00 – and the last two is your refresh rate.


He says last two, that is kind of what made me think you couldnt.


EDIT: Hey thanks man. That got it to work. So that method does work great then. Very easy to add appropriate refresh rate if it is missing.

 

[Phynaz]

That doesnt make any sense and is completely false.... If a particular res does not support a refresh rate, the monitor will give a "out of bounds" or whatever it says error

Ummm...No. Many older displays will destroy themselves running at unsupported refresh rates.

 

[Fallengod]

Small update for anyone else having to force refresh rates with ATI cards.... Careful with ATI Tray Tools...

Over past few days ive noticed what seemed to slower computer usage and such. In a few games played my fps were way low and it had me wondering why.

It seems ATI Tray Tools, which is the only thing I have found to force refresh rates for ATI cards, seems to suck CPU usage up like crazy in some circumstances. I still am trying to narrow down why this happens. I just had to disable ATI Tray tools because it was constantly eating 50% cpu with nothing going on. Ouch... It does NOT seem to happen upon being loaded up but I have definitely noticed it a few times after launching and playing 1 game or so. When I exit a game, I look up my cpu usage and it sits there at 50% while I am doing nothing.

Back to the drawing board...Now I need to force refresh rates in some other manner.