Click an area
in the diagram or on any of the tabs to get information about a particular option.
Recommended resolution: 1024x768
or higher
The OpenGL Settings panel
allows you to customize certain 3D functions in order to enhance games and applications
that are optimized for OpenGL.
Performance
and Compatibility Options
- Enable buffer region extension:
if this option is enabled then the drivers will use the OpenGL extension buffer
region. For applications that have been optimized to support this extension
performance can be increased.
- Allow the dual planes extension
to use local video memory: enable this function to use local video
memory when you have enabled the buffer region extension.
- Use fast linear-mipmap-linear
filtering: this option provides increased application performance at a
slight expense to image quality. In most cases the loss of image quality will
not be noticeable.
- Enable anisotropic
filtering: enabling this option will accomplish extremely sharp images
through interpolation and filtering of multiple samples from one or more mip-maps,
thus giving a much better approximation of distorted textures.
- Disable support for enhanced
CPU instruction sets:
in terms of performance comparisons and troubleshooting, selection of this
option is useful as it will disable driver support for certain enhanced 3D
instructions used by certain CPUs to complement the GPU (graphics processor)
and improve 3D performance.
Default colour
depth for textures
Use this option to determine whether
textures of a specific color depth should be used by default in OpenGL applications:
- Use desktop colour depth:
this setting will use textures with the same color depth as the current Windows
desktop setting.
- Always use 16 bpp/Always use
32 bpp: (bpp = bits per pixel). These settings will force the use of textures
of the specified color depths, independently of the current Windows desktop
setting.
Buffer flipping
mode
Use this option to determine the
mode of buffer flipping for full-screen OpenGL applications. The Auto-select
setting means that the drivers will automatically select the optimal method
based on your hardware.
Vertical sync
Vertical
sync limits the number of frames/sec
to the monitor refresh rate. This option allows you to specify whether vertical
sync is used in OpenGL applications.
- Always off: disables vertical
sync in all OpenGL applications.
- Off by default: disables
vertical sync except where the application specifically requires the function.
- On by default: enables
vertical sync except where the application specifically requires the function
to be disabled.
Vsync should never be enabled for
performance testing as it decreases the number of frames per second displayed
by the graphics board to match monitor capacity. Some games nevertheless require
Vsync to be enabled.
Customized
configuration
You may prefer certain configurations
depending on the game you are playing. This panel allows you to save your favorite
configurations and reapply them instantly at a later time. To do this, simply
define the parameters you wish to save and click on Save As... to access
the following dialog box.

Enter a name for your new configuration
and click on OK. These settings will then be listed in the Custom
OpenGL settings selection box. If you wish to remove a setting from
the list, select it and click on Delete.
To reapply these presets at a later
time, refer to the section QuickTweak.
Restore
Defaults
The Restore Defaults option
resets the settings to the factory default values.