gfx settings ingame or in catalyst?

[melat0nin]

Hi all,

I'm running a Radeon 9800 Pro and I was just wondering whether it is more beneficial to change graphics settings in the Catalyst Control Centre (CCC) or in Half Life 2 (or any other game) itself.

I left CCC on 2xAA and 2xFA and forgot, then ramped up my settings in the game (4xAA) and performance was a dog, so I checked in CCC and realised what I did.

Basically, what happens when the setting in the CCC conflicts with the game's setting (i.e. if CCC says 4xAA and HL2 says none, does CCC overrule or does HL2, or if CCC says 6xAA and HL2 says 2xAA, is it actually 6x or 2x.. etc etc)? And, are both settings identical i.e. is, say, HL2's implementation of 4xAA identical to the CCC's, from the point of view that one is designed with the hardware in mind, and the other is designed with the game's engine in mind.

I've often wondered this, and which settings should be relied upon to get the best performance/quality, and now that Catalyst AI reportedly has optimisations for HL2, I'm curious as to whether the driver is the better place to go for tweaking.

Thanks for any help.

Laurence

 

[melat0nin]

*bump*

 

[[Matt]]

desktop setting overrule ingame setting unless the desktop settings are set to application preference.

 

[DrDevin]

It is best to leave the control center to "application controlled" also I would reccomened setting AI to high. Then do the rest of your tweaking in game (with the settings and console) sometimes developers use tweaks for AA or AF that give you the benefits without as much performance drop. Also you dont have to go tweak AA and AF for every game or create a profile

 

[melat0nin]

desktop setting overrule ingame setting unless the desktop settings are set to application preference.

Hey,

I'm on a Uni network and can't use IRC, i'm afraid :O

EDIT: heh i just realised that was your sig. sorry

 

[melat0nin]

It is best to leave the control center to "application controlled" also I would reccomened setting AI to high. Then do the rest of your tweaking in game (with the settings and console) sometimes developers use tweaks for AA or AF that give you the benefits without as much performance drop. Also you dont have to go tweak AA and AF for every game or create a profile

by High for AI do you mean in relation to HL2 only or for all games? I read a review (somewhere) and it showed performance drops in some games for Advanced, yet performance gains for Standard (I think that was Doom3 but I might be wrong).