Unlocking Additional Display Resolutions by Windows Registry Modifications
The Radeon hardware and the ATI Windows driver are capable of supporting an extensive combination of display resolutions and refresh rates. However, the ATI installation software for the Radeon blocks out quite a number of these resolutions and refresh rates. As a result when you click on monitor settings many of the rates supported by the Radeon hardware/driver to do appear, nor can be selected, by the user. The additional resolutions supported by the Radeon hardware/driver can be unblocked by editing the Windows registry.
Note that the additional display resolutions cannot be accessed if you are still using an early version of the ATI Windows drivers. Therefore, download (from the link provided above) and install the latest version of the Windows drivers before attempting the following procedure. Also, be warned that you must be very careful when manually editing the Windows registry as it is possible to yield Windows unusable. If you have no experience with editing the Windows registry you would be well advised to seek the advise of someone who has experience with this. Click this link to download a general guide to working with the Windows registry. You should backup your HTPC’s Windows registry before making any changes (with Windows 98 and Windows Me you can do this from Start>>Accessories>>System Tools>>System Information>>Tools>>Registry Checker). A utility program is provided by Microsoft with Windows for editing the registry. This utility program (ie., regedit.exe) is installed as part of your normal Windows installation and it can be found in the C:/Windows folder on your PC. You can run this program by selecting: Start>>Run>>Browse -- then locate and highlight the file regedit.exe and select Open.
In addition to the standard set of resolutions and refresh rates that are installed by the ATI installation program, the Radeon hardware and the more recent ATI Windows drivers are capable supporting the following additional settings:
704x480 @ 60 Hz
720x400 @ 70, 75, 85, 160, 200 Hz
720x480 @ 59.94, 60, 72, 75, 85, 90, 100 Hz
720x576 @ 59.94, 60, 75, 100 Hz
848x480 @ 60, 75, 88 Hz
856x480 @ 60 Hz
864x480 @ 60, 75 Hz
960x720 @ 60 Hz
1024x600 @ 60 Hz
1072x600 @ 60 Hz
1280x720 @ 59.94, 60, 75, 85 Hz
1280x768 @ 56, 60, 75, 85 Hz
1280x800 @ 60, 85, 100, 160, 200 Hz
1280x960 @ 60, 70, 72, 75, 85, 100, 120, 160, 200 Hz
1360x768 @ 62 Hz
1400x1050 @ 60 Hz
1536x864 @ 60, 85, 100, 120, 160 Hz
1600x900 @ 60, 75, 85, 100, 120, 160 Hz
1600x1000 @ 60, 75, 85, 100, 120, 160 Hz
1600x1024 @ 76 Hz
1600x1280 @ 86.52 Hz
1856x1392 @ 60, 72, 75, 90, 100 Hz
2048x1152 @ 60, 75, 85, 100 Hz
2048x1280 @ 60, 70, 75, 85, 90, 100 Hz
WARNING: Before attempting to edit the Windows registry to enable any of these additional resolutions and refresh rates you will need to know which of these your TV monitor/projector can support. You should not attempt to enable or use a resolution/refresh rate combination not supported by your TV monitor/projector as this could cause damage.
To edit the Windows registry, run the regedit.exe program then go to the section listed below (note the difference for Windows 98/Me/XP vs. Windows 2000:
For Windows 98, Windows ME or Windows XP:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ATI Technologies\Driver
For Windows 2000:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ati2mtxx\DeviceN
You should find one or more numbered (4 digits such as 0000 or 0001) sub-folders. Locate within one of these numbered sub-folders another sub-folder labeled \DAL. Within the DAL folder will be the key titled:
DALNonStandardModesBCD
The format of value associated with this key is a number of entries that enable any the non-standard display resolution/refresh modes listed above. The data is formatted as follows
HH HH VV VV CC CC RR RR
where:
HH HH represents horizontal resolution
VV VV represents vertical resolution
CC CC represents color depth (use 00 00 to enable all standard color depths)
RR RR represents vertical refresh rate (use 00 00 to enble all std. refresh rates)
For example, to enable 1920 X 1080 resolution for all color depths and at a vertical refresh rate of 70Hz: you will need to create a new value for DALNonStandardModesBCD of:
19 20 10 80 00 00 00 70.
As a second example to enable 1280 X 720 resolution at 16-bit color depth and at a vertical refresh rate of 60 Hz you would create a new value of:
12 80 07 20 00 16 00 60
Any new resolution and refresh rate you enable by changes made to the Windows registry will not take effect until you exit regedit.exe and then reboot your PC. The new resolution should then be available under display settings. However, some Radeon users have reported that even with the changes to the Windows registry the additional resolutions are not available. At his point it is not clear why this seems to work for some PC and Windows configurations and not others.
