The ATI Tray Tools program is a freeware utility for ATI Radeon video cards developed by Ray Adams. Both advanced users and beginners can use it to maximize power of video cards. ATI Tray Tools requires installation of the video card’s drivers. The program does not need the Catalyst Control Center to work properly, but it can also run together with it.
The system requirements of the program is ATI Radeon cards only. ATI Tray Tools supports operating systems of both 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, most builds of Windows Longhorn, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7.
The main features of ATI Tray Tools:
- allows changing the resolution, colors, rotation, and extended desktop settings directly from ATT’s right-click menu;
- modifies OpenGL/Direct3D settings separate from one another;
- provides game profiles with desktop shortcut creation, settings of OpenGL/Direct3D with templates, GUI form and tray popup menu;
- overclocking with templates including FAN Control;
- hotkey mapping (load profiles any profiles/work with colors/run any application);
- the system for making screenshots;
- hardware monitoring;
- OnScreen Display with ability to show information about speed and temperature;
- CrossFire support;
- supports nearly 20 languages;
- supports plugins created for ATI Tray Tools;
- provides Audio Recorder.
The context menu specifications and 3D profile settings
The great advantage of the ATI Tray Tools utility is that you can run it instead of the more bulky official Catalyst Control Center. ATI Tray Tools is much lighter, but powerful. Users simply need to install it once and then the application remains in the tray and supplies a consistent menu. In addition to modifications in game profiles, users get access to the 3D, hotkeys, plugins, tweaks, hardware, refresh lock, and colors, etc.
There is an option to select specific 3D settings such as Anisotropic Filtering, Anti Aliasing, Filter, Texture Preference, Adaptive anti-aliasing, MipMap Detail Level or Wait for Vertical Sync. The last ones can be chosen for every gamer separately. Moreover, users are able to make modifications connected to a number of supported filtering optimizations or texture format, install the ‘Texture LOD Adjustment’ or turn on ‘Temporal AA’.
Fan speed and shader optimization adjustments
In the overclocking zone of ATI Tray Tool users find the nominal and current GPU and memory values displayed. It enables users to change the voltage, core and memory speed. In order to test artifacts, the program provides a 3D renderer or a benchmark to operate. There are two control options in the Fan tab section for manual and automatic speed depending on temperature.
In addition, user can tweak shaders to override pixel and vertex shader versions and optimize pixel shader code, select the use of geometry instancing or force a mipmap filter. Enabling of Fast Z Clear, Z Mask or Z Top leads to the configuration of the Hyper Z compression mode. The System tab section of the Standard Tweaks window should be chosen to disable DMA Copy or Block Write and use WMV Acceleration.
To conclude
The ATI Tray Tools utility is one of the best tweaking solutions for your Radeon video card. The program allows its users operating driver settings easily for Radeon directly from the icon in the system tray. It can make the most of your Radeon graphics card and improve the general experience in applications though the load may be light or weighty. This is the program for experts and newcomers to make the better performance for their video cards and train tweaking skills as well.