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<h2 class="pHeading1">
Glossary
</h2>

<p class="pBody">
The Glossary contains definitions of terms used in the Catalyst Control Center Help.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
2D
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Acronym for &quot;two dimensional,&quot; a term applied to computer graphics that are &quot;flat.&quot; Typical desktop applications such as word processors, spreadsheet programs, or other programs that manipulate print or simple graphics (such as pictures or line art) are generally considered to be operating within a 2D environment, even when they include simple three dimensional elements, such as buttons.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
3D
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Acronym for &quot;three dimensional,&quot; referring to computer graphics that appear to have volume and depth. Various modeling processes take the representation of a three dimensional object provided by the computer program and render it by using various lighting components, applying textures, and setting layers of transparency or opacity as required in order to produce a realistic representation of a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional display.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
3Dc&#8482;
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
An ATI hardware-based compression technology that reduces the size of 3D texture data, rendering more finely-grained texture surfaces with greater efficiency. It significantly minimizes the memory footprint of normal maps containing information on how light reflects off textured surfaces, allowing game programmers to include more texture and lighting details without affecting performance.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Adaptive Anti-aliasing
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Adaptive anti-aliasing is a technique that applies a combination of multi-sampling (MSAA) and super-sampling (SSAA) on 3D objects to improve edge smoothness and fine detail. Multi-sampling works best on smoothing the edges of solid polygons, but cannot effectively smooth edges within polygons which are partially transparent. Super-sampling is able to more accurately calculate color values adjacent to transparent pixel shader values within polygons with partially transparent textures, but is not applied universally since it is more processor-intensive. Adaptive anti-aliasing works by using super-sampled anti-aliasing on transparent textures, and multi-sampled anti-aliasing on all other textures. This delivers exceptional levels of image quality, while maintaining performance.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
AGP
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) is a slot on the computer motherboard designed specifically for 3D graphics cards. AGP runs 3D images much more smoothly and quickly than was previously possible with PCI video cards; AGP runs at several times the bus speed of PCI and employs sideband addressing, so multiple data transfers between the graphics processor and the computer can take place concurrently. AGP is currently being phased out in favour of PCI Express (PCIe&#8482;) on PC systems.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Alpha Blending
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Alpha blending is used in 3D graphics to create transparent or opaque effects for surfaces such as glass and water. Alpha is a transparency value, so the lower the value, the more transparent the image looks. It is also used in animations to produce such things as fading effects, where one image gradually fades into another.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Alternate Frame Rendering
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A graphical load-balancing scheme where two graphics cards are used to render alternate frames of the display. This configuration increases the detail of the 3D objects each card can render, as each card handles half of the total number of frames. Essentially, each card has more time to render a scene, delivering a noticeable increase in 3D detail. This type of graphical operation is only available in Radeon CrossFire&#8482; graphics cards running Microsoft Direct 3D and OpenGL games or applications. 
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Anisotropic Filtering
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A technique that preserves the surface details of an object as it recedes into the distance by utilizing and blending together the object&#39;s texture maps. This makes 3D objects appear more realistic as the detail of their surface texture is retained in a smooth, seamless fashion on the sections that move or fade away into the background.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Anti-aliasing
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A method that smooths out the jagged edges of a curved object. A black curved line on a white background displayed on a computer screen will have some jaggedness along its edges due to the inherent limitations of using discrete pixels to display the image. Anti-aliasing smooths out this jaggedness by filling in the white spaces between the jagged edges with varying shades of grey.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Aspect
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A group of related features in ATI&#39;s Catalyst Control Center software. For example, the Color aspect clusters together controls that handles gamma, brightness, contrast, and other features relating directly to the display of color. Similarly, the 3D aspect provides a set of related controls dealing with such features as anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, mipmap details levels, and more.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Aspect Ratio
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The proportions of a display are expressed as a ratio of its width and height. Common ratios include 4:3 for TVs and CRTs, 5:4 for LCDs, and 16:9 for widescreen displays.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Avivo&#8482; Color
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Avivo&#8482; Color is an advanced feature within Catalyst Control Center, providing the user with precise control over how color is displayed on a monitor. Avivo&#8482; Color provides tools to adjust the Hue and Saturation values on a per-monitor basis, making it possible to optimize the use of a single display within its existing ambient lighting environment, or to better color match two or more adjacent monitors.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Back Buffer
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A type of offscreen memory used to provide smooth video and 2D graphics acceleration. This technique uses two frame buffers, so the process is often referred to as &quot;double-buffering.&quot; While the contents of one buffer are displayed, a second buffer, called the &quot;back&quot; buffer, holds the frame being worked on. In this way, users will only see complete, smooth frames displayed onscreen.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Bilinear Filtering
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
This filtering method reduces the blockiness caused when zooming into a 3D surface that is at a right angle to the viewer. A newspaper photo examined closely enough will show that the picture is made up of tiny dots. If the photo was enlarged it would start to look &quot;blocky&quot; and less distinct. This is also a problem for computer-generated images, especially for surface details.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Bit Depth
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Refers to the number of data bits required to store color information about a pixel. Larger bit depth means a greater range of color information is capable of being encoded into each pixel. For example, 1 binary bit of memory can only encode to either &quot;0&quot; or &quot;1.&quot; So a graphical bit depth of 1 means that the display can only show two colors, the black and white of a monochrome display. Four-bit color depth is capable of displaying 16 colors because there are only 16 different combinations of 4 bits (&quot;0000&quot;, &quot;0001&quot;, &quot;0010&quot;... to &quot;1111&quot;). Sixteen-bit color is capable of reproducing 65,536 colors, 24-bit color can display up to 16,777,216 individual colors, and 30-bit color can display up to one billion individual colors.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Bitmap
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A bitmap is a graphic or character representation composed of individual pixels, arranged horizontally in rows. A monochrome bitmap uses one bit per pixel (bpp). Color bitmaps may use up to 32bpp, depending on the color depth selected.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Brightness
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The amount of white or black that is applied to all colors onscreen. By making the screen &quot;brighter&quot; you are adding more white to it. This should not be confused with luminosity, which measures the actual light level emitted from the computer display.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Buffer
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A name referring to portions of on-board video memory. One large buffer is always used to display images to the screen; this is the &quot;display buffer.&quot; The rest of offscreen memory is typically used by applications as back buffers, z-buffers, and texture buffers.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Catalyst
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
ATI software that provides users with direct control over a wide range of graphic features designed to improve stability and performance. Using Windows Control Panel&#39;s Display Properties as an interface, it provides convenient access to many features available in the display drivers that accelerates 2D and 3D performance for gameplay, multimedia, and various 3D-intensive applications.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Catalyst Control Center 
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Catalyst Control Center is the successor technology to the Catalyst software formerly available only through the Windows Control Panel. It has a new user interface, providing a more interactive means of controlling such things as 2D and 3D performance while providing immediate feedback using a more intuitive graphical user interface.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Charisma Engine&#8482;
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The Charisma Engine&#8482; performs complex transformations, clipping, and lighting calculations utilizing 4-matrix skinning and keyframe interpolations, which are designed to produce more life-like transitions in such things as the facial expressions of 3D characters.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Charisma Engine&#8482; II
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Incorporating a programmable Vertex Shader pipeline, Charisma Engine&#8482; II is a transform and lighting engine designed to make 3D characters and transitions even more life-like.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Color Component
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Three color components-Red, Green, and Blue-combine in various intensities to determine the color of each pixel on the screen. The values of each color component are graphically represented by a corresponding color curve.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Color Correction
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Correct discrepancies between the real color value and the way a screen displays it. Color discrepancies can be caused by a variety of sources, including the lighting conditions in the work area and gradual shifts in color over time on monitors or flat panel displays.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Color Curve
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A color curve represents all possible intensity values (from 0 to 255) for a color component (Red, Green or Blue). For each color curve, the horizontal axis represents the input value (the color value a program wants to display), while the vertical axis represents the output value (the color value that the display driver will write to the screen). A value of 0 (in the lower left corner) represents the complete absence of that particular color, while a value of 255 (in the upper right corner) represents the &quot;full&quot; strength for that color.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Color Depth
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Color depth refers to the number of color shades available on your display and is measured in bits per pixel (bpp). Typical ranges are: 256 colors (8bpp), thousands of colors (16bpp), and millions of colors (32bpp).
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Component Video
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Typically used on DVD players and HDTV systems, component video is a standard Red/Green/Blue (RGB) color signal for televisions. The signal is split and compressed into separate luminance and color values-luminance (&quot;Y&quot;), red minus luminance (R-Y), and blue minus luminance (B-Y). The value for green is not transmitted. The display device automatically &quot;fills in&quot; the color values that are not red or blue. DVDs are encoded using component video, so display devices will provide enhanced playback when this type of connection is used. A common variant of this format used in North America is YPbPr.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Composite Video
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Composite video is a type of analog video signal that combines both brightness and color information into a single signal. It typically uses a single RCA connection for the video channel, and separate RCA connections for the left and right audio channels. The quality of the video signal is reduced by the process of mixing the brightness and multiple color channels together into a single channel. For this reason it is inferior in signal quality than either S-Video or component video. Composite video is the broadcast format for analog television signals worldwide, and connections are typically available on VCRs, DVD players and video games.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Compositing Engine
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A chip that is available only on CrossFire&#8482; Edition graphics cards. This chip takes the signals from the GPUs on both the Master graphics card and the Slave graphics card and combines the results according to the selected operating mode. It then sends the final frames out to the display device. It is capable of advanced blending operations without burdening either of the GPUs.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Control Point
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A control point is a user-created point on the color curve. Users can change the color of the screen by moving the control points with a mouse.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
CRT
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Acronym for &quot;cathode ray tube&quot;, which is the main component of computer monitors and TVs. Color CRTs use three separate electron beams fired through a shadow mask and onto the back of the glass screen. The electron beams activate separate red, green, and blue values in various strengths in order to produce a colored image. 
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Dashboard
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The dashboard is the part of the Catalyst Control Center used to display a graphical representation of the features available in installed ATI hardware and software. The dashboard can be used to access all of the aspects (sets of related graphical features) available on a graphics card. The dashboard is only available in Advanced view and Custom view which is aimed at more experienced users.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Direct 3D
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Part of Microsoft&#39;s DirectX API designed for rendering 3D graphics on Windows systems. It provides software developers with low-level access to functions on graphics cards, providing the type of performance necessary for intensive 3D applications such as games.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
DirectX
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A Microsoft technology, DirectX is an API that provides programmers with direct access to low-level hardware functions for games and other high-performance 3D applications. 
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Dithering
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A computer graphics technique that takes advantage of the human eye&#39;s tendency to mix two colors that are adjacent to each other to produce smooth boundary transitions. Dithering adds intermediate color values between two or more boundaries, producing smoother, more natural look to 2D images or 3D objects.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Dot pitch
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Dot pitch specifies the sharpness of a monitor&#39;s display. It is measured in millimeters (mm) and is the distance between the individual phosphor sub-pixels in a CRT display or cells of the same color within an LCD display. The smaller the number, the sharper the image. The most common dot pitches for monitors range from .24 mm to .31 mm. Also, if a monitor with a .24 mm dot pitch is set to its highest possible resolution, the pixel size will equal the dot pitch. If the monitor is set to lower resolutions, the pixels will be comprised of multiple dots.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
DVI
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Acronym for &quot;Digital Video Interface,&quot; a standard video connection used on many current computer displays. There are three types of DVI connections: DVI-A (analog), DVI-D (digital), and DVI-I (integrated, capable of either analog or digital). It supports high-bandwidth video signals over 160 Hz, so it is most often used for high-resolution displays.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
EDTV
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Acronym for &quot;Enhanced Definition Television&quot;, which produces better television image quality than Standard Definition Television (SDTV). Applicable to the NTSC broadcast format, EDTV displays are capable of depicting the standard 480 horizontal scan lines in a non-interlaced format. Instead it paints all of the scan lines in one pass, which is called progressive scanning, a process which also removes the &quot;jaggies&quot; inherent in the interlaced television signals. 
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Flat Shading
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A lighting technique that shades each polygon of a 3D object based on where the source of the light is and the angle of the polygon in relation to it. It enables relatively fast rendering of 3D objects, although it can make those objects appear &quot;faceted&quot; as each visible polygon is set to a particular color value, and consequently does not produce as realistic an effect as obtained when using Gouraud shading. 
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
FlexFit&#8482;
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
ATI&#39;s FlexFit&#8482; technology brings together the Mobility&#8482; Radeon family of pin-compatible mobile graphics processors and the most competitive Integrated Graphic Processor (ICP) products in the industry for AMD and Intel, with one common driver for all solutions.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Fog
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Term used to describe the blending of an object using a fixed color as objects are made to appear more distant from the viewer.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Frame Buffer
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The portion of the memory buffer on the graphics card used to store the image being displayed. All rendering processes have been accomplished by this stage and this buffer contains only a one-to-one relationship of the data to be relayed to the display.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
FullStream&#8482;
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
FullStream&#8482; delivers smooth, high-quality video when viewing real-time streaming video files over the Internet. It removes pixelation and blocky artifacts caused by limited bandwidth by intelligently detecting the edges of visible blocks and smoothing them over using a sophisticated filtering technique.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Gamma
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Sometimes confused with brightness, gamma actually refers to the correction that is applied to any display device in order to produce more gradual increases or decreases in the perceived brightness for that device. A change in gamma produces a non-linear change in the color curve, ensuring that perceived changes in color and intensity are consistently applied.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Gouraud Shading
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A shading method used to produce a smooth lighting effect across a 3D object. A specific color is used at each vertex of a triangle or polygon and interpolated across the entire face.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
HDCP
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
HDCP is an acronym for &quot;High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection.&quot; It is a form of digital rights management designed to protect copyright of signals being transported across DVI or HDMI&#8482; connections. Several international regulatory bodies have recommended its incorporation into high-definition display and playback devices.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
HDMI&#8482;
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
HDMI&#8482; is an acronym for &quot;High Definition Multimedia Interface.&quot; It is a 19-pin connector used for transferring combined digital audio and video. HDMI&#8482; supports standard, enhanced, and high-definition digital video signals, and is designed for use with VCRs, DVD players, personal computers, and set-top boxes. A DVI adapter can be used to transfer the video signal to an HDMI&#8482;-capable display, although audio must be transferred from a different route, as DVI output does not support audio.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
HDTV
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Acronym for &quot;High Definition Television,&quot; a format that produces much greater picture quality than a standard television, and in a wide-screen format that matches that of a movie theater screen. The two most popular formats are 1080i and 720p, where the number represents how many horizontal scan lines they have, and the following letter represents whether the picture is interlaced, or the product of progressive scanning technology. Interlaced displays paint the odd-numbered scan lines and then the even-numbered lines to produce a picture, whereas progressive scan paints all of the scan lines at once. Both formats use an aspect ratio of 16:9. In contrast, standard North American television signals are displayed using 480 interlaced (480i) scan lines with a more square aspect ratio of 4:3.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Hue
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Refers to a specific color within the visible spectrum of light, defined by its dominant wavelength. A light wave with a central tendency within the range of 565-590 nm is visible as yellow. In the standard RGB color space used by most computer displays, hue refers to a coordinate of the color as described by its red, green, and blue values, minus any additional brightness or saturation values for that color.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
HydraVision&#8482;
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
HydraVision&#8482; is ATI&#39;s multi-monitor management software, enabling users to manage the display of multiple windows and applications across two or more adjacent monitors. It also includes a range of productivity features designed to effectively manage applications in this environment.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
HyperMemory&#8482;
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A technology that enables a graphics card to access the computer&#39;s system memory directly through the PCI Express bus. It uses algorithms to optimize the use of locally available memory on the graphics card as well as system memory as required. Ultimately, it allows for a greater allocation of memory resources for display purposes than is natively available on the graphics card.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
HyperZ&#8482;
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
HyperZ&#8482; decreases the amount of information sent to the frame buffer, easing memory bandwidth limitations and allowing for ultra-high resolutions and full-screen 3D acceleration in true color. It uses a Hierarchical Z-buffer visibility algorithm to eliminate blocks of pixels that are hidden behind displayed triangles, Z Compression to compress and speed the resulting visual data and Fast Z-Clear, which updates only those pixels whose values have changed.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Keyframe Interpolation
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
This feature is also known as &quot;morphing.&quot; In an animation, a start and end point are picked as the key frames. In a 3D rendering, the start point could have a character with a neutral expression, and the end point could have that same character smiling. Additional frames are interpolated (inserted) between the two keyframes in order that &quot;morphs&quot; (transforms) the image so that there is a smooth transition between the key frames. 
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
KTX Buffer Region Extension
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
This OpenGL programming term refers to a feature that rapidly updates portions of the display of 3D modelling applications that change very quickly, or have been moved or occluded. It does this by optimizing the storage of buffer regions in the graphics card&#39;s memory buffer. Other applications are typically not adversely affected when this is enabled.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Lighting
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
In 3D computer graphics, refers to aspects and quality of the virtual light source being used to make an object visible. Lighting can strongly affect the &quot;mood&quot; of a scene. For example, a &quot;harsh&quot; light could be a bare lightbulb that is glaringly bright on the objects closest to it while casting strong shadows in the background. A &quot;softer&quot; light would be more diffuse and not cast shadows, such as you would get outdoors on a typical overcast day.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Mipmapping
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The most memory-intensive aspect of 3D graphics are the textures that give an object its realism (like wood, marble, leather, and cloth). Because objects in real life become less detailed as they move farther away from the viewer, 3D programmers simulate this by using less detailed, lower resolution texture maps on distant objects. These texture maps are merely scaled down versions of the main texture map used when the object is up close, and they use less memory.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
NTSC
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The name for the type of analog television signal used throughout the Americas (except Brazil) and in Japan. It draws a total of 525 vertical interlaced frames of video at a refresh rate of 60 Hz, making it relatively flicker-free. The acronym refers to the National Television Systems Committee, which devised this color video standard in 1953.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Offscreen Memory
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
An area of memory used to preload images so that they can be quickly drawn to the screen. Offscreen memory refers to all of the remaining video memory not taken up by the front buffer, which holds the contents of the display screen currently visible.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
OpenGL
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Short for &quot;Open Graphics Library,&quot; this is an industry standard for cross-platform 3D graphics development. It consists of a large number of functions that can be called upon in various programs, such as games, CAD, and virtual-reality systems, to produce complex 3D objects from simpler, more &quot;primitive&quot; building blocks. Implementations currently exist under Windows, Mac OS X, and various forms of Unix, including Linux.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
ATI Overdrive
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
ATI Overdrive maximizes the performance of the GPU by dynamically altering its speed to an optimal level depending on usage. An on-chip thermal sensor constantly monitors the temperature of the GPU, allowing for maximum clock speed to be maintained while avoiding overheating.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
PAL
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
An acronym for &quot;Phase Alternating Line&quot;, the name for a video broadcast standard used in much of Europe (except France), most of Asia, the Middle-East, Africa and Australia. It draws a total of 625 vertical interlaced frames of video at a refresh rate of 25 Hz.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
PCI
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Acronym for &quot;Peripheral Component Interconnect&quot;, which is the specification for a type of computer bus used for attaching computer peripherals to a computer&#39;s motherboard. PCI encompasses both integrated motherboard components (such as built-in graphical processors) and peripherals that fit into an expansion card slot, such as a separate graphics card. PCI replaced the older ISA and VESA bus standards, and was itself superseded by the AGP standard for the main graphics card bus.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
PCI Express (PCIe&#8482;)
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The successor standard to the PCI and AGP bus standards, with a significantly faster serial communications system, further opening up bandwidth for more communications between such peripherals as graphics cards and the computer&#39;s CPU. PCIe cards can come in several physical configurations, the fastest currently being X16, which is typically used for graphic cards, and X1, typically used for other peripherals, such as separate multimedia cards.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Pipeline
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
In relation to computer graphic processors, refers to the number of separate arithmetic units available for rendering the output on a display. In general, more pipelines available on a graphical processor means there are more 3D rendering capabilities available, increasing overall 3D performance.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Pixel
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
All computer images are made up of tiny dots. Each individual dot is called a pixel, a word created from the term &quot;picture element.&quot; A pixel is the smallest indivisible unit of a digital image and can be only a single color. The size of the pixel depends on how the display resolution has been set. The smallest size a pixel can be is determined by the display&#39;s dot pitch, which is measured in millimeters (mm).
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
PowerPlay&#8482;
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A power management technology designed to dramatically reduce power consumption for ATI&#39;s Mobility Radeon family of mobile graphics products. It provides an optimal balance between performance and power, delivering high-performance when required and conserving battery power when demand on the graphics processor is low.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Pulldown
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Pulldown is a telecine technique used to transfer motion picture film shot at one frame rate to a video format at a different frame rate. Typical NTSC video contains more frames per second than motion picture film for even division between frames, so that every 4 frames of film can be reproduced as 5 separate NTSC frames, the &quot;extra frame&quot; created by interlacing interpolated frames. The features produces a smoother NTSC video image from a motion picture film source, and can be used for better edge image processing in the Vector Adaptive Deinterlacing feature within Catalyst Control Center.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Refresh Rate
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Also referred to as &quot;vertical refresh rate.&quot; This is the rate at which a monitor or television can redraw the screen from top to bottom. NTSC television systems have a refresh rate of approximately 60 Hz whereas computer displays typically have refresh rates of 75 Hz or more. At refresh rates of 70 Hz and lower, screen flicker is often noticeable.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Rendering
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Rendering refers to the final drawing stages where the 2D image that appears on a display is derived from its 3D descriptions. What appears on the display may look three dimensional, but it is really just a 2D grid of pixels designed to appear that way.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Resolution
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The resolution of any display is the number of pixels that can be depicted on screen as specified by the number of horizontal rows against the number of vertical columns. The default VGA resolution of many video cards is capable of displaying 640 rows of pixels by 480 columns. The typical resolution of current displays is set to higher values, such as 1024x768 (XGA), 1280x1024 (SXGA), or 1600x1200 (UXGA).
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Runtime Server
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The Catalyst Control Center Runtime Server is an application that runs continuously in the background. It manages hotkeys and profiles and stores all display settings. 
</p>

<p class="pBody">
Should the Catalyst Control Center stop for any reason, for example nothing happening when attempting to change view, restart the Runtime Server.
</p>

<p class="pBody">
To restart the Runtime Server:
</p>
<div class="pSmartList1"><ul class="pSmartList1">

<div class="pSmartList1"><li>Click Start &gt; All Programs &gt; Catalyst Control Center &gt; Advanced &gt; Restart Runtime.</li></div>
</ul></div>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Saturation
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Refers to the intensity of a specific hue (color). A highly saturated hue is vivid and intense, whereas a less saturated hue appears more grey. A completely unsaturated color is grey. In terms of the RGB color model, a fully saturated color exists when you have 100% brightness in one of the three channels (say, red) and 0% in the two others (green and blue). Conversely, a fully desaturated color is one where all of the color values are the same. Saturation can therefore be thought of as the relative difference between the values of the channels.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
SCART
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
SCART is an acronym for &quot;Syndicat des Constructeurs d&#39;Appareils Radiorcepteurs et Tlviseurs&quot;. SCART is an 21-pin connector used mainly in Europe for transferring analog audio and video signals between VCRs, DVD players, personal computers, and set-top boxes. It is sometimes referred to as Pritel or the Euroconnector.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Scissor Mode
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A graphical load-balancing scheme where two graphics cards are used to render two halves of an image display. One graphics card renders the top half of the screen while the second graphics card renders the bottom half. This configuration offers a form of dynamic load balancing between the two cards as each only needs to render 3D object details on only half of the screen instead of the full screen at any one time. This type of graphical operation is only available in Radeon CrossFire&#8482; graphics cards running Microsoft Direct 3D and OpenGL games or applications. 
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
SDTV
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
SDTV is an acronym for &quot;Standard Definition Television&quot; that identifies lower resolution systems when compared to High Definition Television (HDTV) systems. SDTV systems use the same 4:3 aspect ratio and 480 scan lines to produce a picture as regular analog television sets, but digital decoding enhanced of the signal, displaying a sharper and crisper picture. SDTV broadcasts are either interlaced (480i) or use progressive scan (480p), the latter method providing the best overall image quality.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
SECAM
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
An analog color video signal that originated in France, and is used in many other countries, including (but not limited to) much of Eastern Europe, parts of the Middle East and Asia. Like the PAL video standard, SECAM also draws a total of 625 vertical interlaced frames of video at a refresh rate of 25Hz, but uses a fundamentally different way of encoding its colors. The name is an acronym for &quot;Squential Couleur avec Mmoire,&quot; which is French for &quot;sequential color with memory.&quot;
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
SmartGart&#8482;
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
SmartGart&#8482; is ATI&#39;s proprietary diagnostic tool that determines the user&#39;s optimal AGP settings to ensure maximum stability. One significant cause of system hangs is the quality of the AGP bus. Since there are many types of AGP chipsets controlling the bus, the compatibility of the AGP bus varies, and it is difficult to pre-determine its quality through the display driver. With SmartGart&#8482;, the driver will automatically test the AGP compatibility upon its initialization and dynamically switch to or set up the AGP bus based on the test results. The end result is a more stable system.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Specular Highlight
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The bright, usually small, intense light reflected from a 3D surface with a high refraction value. From the intensity and spread of this highlight users can differentiate between a &quot;hard,&quot; smooth surface, such as metal or porcelain, or a &quot;soft,&quot; textured surface, such as fabric or skin.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Super Anti-aliasing
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A feature that improves image quality by combining the results of full-screen anti-aliasing across two graphics cards in a CrossFire&#8482; configuration. The two graphics cards work on different anti-aliasing patterns within each frame. The results of which are combined by the compositing engine on the CrossFire&#8482; Master graphics card to produce 3D images featuring smoother contours, lines, and shading effects. 
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
SuperTiling
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A graphical load-balancing scheme where two graphics cards are used to render alternate small 32x32 pixel squares in a fine-grained checkerboard pattern. This configuration increases image rendering quality, as each card processes half of the complex 3D objects in the pixel squares. SuperTiling is better optimized for most applications than Scissor Mode (where two graphics cards are used to render the top and bottom halves of the screen), since the checkerboard pattern better ensures a more even distribution of what needs to be rendered. This type of graphical operation is only available in Radeon CrossFire&#8482; graphics cards running Microsoft Direct 3D games or applications.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
S-Video
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Short for &quot;Separate Video,&quot; S-Video is a type of analog video interface that produces a higher-quality signal compared to composite video. The signal is split into two separate channels- luminance (Y) and chrominance (C). Sometimes referred to as &quot;Y/C video&quot; or &quot;Y/C&quot;, the connectors typically contain 4-pins within a single connection housing and are commonly found on consumer DVD players, VCRs, game consoles, and related devices.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Texel
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Short for &quot;texture element,&quot; the 3D equivalent of a pixel, describing the base unit of the surface of a 3D object, such as a sphere; for a 2D object, such as a circle, the base unit is a pixel. 
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Texture Mapping
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
In computer graphics, two-dimensional textured surfaces are referred to as texture maps. Texture mapping is the process by which a two-dimensional surface gets wrapped around a three-dimensional object so that the 3D object takes on the same texture qualities. For example, if you take a 2D textured surface that looks like cloth and wrap it around a 3D sphere, the sphere will now appear to have a cloth-like surface. 
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Texture Preference
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Texture Preference is a feature enabling the user to select the texture quality level for the surface of a 3D object. Selecting the highest quality possible will provide the most realism, although it may also have some impact on the performance of any 3D intensive application.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Transition Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS)
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A technology designed to reduce electromagnetic interference (EMI) and improve the digital signal delivered to flat panel displays. Its encoding algorithm converts the original 8-bit graphic data into a more fault-tolerant 10-bit signal, which is then converted back to its original 8-bit form at the display device. The signal is also DC-balanced, allowing for the option of transmitting the signal over fibre-optic cable. DVI connectors can incorporate up to two TMDS links, with each &quot;link&quot; comprised of the number of signals required for standard RGB output. Higher resolutions and refresh rates than standard are possible if multiple TMDS links are available by using multiple DVI connectors. 
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Trilinear Filtering
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A sampling method used to produce realistic-looking 3D objects. Trilinear filtering averages one of the bilinear filter mipmap levels along with the standard mipmap samples.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Vari-Bright&#8482;
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
An ATI technology designed to optimize notebook panel brightness in order to save power. It allows for direct control of the notebook brightness level to prolong battery life.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Vector Adaptive Deinterlacing
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A technique that provides smoother, less jagged edges for interlaced video playback. Interlaced video consists of alternating odd and even numbered scan lines, which are then mapped to an equivalent pixel-by-pixel display on a CRT or Flat Panel Display. Without correction, jagged lines appear in a video image either as doubled scan lines or lines that are improperly interpolated. With vector adaptive deinterlacing, the difference in pixel values is considered across multiple lines and alternating frames (using Pulldown detection on the interlaced video source), and then intelligently re-interpreted to produce smoother edges in interlaced video images.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
VersaVision&#8482;
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
An ATI technology enabling accelerated display rotation and scaling. Any desktop can now be rotated 90 degrees left or right, or even 180 degrees, while maintaining the full feature set of other ATI 2D and 3D technologies, such as SmoothVision&#8482;. VersaVision&#8482; works with single or multiple displays.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Vertex Shader
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
Three-dimensional objects displayed on a screen are rendered using polygons, each of which is made up of intersecting triangles. A vertex is a corner of a triangle where it connects to another triangle, and each vertex carries a considerable amount of information describing its coordinates in 3D space, as well as its weight, color, texture coordinates, fog, and point size data. A vertex shader is a graphics processing function that manipulates these values, producing such things as more realistic lighting effects, improved complex textures such as hair and fur, and more accurate surface deformations such as waves rippling in a pool or the stretching and wrinkling of a character&#39;s clothes as he or she moves.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Vertex shader units
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A feature built into the graphical processor which renders the texture, magnitude and direction of the individual triangles that comprise each polygon of a given 3D object. The more vertex shader units available within the graphical processor, the more complex polygons that can be generated per clock cycle, and hence finer, more naturalistic detail and movement is possible.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
VGA Connector
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A type of graphics connector, sometimes also called an analog connector. It is the most common type of video connector available, consisting of 15-pins set in three rows. The &quot;VGA&quot; is an acronym for &quot;Video Graphics Array,&quot; which is also the name for the video resolution mode of 640x480 pixels, the lowest standard resolution supported by virtually all video cards.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Video Immersion&#8482; II
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A technology that integrates digital video features such as advanced adaptive de-interlacing, temporal filtering, and video gamma enhancement to produce high-quality video along with an integrated digital TV decode capability. It also supports component output support for EDTV displays at 480i (interlaced scanning), 480p (progressive scanning), and for HDTV displays at 720p, and 1080i.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
VideoShader&#8482; HD
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A feature that integrates pixel-shading technology with video filtering and processing functions. It accelerates noise removal, de-blocking, adaptive de-interlacing, frame-rate conversion, color-space conversion, and more. It also enables better MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
VPU Recover
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A feature designed to significantly reduce the number of system crashes caused by problems occurring with the graphics hardware. If the display driver detects that the graphics processor has hung, VPU Recover will attempt to reset the graphics processor, eliminating the need for a system reboot and allowing users to continue using the computer without interrupting or losing their work.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
YPbPr
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
A type of analog composite video signal that splits and compresses the standard Red/Green/Blue (RGB) colors of a television signal into separate luminance and color values. The &quot;Y&quot; stands for the luminance channel, while &quot;Pb&quot; and &quot;Pr&quot; represent the blue and red channels respectively, both of which have the luminance value subtracted from them. It is an equivalent color space to the chrominance-based YCbCr, which is used for digital video.
</p>

<h3 class="pHeading3">
Z-buffer
</h3>

<p class="pBody">
The portion of video memory that keeps track of which onscreen elements can be viewed and which are hidden behind other objects. In the case of a 3D image, it keeps track of which elements are occluded by the foreground in relation to the user&#39;s perspective, or by another 3D object.
</p>



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