Before we start the tutorial, let's cover two things; the first is that Downsampling is a very GPU intensive anti-aliasing technique, so you're going to need a very powerful card to get good mileage using this technique, however if you play older games you can still use this trick and get reasonable performance. The second is that this technique will give you the best AA results possible, so if you hate jaggies then this is for you. For those who are unfamiliar with jaggies, here is an example of what they look like with various anti-aliasing methods used to remove them. Click here for the imgur album I used stairs in wow as an example of what they look like, notice the stairs in the image and the varying degrees of awkward jagged lines.
You should also know that this guide outlines how to overclock your monitor to get more Hz out of it. You can get a small or large bump in frame rate depending on the make and model of your monitor.
As this is an overclocking guide, you can (but most likely won't) damage your hardware in the process. I have no liability for what you do to your hardware, if you follow this guide and do everything properly there should be little to no issues. Use this guide at your own risk.
Alright with that out of the way you're going to need a couple pieces of software in order this to happen. The first and probably most important is going to be Custom Resolution Utility or CRU as it's going to be referred to in this guide.
The second tool is sort of optional, you should need the Pixel Clock Patcher, this is going to patch the driver to allow for you to actually overclock the monitor or increase the resolution to your desired values. This is optional because the driver may or may not already allow for the overclock to take place, it just depends on which version you are using, what monitor you are using, etc. I recommend you do this step no matter what.
Both of these utilities were created by ToastyX of monitortests.com so I'd like to thank him for creating these tools.
Before the real meat of the guide begins I'd like to say that I'm doing this from my personal computer which happens to be running two R9 280Xs in crossfire. The technique used should be entirely the same for Nvidia users, but I may not be able to answer some Nvidia related questions/problems. Also this was done on Windows 8.1, it's slightly different to find and change the resolution/refresh rate of your monitor for other operating systems, I'll try my best to accommodate for those using Windows 7.
FOR CROSSFIRE/SLI USERS: Depending on the clock speed of your monitor (if your pixel clock needs to be over 300Mhz) you may need two bridges, this means you can only do a 2x Crossfire/SLI configuration because there's not enough fingers to support more bridges. I'd also like to note that only 2x Crossfire/SLI is supported for these methods, so anyone with 3 or more cards is unfortunately out of luck.
Finally to the actual guide portion of this guide. We're going to assume you have your necessary tools downloaded, but not installed, this includes CRU and your respective Pixel Clock Patcher.
Now to the more difficult part of the guide, this is slightly more involved than just raising or lowering your refresh rate so be prepared.
I hope you enjoyed this guide, thanks for the read! If you have any questions feel free to submit them below.
You should also know that this guide outlines how to overclock your monitor to get more Hz out of it. You can get a small or large bump in frame rate depending on the make and model of your monitor.
As this is an overclocking guide, you can (but most likely won't) damage your hardware in the process. I have no liability for what you do to your hardware, if you follow this guide and do everything properly there should be little to no issues. Use this guide at your own risk.
Alright with that out of the way you're going to need a couple pieces of software in order this to happen. The first and probably most important is going to be Custom Resolution Utility or CRU as it's going to be referred to in this guide.
The second tool is sort of optional, you should need the Pixel Clock Patcher, this is going to patch the driver to allow for you to actually overclock the monitor or increase the resolution to your desired values. This is optional because the driver may or may not already allow for the overclock to take place, it just depends on which version you are using, what monitor you are using, etc. I recommend you do this step no matter what.
Both of these utilities were created by ToastyX of monitortests.com so I'd like to thank him for creating these tools.
Before the real meat of the guide begins I'd like to say that I'm doing this from my personal computer which happens to be running two R9 280Xs in crossfire. The technique used should be entirely the same for Nvidia users, but I may not be able to answer some Nvidia related questions/problems. Also this was done on Windows 8.1, it's slightly different to find and change the resolution/refresh rate of your monitor for other operating systems, I'll try my best to accommodate for those using Windows 7.
FOR CROSSFIRE/SLI USERS: Depending on the clock speed of your monitor (if your pixel clock needs to be over 300Mhz) you may need two bridges, this means you can only do a 2x Crossfire/SLI configuration because there's not enough fingers to support more bridges. I'd also like to note that only 2x Crossfire/SLI is supported for these methods, so anyone with 3 or more cards is unfortunately out of luck.
Finally to the actual guide portion of this guide. We're going to assume you have your necessary tools downloaded, but not installed, this includes CRU and your respective Pixel Clock Patcher.
1. Unzip the two files that you receive, the first should be the "atikmdag-patcher-X.X.X.zip" for "AMD users or nvlddmkm-patcher-X.X.X.zip for Nvidia users", you will then get an .exe that looks like this
2. You will get a window that will popup like this
2.1. You can undo the patch by running the .exe again, and hitting restore.
3. Reboot your PC
4. After rebooting your PC you should unzip the CRU file that you downloaded, you will get 4 .exes that look like this
5. Open up CRU. Exe a window will appear that looks like this
6. Hit Add… a window will appear that looks like this
7. You may do one of two things here, you can change the refresh rate of your monitor, or you can increase the resolution, the first part of this tutorial will cover increasing the refresh rate, the second part will cover increasing the resolution to downsample, so continue from here or skip down to the second part of this guide.
8. Change the Refresh rate to 75 Hz, and hit Ok.
9. You will be back in the original CRU.exe window, hit Ok and navigate back to the folder that was created when you extracted the files (or where they were contained) and then run Restart.exe you screen will go blank for a minute, this is because your various display driver is being restarted. A window will appear, hit okay.
10. Reboot your PC
11. Right click and open the Screen Resolution option, a window that looks like this will appear.
12. Hit advanced settings, a window like this will appear
12.1. If you got an out of range error, you should repeat steps 5 – 12 while decreasing the refresh rate by 1, this should continue until you are either back down to your monitor’s original refresh rate or your monitor no longer goes out of range during the process
12.2. If your monitor successfully did not go out of range on the first try, you should repeat steps 5 – 12 while increasing the refresh rate by 1, this should continue until your monitor goes out of range, at which point you should hit enter, and then put the refresh rate down one.
13. Congratulations, now you can enjoy an even higher refresh rate in your games!
Now to the more difficult part of the guide, this is slightly more involved than just raising or lowering your refresh rate so be prepared.
1. I urge you to complete steps 1 – 7 if you haven’t already, once you have, continue on.
2. First you must disable GPU Downscaling, otherwise the whole process WILL NOT work. This option for AMD users is located here, for Nvidia users you can find it in the properties section of your respective driver (sorry for the lack of a picture, I don’t have an Nvidia card)
3. Once this is disabled you should open up CRU.exe and navigate to the Add… menu once more (you should make sure this is separate from your increase in framerate, as it might cause some instability due to the strain on the pixel clock)
4. You must now change the resolution of your monitor, make sure you maintain your Aspect Ratio, otherwise it will look funny, for this example I’m using a 1080p monitor that I have changed to 1440p
5. Once this is done, hit OK and then OK once more.
6. Run restart.exe just as you did when increasing the refresh rate
7. Reboot your PC after this is done
8. Right click your desktop and select Screen Resolution, you should get a window that looks like this
9. Select List All Modes and a window will pop up that looks like this
9.1. If you got an out of range error, you should repeat steps 4 – 9 while incrementally decreasing the resolution of the display until you have either your original resolution or something higher while maintaining the original aspect ratio of your monitor
9.2. If you did not get an out of range error, you should repeat steps 4 – 9 while incrementally increasing the resolution of the display until you have a higher resolution that does not go out of range
10. Your games will now downsample automatically and should look a bit better than they originally did, this is the best form of anti-aliasing, but it’s also the most demanding.
I hope you enjoyed this guide, thanks for the read! If you have any questions feel free to submit them below.
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