ATI Technologies Nexus GA User Manual page 23

3D Texture Compression
Using the 3D features of the Nexus GA accelerator you can
adjust the amount of 3D texture compression used. Because of
the amount of memory some 3D textures use from the Nexus
GA accelerator, you may want to increase the amount of
compression used. When you increase compression, additional
offcreen memory becomes available, but there can be some loss
in the image quality.
Adjusting Texture Compression
Setting texture compression to None provides the best image
quality for your 3D textures, but they require additional
offscreen memory.
Medium texture compression will compress your 32-bit textures
to 16-bit, thus reducing the memory required by a texture in
half.
High compression will compress your 32- and 16-bit textures to
8-bit. High texture compression saves the most memory, but the
loss in data may affect the image quality.
3D Memory Monitor
Nexus GA supports advanced 3D features including
mip-mapping, Gouraud shading, fog effects, and texture
mapping. The 3D Memory Monitor shows how available
memory in the accelerator card is allocated when displaying 3D
graphics.
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