My passion for 3D graphics led me to develop ATI Tray Tools, a program empowering users to fine-tune their ATI video cards for maximum performance.

Back in the early days of PC 3D graphics, ATI and NVIDIA dominated the market. When I got my first ATI card, I was disappointed by its control panel. It felt clunky and lacked essential features for fine-tuning performance. This motivated me to develop a more user-friendly alternative – ATI Tray Tools – Wikipedia.

ATI Tray Tools was one of my earliest projects, a completely free and ad-supported application for the public domain. The official website, still hosted by Guru3D, offered easy access to the program.

ATI Tray Tools, a project I launched in 2004, celebrates its 20th anniversary this year! While active development ended in 2011, it was a remarkable journey that pushed my boundaries. Developing this tool meant diving deep into graphics card hardware, BIOS modifications, low-level Windows drivers, and even the intricacies of Direct3D and OpenGL.

ATI Tray Tools packed a punch with a ton of features. Notably, it allowed users to create custom profiles for applications. These profiles could tie together specific 3D graphics settings and even overclocking configurations. It even boasted the ability to automatically identify the maximum stable clock speeds for your graphics card, ensuring smooth performance without visual glitches (artifacts).

Time certainly flies! Modern graphics cards boast sophisticated control panels that universally offer application profiles. Back in the days of ATI Tray Tools, these features were groundbreaking! In fact, only two applications offered this level of control: mine and the very popular RivaTuner by Unwinder. RivaTuner on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RivaTuner

I’d like to express my sincere gratitude to some incredible individuals who provided invaluable help and ideas during development: Unwinder, Fiery (“Everest”), Jaz (“RaBiT”), Serj (“S&M”), and W1zzard (“ATITool“). Their contributions were instrumental in shaping ATI Tray Tools.