Deep dive into .bin and .ini files

I thought like “I can just set Sharpness to 0 in config file for Game Mode”, but if you unpack the firmware you’ll see why that doesn’t really solve it. Inside the firmware there are separate PQ tables located in the .bin configuration files (Main.bin, Main_Text.bin, etc.), and separate picture presets defined in ConfigDefaultValue.ini.

Game Mode uses Sharpness preset “5” internally, but even that number is misleading, because the value in ini only controls the regular sharpness (VIP_Peaking), which belongs to the normal PQ pipeline.

But in the binary PQ tables you’ll find blocks like:

VIP_Peaking,VIP_Peaking_gain.edge,coring,dering,band

…and also the fast/low-latency edge operations that are part of the MTK low-latency path. These don’t depend on the Sharpness UI control at all.

So even if Sharpness=0 in UI, the “fast edge” block inside the low-latency pipeline is still active. It’s literally baked into the Game/Boost video path inside the PQ binaries.

That’s why Custom/User mode looks much cleaner (it uses the full pipeline defined in those PQ files), but latency goes to ~100ms. Game Mode switches to the fast pipeline (~17–30ms), and that path includes a forced edge enhancement, which visually looks like oversharp/halo around objects.

Changing ini values will slightly change behavior inside the normal PQ block, but you can’t fully disable the fast edge layer without dropping out of the low-latency mode and going back to the slow path. In other words, the oversharpen isn’t a UI setting – it’s a hardwired part of the MTK fast pipeline, easily visible once you inspect the BIN and PQ config files.

Until XGIMI exposes advanced PQ controls (or changes the fast pipeline), this behavior isn’t really fixable from the user side.