Mass Effect Depth of Field problem with ATI 1xxx cards

Hi all,

If you have an ATI 18xx, 19xx or earlier 1000 series video card and plan to play Mass Effect, you might run into a problem with the game's depth of field effects.

Depth of Field allows out of focus rendering to be be blurred to contrast with objects current on-focus. This looks really good (as if someone is shooting the scene with a camera), but the above series of cards would pixelate the objects that are not focused. As a result, you will have your main character having a conversation with people at the foreground, and background objects / lighting would be in big blocks of pixel - really distracting.

The current workaround is to edit the game engine config file to not use depth of field, but it does remove some of the game's features (coolness factor) with DoF off.