Fonts not clear on new monitor

[Bad boy Warrior]

I purchased a new Samsung TV/Monitor (20"), on my PC i have a NVIDIA GeForce 6200 graphics card. I uninstalled this card and reinstalled it with the latest drivers from windows update - so far all seems to go well however when i look at the fonts they seem to be jagged around the edges and not as crispy as they were on other monitors.

The monitor is being connected from a DVI (PC) to a HDMI (TV/Monitor) connection which i thought would give the most clear and accurate display but cant work out why the fonts are jagged?

Any thoughts on this?

Cheers

[mara-]

I uninstalled this card and reinstalled it with the latest drivers from windows update

I suggest you to download latest drivers from NVIDIA page, not from Windows Update. Also try to put refresh rate at least 75 Hertz.

Cheers

Edited February 21, 2008 by mara-

[j7n]

Can you drive this monitor at its real and only resolution? You did not say what it was. On the fly resampling is a no-no.

Edited February 21, 2008 by j7n

[puntoMX]

Right click on a blank area of the Desktop and choose [Properties]

Click on the Appearance Tab; Click Effects

Check the box: Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts

In the drop down box select: Clear Type

Try that .

[Zxian]

Did anyone care to check what resolution he's running at? If the drivers for your graphics card can't match the resolution of the TV (which my guess is at 1366x768), then the fonts are going to look ugly.

[puntoMX]

And try the "auto" settings button too on the screen...

[TravisO]

With LCD screens, if you don't run the monitors natural resolution, it will look blurry. You mentioned this is a monitor/tv, so realize a 720p is intended for 720 pixels high, but the natural resolution is often 768 pixels high.

[Bad boy Warrior]

I suggest you to download latest drivers from NVIDIA page, not from Windows Update. Also try to put refresh rate at least 75 Hertz.

Cheers

Ok will try that and see how it goes. I thought about the refresh rate too. It only has 60 Hz listed and less listed which i thought was strange. There is no "75" but this might be explained towards the end of this thread.

Can you drive this monitor at its real and only resolution? You did not say what it was. On the fly resampling is a no-no.

I did try that and it seemed fine but since i know it can accept 1680 x 1050 i changed it to something close to this resolution. The specs for this monitor are at http://www.ebuyer.com/product/132112 (Samsung SM2032MW 20")

Right click on a blank area of the Desktop and choose [Properties]

Click on the Appearance Tab; Click Effects

Check the box: Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts

In the drop down box select: Clear Type

Try that

Think ive already done that but ill double check it as ive picked the Aero theme which i think adds clear type on automatically.

Did anyone care to check what resolution he's running at? If the drivers for your graphics card can't match the resolution of the TV (which my guess is at 1366x768), then the fonts are going to look ugly.

The card used is found here http://www.e-tropolis.co.uk/ProductDetails...;Show=TechSpecs (256MB XFX 6200A AGP 4x/8x 4 Pipes, D-Sub/DVI/S-Video Passive Cooling) but i cant find the resolution it can support - im looking into this but if anyone knows please advise.

And try the "auto" settings button too on the screen...

Unfortunately this TV doesnt have it. I think you switch from HDMI to another input and back to HDMI or just turn it off and back on

With LCD screens, if you don't run the monitors natural resolution, it will look blurry. You mentioned this is a monitor/tv, so realize a 720p is intended for 720 pixels high, but the natural resolution is often 768 pixels high.

Im sure according to that link it should support more - 1680x1050......or is there a catch that im unfamiliar with?

One other thing i forgot to mention (as i only noticed this morning) that the monitor came with a disk which i think is for a PC. If i understood this correctly it may have some calibration tools - not sure but will update as soon as i try this out.

Thanks everyone for your input.

[nmX.Memnoch]

Also try to put refresh rate at least 75 Hertz.

Most LCDs only support a 60Hz refresh rate. LCDs don't refresh like a CRT anyway so the refresh rate isn't as important.

I did try that and it seemed fine but since i know it can accept 1680 x 1050 i changed it to something close to this resolution.

Something "close" to that resolution? Since 1680x1050 is the native resolution of the monitor you need to set it to exactly that resolution. Some higher end LCDs can scale other resolutions so that they look decent when not running at the native resolution, but others look absolutely terrible in anything other than the native resolution. We have some Viewsonics at work that are completely unreadable if you don't run them at the native resolution.

[Bad boy Warrior]

I ran the CD that came with the monitor and installed the driver. Although the monitor in device management now shows the TV/Monitor model, i then re-tuned Cleartype it didnt make a huge difference but some larger fonts seem to look neater than smaller, so at present the fonts look slightly faded, but think this is gonna be the best i can get since its a TV too. DVDs etc come out pretty clear.

I cant get the monitor to run to its default res as its not listed but its close to it. Overall i guess its acceptable and since this is a Dell machine i can only look forward to a new PC with better hardware and hopefully it'll be a lot more crispier. if thats the case......

Edited February 22, 2008 by Bad boy Warrior

[j7n]

Did anyone care to check what resolution he's running at?

I did.

DVI does not need/have any auto adjustment.

You are in better luck with NVidia that you would with an ATI adapter. Some (recent?) NVidia's can be set to custom resolutions in control panel.

[DonDamm]

I believe the problem is that the monitor is a widescreen model with a 1680x1050 resolution and the Graphics card doesn't natively support that 16:10 resolution (it may support a 1920x1200, but I wasn't able to get the specs of the resolutions available). As mentioned above by nmX.Memnoch. However, a look at the the Forceware guide shows that the latest drivers for your card also include the ability to add custom resolutions! This obviates the suggestion I was going to make about using PowerStrip to insert the needed resolution. It appears that you can set your monitor/TV to be iinterlaced or not, and also add custom resolutions. I was looking at this:

http://www.xfxforce.com/web/support/searchManualsSerial.jspa

and used the serial codes PV-T44A-WAN7 and PV-T44A-WANG which I got here:

http://www.xfxforce.com/web/product/listCo...urationId=79772

Dig a bit deeper into your manual, try a few things out a let us know how you get on! :^)

[nmX.Memnoch]

I believe the problem is that the monitor is a widescreen model with a 1680x1050 resolution and the Graphics card doesn't natively support that 16:10 resolution

The resolution support should come from the monitor. If a graphics card says it supports "up to NNNN x NNNN" then it should support all resolutions up to that point. Specifically speaking though, I know that NVIDIA cards do support 16:10 resolutions of 1440x900, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200. The frame buffer amount is the limiting factor on resolution and color depth support...and even just 32MB of frame buffer should get you the necessary support.

If the selections from within Windows don't show you the proper resolution then you either have the wrong driver installed or the driver didn't install correctly. Put it back to Plug and Play Monitor and reboot. The resolutions the monitor supports should become available then (I never install monitor drivers).

[j7n]

The resolution support should come from the monitor. If a graphics card says it supports "up to NNNN x NNNN" then it should support all resolutions up to that point.

In what increments? Available resolutions are determined by the display adapter, period. Monitor may limit the range with proper DDC signals, but not reprogram the display adapter.

[Bad boy Warrior]

I read those manuals and tried a few things. First i went into Nvidia control panel and under desktop resolution i picked 1680x1050 - ok this changed but i was missing the top, bottom menu bar and sides. Back into nvidia CP i clicked HDTV size then resize - and it seemed somewhat clearer. Now the problem i have now is there's a black border all around the display (a bit like movie cinema borders at the bottom) i then tried to change the TV/Monitor mode from Wide to 16:9 etc but no real difference- Back into the nvidia CP i resize it manually looking at the resolution its 1728 x 1040.

Uninstalled all the drivers etc etc rebooted and installed again (by the way drivers are form nvidias web) - exact same issue. Although at the moment its somewhat acceptable but looking at my server via RDP looks very degrading.

I dont think the monitor is faulty as DVDs and TV seem to appear nice and clear. Its something to do with the monitor resolution and graphics card as this graphics card was nice with a Dell monitor E172FPT 17".

I'm hoping to build a 64 bit system in a few months time so can anyone recommend a graphics card that would suit this TV/Monitor?

Thanks again everyone

EDIT ** Update - ok ive been on this for a couple of days so thought what would happen if i connect my old graphics (the standard built in) card to this TV? - The fonts were looking excellent and all looked perfect BUT i couldnt get the resolution to be correct when i had it to 1680 x 1050 the bottom/top were missing, i installed the correct drivers from nvidia but still made no difference (along with the tv driver). So it leaves me to think that the graphics card and TV are not compatible to an extent or this dell system is too old for this TV or something else

Edited February 23, 2008 by Bad boy Warrior