D1028L issues

[Guest]

I have two questions, one about the Dell D1028L in particular and another about a general monitor term. First, I have a question about horizontal/vertical moire, and second I'm having issues maintaining the monitor's refresh rate. I just upgraded my system this weekend with a new AMD mb and processor, and for whatever reason, the Dell monitor I was using before would not turn on with the new board. (Our guess is that a missing pin that broke off in the first monitor's cord that wasn't necessary with the old board was stopping it from working with the new one.) So I had to go out and get a replacement, and decided to buy a refurbished/used D1028L since it was affordable. (And by the way, I'm using a Voodoo3-2000 PCI graphics card, in case that's important.)

1) But I noticed when I hooked it up that, in Windows, there seemed to be vertical light grey lines in "solid" colors every few pixels or so, so the menu bar, menus, etc. all had this annoying grainy/pixelated look. After much fiddling I figured out that two options called Horizontal Moire and Vertical Moire seemed to be the culprits: each apparently made the on-screen pixels move around or "jiggle." I ended up setting horizontal moire at 10% and vertical at 55%; this seemed to make the desktop look "smooth" again like on my old monitor. I've never heard of these settings before, so I was wondering if anyone could help me on choosing optimal %'s, or if the ones I have are ok.

2) My second question is about the monitor's refresh rate. I've used a Voodoo3-2000 PCI card for a while and was able to get my first 15" monitor up to 100hz @ 800x600, and the first 17" to 85hz @ 1024. But when I swapped in the D1028L (running at 1024), it seems to play games with Windows: sometimes after I boot up there'll be a full range of refresh options (60hz-85hz) and other times it'll only have 60, 70, and optimal.... I also noticed that when it has the full range, the Energy Star compliant box is checked and greyed; when there's only 60 and 70 it's unchecked, if that makes any difference. Besides seeming really bizarre, I am concerned because I get bad headaches if the refresh rate is under 85hz, so I'd like to get this figured out.

So there are my two problems... sorry the post was so long, but I wanted to make sure I was thorough and explained everything. Hopefully someone will be able to help me out!
Thanks,
m19

 

[GoSharks]

Moiré is caused by the interaction of the beam and the mask or aperture grill. Simply changing the resolution you run will in most cases eliminate moiré completely. Moiré controls are a nice way of saying Defocus controls, because that is what they do. You are so used to looking at your old unfocused monitor that a newer better-focused monitor gives that pixilated affect you describe. Oddly enough moiré becomes more apparent on sharper focused monitors. This does not imply that if the focus on your monitor is sharp, moiré will automatically be apparent, conversely, a soft focus of your monitor can reduce the appearance of moiré at the expense of degrading readability of the image on your monitor. By using a poor focused monitor you might find the cure for moiré worse than the disease.

When I evaluate monitor I look for that pixilated look, this tells me the monitor has better focus. Like you found out you can always defocus the image.

Does the D1028L support Windows plug and Play, if not this may explain the issues with resolutions. If you can find the monitors INF files install them.

Good Luck

Jim Witkowski
Chief Hardware Engineer
Cornerstone / Monitorsdirect.com


Jim at http://www.monitorsdirect.com

 

[Guest]

I'm not so sure about "I'm used to looking at my old unfocused monitor." The 17" I had prior to this one WAS sharper, black text on white was a lot clearer. If it's a toss-up between sickly looking colors with faint grey lines vs. fuzzy text, I'll take the fuzzy text... And I wish I could change the resolution, but I bought the 17" to run at 1024, not lower. ;-)

And yep, D1028L is P&P, as soon as I rebooted Win98 picked it up and had it labelled right in Device Manager. I think the resolution sorted itself out, though, as it the full range choice has remained for the last few boot-up's.