Monitor shifting the display when launching games

[Lunareklipse]

I recently upgraded my system changing out everything, (mobo, cpu, gpu, ram) I put in a GTX 780, ROG Hero Maximus board, i7 4770k and 16gigs of corsair vengeance. Ever since I did this upgrade I have a weird issue with my main monitor. It is a HDTV and I've been using it as a monitor for quite awhile and never had any problems with it, I have a regular LCD monitor plugged into the other port.

Whenever I start a game the entire screen will shift to the left leaving a thin black bar down the right side and everything on the monitor will shake very slightly, it almost makes you dizzy. I can easily get rid of it by changing the input on the tv and changing it back, it will go back to normal.

I've googled a lot about this problem and seen ideas about changing the scaling options in the nvidia control panel and turning off triple buffering in the 3d settings, but it doesn't appear to be a common issue i've having trouble finding any information. The tv worked fine before I switched video cards, and this only happens when I launch games, also some games don't even do it which make it even more strange. I've tried a new vga cable, and a new adapter and nothing has seem to fix it.

Does anyone have any ideas what could be doing this? I've been using all the up-to-date drivers from nvidia, I just installed the newest version that came out on the 26th and its still happening. Thanks

 

[MagicPants]

Vga is an analog crapshoot it all depends on Ramdacs and whatnot. You ought to hook it up with a digital interface (hdmi,dp, or DVI-D).

 

[Lunareklipse]

The the tv is a little older and doesn't have a dvi port, I've tried using the hdmi port and for some reason the display doesn't look sharp at all, it looks really bad.

 

[MagicPants]

It's probably set to overscan (scale up) on the hdmi port. You can usually turn that off and it'll look a lot better.
Or maybe it's a 720p (or 768p) TV and you're trying to use a 1080p signal?

 

[nukemaster]

Overscan/underscan is an issue with TV HDMI for sure.

If overscan does not fix your issue, you may want to ensure that you are always keeping the same resolution on the TV. Changing it may cause the TV to do an auto adjust whenever you change it.

Many video cards allow you to make the card deal with image scaling. In those cases, your TV will always see the same resolution and the video card will deal with it.

 

[Lunareklipse]

It is a 1080tv I'm going to mess around with the hdmi again and see if I can get it to work and not be blurry.

 

[nukemaster]

Do you have an AMD or Nvidia card?

 

[Lunareklipse]

its an Nvidia card. I just plugged the HDMI back in, all the text is jaggy and the color is way off, i'm looking at the scaling options in the nvidia control panel to see if I can fix it at all

 

[nukemaster]

If you can not find it let us know. I am sure I can get you a screen shot or two.

Some screens have rather bad scaling and will never look that great. You may also check you TV's menu for an option called just scan or 1:1 mapping. If you have this things should be much better(you may still need to adjust over/underscan to get it all to fit right).

 

[MagicPants]

I'd look on the TV first, but you might need to fix it on both places.

 

[Lunareklipse]

unfortunately the TV has no scaling options aside from changing the screens aspect ratio. I tried changing all the scaling modes in the control panel and it still doesn't look right and the color is quite off. One thing I did test is launching a game and it doesn't throw the screen off so there is clearly an issue with using the VGA. However at this point I guess I would rather reset the screen when I start a game than have the display look the way it does in its current state.

 

[nukemaster]

Check Nvidia Control Panel -> Display -> Adjust Desktop size and position.

You should see a scaling options. Make sure the Native resolution matches your screen(1920 x 1080 from what you told us) and check to ensure that you are performing the scaling on the GPU(you may need to check other resolutions to ensure it is working as well).

If that is set your screen should not see resolution changes.

Also note that some games may flash the screen when switching to full screen. If a game has a fake full screen or boarderless window option it should help.

 

[Lunareklipse]

Well I'm not sure what in the world I did. I plugged the vga cable back in, had to restart the pc since everything shifted to my second monitor and now the problem went away at least for now. I've already tried using multiple cables and dvi adapters in the past so I don't know why plugging in an hdmi cable then reconnecting the vga cable would do anything, but something changed::shrugs:: I appreciate the answers, I wish I knew why it fixed itself after i've been messing with it intermittently for over 2 months now.

 

[Lunareklipse]

Yeah I was messing with all of those options Nuke and everything I tried the letters still weren't crisp and there was a bad yellow hue. I could fix the color re-calibrating the monitor, but for some reason everything looked bad no matter what I tried changing. after awhile of looking at it I thought it was getting better when in actuality I was just getting used to it. I could see a major difference when I plugged the vga back in.

 

[nukemaster]

I was more thinking of ensuring GPU scaling was on for VGA. My hope would be that you would not have the screen see the resolution change and this not auto adjust.

 

[Lunareklipse]

Actually I think that is what changed after messing with all those settings it landed on fullscreen scaling for GPU with the box checked to override games and programs. I believe it was on display when I went in there to mess with it. Again I'm almost positive I tried every setting in that menu in the past, but I've been opening all the problem games up and nothing is throwing the display off anymore.

 

[nukemaster]

Fingers crossed.

I find it to be a bit of a pain sometimes(the scaling settings sometimes do not want to stick).

I was actually checking with a VGA screen and could even hold the menu into a resolution change with the gpu doing the scaling and the screen just sees full resolution all the time instead of seeing the changes.

While not perfect(text can be a bit less sharp), I do not personally think VGA is that bad as long as the screen has a decent analog to digital converter and the cable is decent.

This digital is always better thing is the reason many older videos tend to be so badly converted to digital formats for sales. The assumption is that it is so bad that even the lowest settings will work. Then you take something like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" on bluray and they did a good film - > BD transfer. It looks great.

Now transferring VHS is harder because older TV's hide all the issues the video quality had.

 

[Lunareklipse]

I do agree there, I have an insanely large gauged vga cable, I'm not sure where I got it, its bigger than all the other ones I have laying around by almost double and I'm using the most recent converter that came with the 780. I find everything looks better on this screen than my lcd screen I use for the second monitor, has better contrast and just looks better in general. especially sliding photos between the 2 you can tell a huge difference. I do as well hope this sticks I think before I was trying to make it run off the GPU and everytime I applied it, it would revert back to display.

 

[nukemaster]

Yeah it is strange, Sometimes dropping the screen resolution(in windows instead) and making the change(Nvidia control panel) works.

Once it works, it seems to stay.

I just like the faster switching if I play a 4:3 game(like 1600 x 1200 because my screen is 1920 x 1200 so I just get bars on those older games vs distorted images)

Ohh yeah one HUGE downside to VGA. while not a technical issue, Bluray does not play(or down scales) because VGA can not enforce the HDCP feature required for playback.