pci express bluriness and jagged edges

[mcsnipe]

I have a problem which might be to special to be answered generally but I try anyhow.
I have assembled an computer with an8 abit mobo, a gt 7600 pci express car, 500 watt power supply, 2 x kingston 512, etc. Thus all it needs.

But when running windows xp I get bluriness and jagged edges. Like I run an old fashioned pci card or so. I have all the new drivers and i have flashed the bios of the mobo. It is not the tft monitor which produces fine pictures on an other computer with agp gt 6600 etc. I tied sp1 and sp2 to see but it makes no difference.
Changing resolutions has absolutly no effect.
I overclocked the card, nothing.

If i had to change what should i do graphic cards or mobo or both?

I have no fomer expeirence with pci express, so i might overlook something, there are 2 little slots beside the card, they are pci something but i dont know what they do nor got i any equipment for them with the card or the mobo.

The old agp card needed extra juice but this one got no cable for this.

If anybody can point me in any direction I would be hapy. I am after a long weekend trying a bit desperate.

Gainward GeForce 7600GT 256MB 1.2ns DDR3 ,PCI-Express, "BP7600GT-256-TV-DVI GS
Abit AN8, nForce4, Socket-939, ATX SATA,GbLAN,DDR,PCI-Ex16 -B-
XION Powersupply ATX 500W Retail SLI, LxWxH mm(163x150x85) Blue LED, 20+4 pin
iiYama Pro-lite E481S runs at 75 mhz 16... colours

 

[ussra2]

You might try taking the card out and reseating it back in the PCI-Express slot. Also do you have a cell phone close to the monitor, this could cause the jaggedness but not bluriness.

 

[Jak_Sparra]

have you tried running windows at the correct resolution. ie, i have to run my 19' tft moniter at 1280x1024. If i run it any lower then this then everything has slightly blurred edges aswell...

 

[mcsnipe]

1. Removed the card and even did reset the cemos, no result. Tx.
2. I am running it in the same resolution, it seems that the bluredness is a little lesser but no change to the jaggedness. Tx.

 

[mcsnipe]

Any help with the other question, wy are this small pci slots there?

 

[jap0nes]

what about the refresh rate?

The fact it is a pci, agp or pci-e does not mean that the pci card will have a jagged or blurred image.

 

[shata]

Thats messed up... Try putting that pci card into another pc see if it does it to that one. If it doesnt then it could be the motherboard.

 

[waylander]

I agree that it could just be a bad card, try it in another computer and see if that helps. Also, are you using a DVI or analog connector?

 

[plewis00_uk]

It has to be a bad card. The outputs are digital on the cards until the RAMDACs convert to an analog signal (I'm going to presume you are using an analog link because DVI doesn't have the scope for a blurriness). You tend to find cheaper cards (i.e. integrated graphics, low-end ATi and NVidia, older generations are worse too) using the VGA out have soft edges, blurriness and jagginess as you describe. It is highly unlikely it's anything to do with PCIe. I don't know about this card but because it's a 7600GT (quite a good card) you would imagine them using better components. Check the VGA cable on your monitor as well, maybe try replacing that (interference can cause a bad signal). If you can use a DVI link or upgrade the TFT will probably solve all your problems.

 

[foshizzle]

The small slots are either PCIEx1 or PCIEx4 slots (your graphics card uses a PCIEx16 slot). Very few cards use PCIE besides graphics cards presently. I'm sure in the future we'll see more and more things moving to PCIE.

And I'm going to agree with some previous posters that if you have your resolution set to 1280x1024 and things still look blurry or something then you've got a bad video card.

 

[FatFunkey]

how about a screen shot?

 

[mcsnipe]

1. highest refrehs rate
2. unfortunatly I have only agp computers here, is my first pci
3. I use analog, dvi? have not figured this out, must fit on my monitor as well?
4. the cabel does fine using an other computer testing it.
5. pcie ok, so it does not matter right now.
6. Advanced tab, standart parameters which you find with starting up, I have poked around a bit but nothing has changed. 75 Mhz, 16 mill, autodetect, 1280 -1024. It is confusing anyhow I got the nvidia tab, a control "expert" progy with the card and the windows tab all to manipulate the thing. But as said now all to what it has been.
7. Screen shot I could do but it should be not hard to imagine a windows yellow map on the screen with jagged edges, not smouth as it has been before.

Update: probably the high screen resolution does something or frequent reinstalling the driver, the bluriness is (quite) gone. Furthermore when I open a webpage or play a game it looks ok.
HOWEVER in Windows the edges are still there. And the dam thing does now sometimes reboot when I play ghost recon (GR:AW). So I am not there. If you still have suggestions pls do so.

 

[foshizzle]

I suspect you were running at 1280x960 instead of 1280x1024? I've seen this happen frequently. As far as rebooting when you are playing Ghost, could be a number of things...most obvious is make sure that you have adequate cooling.

Did you just switch to an LCD monitor from a CRT? When I made the switch I noticed that the LCD tends to look a lot more 'jagged' as you have decribed. Diagonal lines accross the screen look the worst...I think that's just how LCD monitors look. Using anti-aliasing in games fixes the problem but on your desktop you just get used to it after a while. You can try using "cleartype" or "cleartext" (I can't remember what it's called) to smooth out the fonts. Google it and you'll see how to turn it on.

Anyone else notice the 'jaggedness' of LCD vs CRT? (or am I crazy?)

 

[jap0nes]

Anyone else notice the 'jaggedness' of LCD vs CRT? (or am I crazy?)

that usually happens when you run your lcd out of its native resolution. When you dont run in the native resolution, it has to interpolate the image, it "guesses" the pixels to create the image. Try to look at the specs of your monitor and try to run it at its native resolution and see if it helps

 

[foshizzle]

Yup, 1280x1024 is my native resolution. Maybe 'jaggedness' isn't the right word. It's more like 'pixellated' or something. Like, on the LCD I can notice the LCD size or in other words I can actually see the smallest unit on the display, I can see the pixels kind of...whereas I don't see that on a CRT. Does that just mean I have a crappy LCD or what? It's a 19" Acer. I also notice a lot of screen redraws when I'm moving quickly in games...

(sorry, I'm not trying to steal this thread from you mcsnipe)

 

[jap0nes]

ok, i think i understand. That could be the dot pitch, i.e., the size of the pixels. The smaller, the better. About the redraws, could be the response time of your monitor. It's the time it takes to change the pixel color from white to black, i guess. In real life, it avoid "ghosting" the image when it's moving fast, like in games or movies with fast scenes.

That's why i particularly dont like lcd monitors. Too many issues to look for, and a good one withouth those issues is too expensive

 

[plewis00_uk]

I get that on my Dell 2005FPW as well, it's just one of those things. If you want to fix the screen redraws, enable 'V-sync' which will fix the tearing.

 

[foshizzle]

Hmmm, I checked out the dot pitch or pixel pitch and it was the same for ALL the 19" LCDs I looked at. I also got an 8ms monitor back when that was the fastest there was, but I wouldn't describe what I'm seeing as ghosting. Maybe I misunderstand what ghosting is, but it's not like the old image is sticking around for a brief second, it's just like I can see it redrawing really quickly. As soon as it redraws over the old image, the old image is gone...it just doesn't get rid of the old image entirely until the redraw cascades down the screen completely from top to bottom. Does that make any sense?

 

[foshizzle]

I thought you were rarely supposed to enable V-sync? Since my monitor refreshes at 60hz wouldn't I need to get 60fps to be able to V-sync? Or is this one of the many things that I misunderstand? lol

 

[jap0nes]

and how much is the dot pitch? For a CRT it's around .20, for what i've researched, LCDs are usually higher than CRTs.

the thing with your screen could be the v-sync. As far as i know, if your screen is at 60hz, then if you get above 60fps it will be capped at 60 or something like that, but i'm not sure.

 

[plewis00_uk]

I thought you were rarely supposed to enable V-sync? Since my monitor refreshes at 60hz wouldn't I need to get 60fps to be able to V-sync? Or is this one of the many things that I misunderstand? lol

It doesn't completely fix it but it is my belief that if you are drawing images under 60fps (or whatever your refresh rate is) you wouldn't have the problem. Of course, V-sync will cap your frame rate at your refresh rate but in essence this won't be a problem (because 60fps is plenty fast enough anyway).

I'm pretty sure what you describe is known technically as tearing.

 

[foshizzle]

Ok, yes that's what I though. That does work for older games yes, but I'm playing Oblivion right now so I'm lucky to get 20fps sometimes, much less 60fps...

Yes tearing sounds like a more accurate term for what I'm seeing. So that's just something that one has to deal with when using an LCD monitor?

I don't believe many CRTs are around .20 I think a super sharp CRT is like .24 tops with .26 being the average. All the 19" LCDs that I researched (quite a few) when I bought mine had .29 I believe. All the 17" LCDs had .26 because they run native at 1280x1024 same as a 19" so their pixels must be smaller. Since almost all 19" LCDs run native at 1280x1024 wouldn't they all need the same number of pixels and therefore the same pixel size?

 

[plewis00_uk]

Just try turning it on and see if it helps. It can't hurt and because of the way redraws are handled it might help. Unfortunately, this is one of the areas I'm not so good in so can't tell you much more than this.

 

[foshizzle]

Yea, couldn't hurt...I'll mess with it tonight. Just found this link:

Article on Vsync

Interesting

 

[jap0nes]

All the 17" LCDs had .26 because they run native at 1280x1024 same as a 19" so their pixels must be smaller. Since almost all 19" LCDs run native at 1280x1024 wouldn't they all need the same number of pixels and therefore the same pixel size?

hmmm nope, coz if their native resolution is the same, that means they have the same number of pixels. To get the bigger screen, the pixels in the 19" have to be bigger.

As for the CRT dot pixels, they are .20 horizontal, vertical a little bit higher, but around .23 i guess.