Windows 7 Pro 64bit: only get 60Hz with XFX HD 5970 on Philips 21" CRT

[maxwell_jr]

Hi,

I've Windows 7 Pro 64bit with a XFX HD 5970 connected via DVI->VGA to a Philips 21" CRT 201B (ten year old monitor, still great picture!) put I only get 60Hz, even on the desktop. My desired resolution is 1600x1200 but it doesn't matter: any resolution is capped at 60Hz (or some at 59Hz or even 30Hzi, but the one(s) I want are all maxed at 60Hz).

Prior to that I was running WXP Pro with various NVidia cards over the years and never had any troubles.

Only 60Hz:

Tried everything I found within the CCC:

But no win, still not able to select more than 60Hz.

This is how the settings look on the old WXP Pro System with a 9600GT and the same monitor:

I was even able to directly select my monitor from the existing list, I also tried other variants from the list with 85Hz (at which the monitor operates best), but whatever I tried, I was never able to set it to more than 60Hz:

Using search engines I found many threads, but mostly dealt with the details that W7 now more accurately describes the Hz signal and so it sometimes says 59Hz instead of 60Hz, etc. But that's not the issue I'm facing.

I've also a long history with Q3 engine based games, e.g. RTCW or Urban Terror. I was able to fixate the Hz with the command seta r_displayrefresh "85" on my old system but even this doesn't work: so on my new W7 system I'm neither able to use my desktop with more than 60Hz, nor in-game.

I'm really lost at the moment at it's really a problem, because 60Hz hurt my eyes badly and after an hour I'm getting headaches from it.

thanks for any pointers

 

[maxwell_jr]

Issue solved!

Took me nearly a week to find the fix. Searching around I found pointers that EDID could be the problem. I've never heard of it, it's a standard for monitors to advertise their capabilities to the operating system (or so).

I downloaded a few tools to read out the EDID information within W7 from my monitor (Phoenix Edid Designer, Moninfo, WinI2C-DDC Lite), but everything just failed. I assumed my monitor did not support EDID (it's a ten year old CRT), but I was wrong: the tools simply didn't work under W7 64bit.

I loaded my old XP system were the refresh rate was 85Hz, loaded the Phoenix Edid Designer tool and was able to retrieve the EDID information. I saved it as *.inf file, booted into W7 and installed it instead of the current monitor driver -> presto! Everything works, Desktop and in-game. Every in-game resolution now works by default on 85Hz.