ATI Noob

After using AMD and Nvidia for the last 6 years I recently built a machine based on a Conroe E6700 and an MSI 1900XTX.

Everything’s been great except for one thing; games on this rig are extremely dark. I’ve adjusted the brightness and contrast on my monitor (Viewsonic P225f) and tried different drivers to no effect.

I’ve managed to work around the problem in games based on the Doom III engine by setting r_gamma but CS:Source and HL2M are still so dark as to be unplayable. I’ve been searching for an equivalent command to r_gamma in Source based games but haven’t had any luck. Is there such a thing? Or am I missing something in the Catalyst drivers? The “Full screen 3D” settings don’t seem to have any effect on games, which seems odd. But then again, the Catalyst control panel is taking some getting used to.

what? I never heard ATI cards being dark... While some of the older Nvidia cards were dark...

Anyways all games have gamma and brightness adjustment in game...

Might want to try the system on a different monitor. Perhaps an LCD through a DVI connection, if possible - no worries about brightness, then.

Get rid of your current driver pack with Driver Cleaner, then install the latest WHQL Catalyst drivers.

Right after I posted this I found “mat_monitorgamma” which helps a little, at least it’s playable now.

My monitor has always been dark when left at default settings, but I can usually overcome that by adjusting the brightness and gamma in the video drivers control panel. I had a AMD 3800+ and a BFG 6800GT previously, adjusting the gamma and brightness on the desktop also effected games in full screen mode, not so with the Catalyst drivers (or is it the ATI card, I dunno…). So, yeah, the monitor is a little dark, but damn, at least I could adjust it with the drivers before.

Thanks for the info on Driver Cleaner, I’ll give that a try.

I still don’t get why the settings in the Catalyst control panel don’t stick, I have to go into the control panel and hit “reactivate ATI color controls” to get the desktop settings I want and the “Full screen 3D” settings have no effect whatsoever… wtf???
I’ll try using Driver Cleaner and reinstall the drivers to see if that clears up these annoyances.

All in all though, I gotta say that the E6700 with a 1900XTX fookin’ rocks

You said your monitor is dark at default settings, so try looking into the settings and see if you can raise the brightness and contrast.

krom said:

All in all though, I gotta say that the E6700 with a 1900XTX fookin’ rocks

Click to expand...

Aye on that combo. Running mine at 3.33 GHz now -- stable, rock solid -- idle temp 34 C -- load 45 C. Still have plenty of OC room to go -- but I am happy with with the performance as it is now.

Question on the monitor: Does windows list this as a default monitor? If you have the drivers for your monitor, update your driver. This sounds like a 60 Hz default refresh problem I had at one point.

AB9 [email protected] GHz
2 Gb xms2-5300c4
4x250 Sata II
x 1900xtx w/Cat 6.8

I downloaded the drivers from Viewsonic, so now the OS sees my specific monitor. My desktop settings are 1600x1200, 32 bit color at 75mhz refresh rate. I suppose it could be the tube is just going on me, which would suck (it’s only two years old)
You can’t get good large CRTs anymore and I’m not ready to spend $700-$800 on a good LCD but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Zero82z – I’ve adjusted the monitor (using the OSD and in the drivers) and it is fine for 2D desktop and some games. The main problem is that in CS:Source and HL2DM the video output is extremely dark. And maxing out the brightness setting in the game does not make enough of a difference, it’s still unplayable. Setting the mat_monitorgamma value to 1 helps but it seems to be limited to that, changing the value to anything less than 1 has no effect.

Thanks for all the input, I may just have to bite the bullet and look into getting a new monitor.

*** sorry re-read first post ******

Thanks for the help with this problem, especially for pointing me to Driver Cleaner which led me to the ATI Tray Tool. Then I read the ATI tweak guide found here:
http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html
Then I finally thought of a simple solution to my problem. Hot keys… so obvious I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier. Create hot keys for increase gamma and increase brightness, start HL2DM, increase gamma, increase brightness and now I can see.
The only draw back is when I quit the game and go back to the desktop it’s way too bright, so then I just load my desktop profile and I’m good to go. The ATT is a great utility, much better than the CCC. I'll get used to ATI yet...

Yep, ATT is a great util. Started using it when it was packaged with the Omega Catalysts, the custom game profiles are great, especially since they autodetect and you can use custom AA/AF and overclocking settings. You could probably set the brightness in a game profile, so you wouldn't have to do it manually.