8800GTX desktop "fuzziness" issue: Fixed

[Mako360]

I noticed a slight drop off in precision and quality on the desktop, largely in text clarity, when I moved from an X800XT-PE to an 8800GTX this week. I initially chalked it up to nvidia's external TDMS chip possibly being weak, and noticing small things more on my 37" Westinghouse LCD at 1920x1080 from a view distance of just two feet, but as I played around in nTune I managed to resolve the issue.

THE PROBLEM: Text was slightly blurry, and when I moved the mouse cursor over text items it caused a slight "dot crawl" or other small motion artifact to appear under the cursor as it moved. It wasn't something obvious, but I noticed that the overall image on the desktop reminded me of interlace on a CRT, or better yet, using a CRT at too low of a refresh rate. It was even eye-fatiguing a little bit, like the old days.

THE SOLUTION: Something that is probably obvious to a lot of you, partularly ATi users where it's defaulted, but nvidia's doesn't default that "CVK blank" option for LCD users to "on" in their drivers. Once I went into the display properties of the control panel and selected to modify the settings, I flipped the "blanking" option to "on" and everything looked fantastic again as it had with the X800XT.

Hope this helps, strange I know but glad it's fixed.

 

[ellover009]

I have something similar but I have a CRT 24inch. I took it off the stand away from all the cables and the problem went away, I put it on table problem persist. It seems like a coaxial cable or some sort is interfering with my monitor. What I get is small outlines of the item, when I move an Icon I can see the vertical line following it. Once I do new build I will change almost everything.

 

[loafer87gt]

Where does one find this setting? I looked through my control panel and can't find a way to enable this.

 

[Mako360]

nvidia control panel, display, manage custom timings, create, advanced, Timing standard, CVT reduced blank, test, exit.

 

[Astrodave]

I do not have a "manage custom timings" in my CP under the display option.

 

[Mako360]

Wrong drivers nooblet.

97.28 at a minimum for this fix to be applied, 97.44 also has it.

 

[Jodiuh]

I just did this to a 2007WFP and I'm not quite sure I notice the difference. Can you describe it a bit more in depth? Thanks!

EDIT: OK, was it like this? I don't have any fuzziness issues w/ def or manual timing.

EDIT - Problem "solved" by going back to 96.xx drivers that came on the stock driver CD. However, I have major shadow rendering problems in Oblivion with the 96.xx drivers so I'm going back to the 97.02's for now and just using an analog connection until nvidia releases some newer drivers that (hopefully) fix both problems.

Original post:

Title says it all... at native res with the 97.02 drivers, my desktop is VERY blurry... just awful quality. I tried switching to DVI-2 and that fixed it for one boot cycle, but when I tried 1 again, blurry... back to 2, still blurry. Tried uninstalling and re-installing drivers, still blurry. This is at native LCD res at both 60 and 75 Hz over DVI.

No that's not shot variation, that's how it actually looks... I used manual focus and put the camera on a stack of books, didn't move it between shots, just changed from digital to analog input on the monitor (you can tell it's not shot variation because you can actually pick out the monitor pixels themselves in each shot)

Notice especially the change in white brightness in the "I think that" as well as the wild variation in color saturation in the date/time above the post. Also notice how the t's in "that" appear to have major ghosting on the DVI to DVI image.

DVI to VGA converter to Analog monitor input:

DVI to DVI: