PNY Image Quality Problem Documented

[esun]

Hopefully this will help out anyone trying to get their PNY 6800 RMA'ed due to the analog image quality problems many of us have observed. I took pictures of the problem with direct comparisons between the 6800 and my old Ti4200 and posted them here:

http://www.eudean.com/pny (See the bottom for the most direct comparisons which most obviously demonstrate the problem.)

I recently called PNY regarding an RMA and was told to try the monitor using the external DAC with my analog monitor just to see what the results will be and you can see for yourself it isn't good. I intend to call them back Monday with this hard evidence of the problem in hand.

EDIT: To save anyone else the time and effort, I just finished compiling this list and sending it off to the tech I talked to:

Here are some links to the forums I visit that describe the problem occurring on various systems with various different types of monitors and configurations:

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...key=y&keyword1=pny

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...key=y&keyword1=pny

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...key=y&keyword1=pny

This thread talks about "new" versus "old" revisions of the card and how many with the "old" revisions have 2D image quality problems:

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...4592&enterthread=y

Here is a thread I created regarding the problem with a link to the website I showed you previously. Others also comment in this thread about having the problem, and someone posted a screenshot of it as well:

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...4256&enterthread=y

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/touchmyichi/crapp.JPG (Screenshot of problem)


Some people "solved" their problems by eliminating font smoothing and such, but many others, including myself, have tried all such fixes and had no results.

This forum also saw some complaints about image quality:

http://www.hardforum.com/showt...7&page=4&pp=20

The main point of the thread was about missing capacitors, a problem I did not have, but if you read through enough if it people also talk about the image quality problem.

Here is another thread with complaints (some are complaining about a different brand, but others do mention specifically the PNY 6800 having image quality problems):

http://www.techsupportforum.co...ter/topic/12655-1.html

I forgot to mention this, but I also have some sporadic crashing problems. I'm not 100% sure they're tied to the card, but when I play Counter-Strike: Source, occasionally it will freeze up and force me to do a hard reset (as in I can't even kill the problem via task manager). The reason I suspect the video card in this problem as well is that it seems to get worse when I use higher resolutions or set more details to medium or high in the game's settings. I never had crashing problems with my Ti4200 either, but I always ran lower resolutions anyway, so it's hard to say for sure.

As you recommended, I will try to find a CRT to test the video card on, but either way with the surmounting evidence above, I think it is almost certain it is the fault of the video card and not the monitor.

It is quite thorough and well supported by all of the links provided.

 

[Keysplayr]

The Ti4200 looks sharp as a razor, definite difference. One question. Did you happen to install the latest driver for your LCD display? Or does it say "Default Monitor" in Device Manager? Don't know if this will make any difference.

 

[yhelothar]

Probably not. There monitor drivers should only tell the video card the max display modes, which usually the video card can pull up the monitors DDC information without requiring any drivers installed. Maybe if the drivers set the current monitor timing mode, it would make a difference.

 

[uOpt]

This looks like horizontal mispositioning by 1/3rd a pixel.

You can probably fix that by manually tuning the exact frequencies and syncs. I don't know how to do that in Windoze, but in Unix you would use a custom modeline, starting with the built-in one you use now and then place the hsync a little earlier in the image sequence.

 

[esun]

I am using the proper monitor drivers so it says appropriately "Sharp LL-172A-B". Regarding the manual tuning of frequencies, please excuse my possible ignorace, but I don't see how that would fix the problem. That would be a monitor issue, wouldn't it?

 

[Viper96720]

It kind of looks like cleartype is enabled. The words get bigger looking. Cause that's what my lcd looks like with cleartype enabled.

 

[esun]

Yeah I know, and I wish the problem were that simple. But trust me, I made sure numerous times that all forms of font smoothing were disabled. I'm also getting some crashing problems in CS, so I think the card is just bad overall.

 

[dj1]

this was fixed when i got my lcd monitor. for some reason my pny 6800 card didn't like my old crt monitor. my lcd monitor auto-adjusted itself. u might want to play around with your moire levels for horizontal and vertical. because the reason for bluriness, is because the horizontal and vertiacal refresh rates are not exactly in sync, and may cause slight jumping of the screen which may lead you to saying the picture quality is blurry. i never got a chance to fix this on my crt monitor though. my lcd monitor i have right now still uses an analog connection and the picture quality is perfect.

 

[hepstah]

As a final check, I would suggest trying to use the auto adjust while displaying the patterns on this site:

http://www.techmind.org/lcd/

specifically this one: http://www.techmind.org/lcd/phasing.html

steve

 

[Rhin0]

Just got home from Illinois, lock the front door, oh boy!
Got to sit down, take a rest on the porch.
Imagination sets in, pretty soon I'm singing,

Doo, doo, doo, Looking out my SCREEN DOOR

 

[esun]

I've tried auto-adjusting, I tried auto-adjusting with the pattern the came with my monitor's CD, I'm done with it. Card is going back for RMA ASAP. I don't intend for this to help diagnose or solve the problem because there is no way to do so. I intend for this to be useful for someone trying to get an RMA and being unable to describe the subtlety of the problem.

 

[yhelothar]

Your card is defect.. mine has the same problem. This problem has been widely reported by PNY 6800NU users.
If you don't own one, don't come in and claim the problem is between the keyboard and chair.

 

[bradyapba]

I have not exp. the problem with my PNY 6800, but my friend did we both of ours from Comp usa on black friday. But when I brought my monitor over to his place, it worked fine. I even fack have 4 monitors... a Dell,Sun, emachine, and envision. The dell is about 4 years old, and the other 3 about 1-2 years old.


The Dell had the same issue, the other 3 worked fine. It seems this card doesn't like some monitors, and I am at a loss as for why.

 

[touchmyichi]

I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, I have my own poor images to add. So I was basically just sitting here when all the suddenly my screen flashed and everything basically turned to....crap. Before it would only look bad at 85 herz, but now it looks terrible at even 60. Here is a shot, I took more but this should more than suffice.

I rest my case

 

[L337Llama]

II had blurry text at one point, but that was become something was messed up with the AA, and it ended up using AA on my desktop. Its happended once for about a minute, but I havnt been given any other problems.

 

[esun]

Yeah, that reminds me exactly of my problem (although I'm back on my Ti4200 for now). I guess now that I think about it I'm not all that surprised it showed up in a screenshot, but somehow I didn't think of that...

 

[tr1kstanc3]

i had a similar problem with an evga 6800. i originally bought one from microcenter and it had terrible 2d text like the days of the original geforce 1. i promptly returned it and got it exchanged. the replacement had better 2d than the 9800pro it replaced. definitely a quality control issue. using 1280x1024 on a samsung 712n lcd.

 

[mrwxyz]

is this problem only for the 6800nu, or also the pny 6800gt? i have a pny gt in the mail.....

 

[esun]

From what I've heard it's only a 6800 problem, not a 6800GT problem. I just got off the phone with another PNY tech and he's having me e-mail him all of the evidence I've compiled, which includes lots of threads just like these in the forums. Hopefully PNY will realize the problem and just start handing out the RMAs as they should be.

 

[BlackPear1]

Either I got lucky or they've figured out how to improve the analog output quality on these cards. I got another PNY 6800 today, one of the new revisions as described elsewhere on this forum, and it's analog output quality seems significantly improved over the first PNY 6800 and the BFG 6800 I had before. Both of those cards had substandard analog output when viewed on my 2001FP and other displays. Analog output quality on the new card is about as sharp and clear as that on my ATI and older NV cards. (DVI out on all these cards, even those w/bad analog, has been excellent, so I'm guessing they've had some DAC or filter issues.)