Poor Font Resolution with Radeon 8500/Win XP

[MattCK]

I just got a custon system with an ABIT KR7A-R, 512MB DDR RAM, AMD Athalon 2000 XP, Win XP, Sony G420S and an ATI Radeon 8500. Photos and DVDs look great, but font resolution (especially bold) on my browsers (Netscape 4.7 and IE 6) and in Word 2000 look terrible. There is bleeding around the edges on the fonts and they also lack contrast. I am running at 1024 x 768 at 85 Hz and have tried other resolutions/refresh rates w/o success. I have the latest ATI driver for the 8500 installed (6.13.10.6015). I substituted a Optiquest V75 monitor and saw the same phenomena. I also changed the font size within the ATI display control panel without luck. I am stumped. Can anybody help? Thanks.

 

[DefRef]

Do you have the ClearType switched on? That looks like ass on CRTs.

 

[MattCK]

Thanks, I will try that. I am at work and away from my home PC - I assume this ClearType setting is within the Radeon 8500 display control panel?

 

[SlimHarpo]

It can be found under under appearance->effects->"Use the following method to smooth screen fonts" of your display properties. It does blur and thicken fonts a bit, and this is especially noticeable on bold fonts. Although it was designed with LCDs in mind, I wouldn't say it "looks like ass" on CRTs, but to each his own.... I guess. I've been using it on CRTs for a while, and now the standard AA looks awful jagged to me.

 

[DefRef]

Sure. Personal taste varies, but it was a blurry mess for me, but I run at 1600x1200 and I don't see jaggies at all normally.

 

[AA0]

cleartype is a huge improvement over normal fonts in XP. Why are you running it at 85Hz, did you use the refresh rate fix for it?

 

[MattCK]

What's wrong with 85 Hz if I see no flicker? I have only been surfing and using email and word processing so far, i.e. no games yet. Please educate me.