the basics

[KarenMarie]

Can some one please point me in the direction of an 'idiots' guide to video cards and how they work, and what they do... as well as stuff about monitors?

I got a new monitor and upgraded my video card and am totally clueless on what they best settings are, cause ... well, to be honest... I have no clue on what any of it is.

Thanks so much,

 

[MBrown]

what monitor and what videocard do you have?

 

[KarenMarie]

in my sig... main squeeze.
AIW 9800PRO and I just got an UltraSharp 19 in Dell flat panel.

had a 9600 pro and a KDS 17 in flat panel.

This card does stuff i dont even understand.... and some of the stuff looked better wth the old card. So, I figure it MUST be the settings. And, to be honest, I would like to learn.

 

[VIAN]

What exactly is wrong with the image quality?

 

[imported_Ged]

17in KDS LCD!

I had one of those for 4 years and didn't have a single problem. Not sure who made that panel but it's a decent panel for its time. Just passed it on to the girlfriend. Was an upgrade from her old old CRT.

More on topic: what is wrong with your image quality? Are you running at your LCD's Native Resolution or a multiple of its Native Res?

 

[KarenMarie]

ok.. settings are this...

the monitor is set at 1280x1024 - refresh is 70 HZ.

the card is plugged in... hahaha... i have no idea what to do from there!
3D is set to Quality and Video is set to theater.

Thing is, I put in three different Games and they all suck. Two were a few years old (Warcraft and Diablo) so I figured it might be the games. So I tried Lara Croft that came with something I purchased a few weeks ago. All of them looked ... hmm.. dont know if the word is pixelated, but that is the word that comes to mind. As the games are playing at full screen, they look like they...well, it looks like it should be watched on a small screen but was stretched too far. And when some one of the characters move ... it is like they are doing it in stages, not in a fluid movement. I was using the DVI cable, but it was suggested that I go to VGA cable, so I switched. No improvment.

Just need to adjust the settings, I am sure... but when I went into the Catalyst Control Center, I realized how little I know about any of this type of stuff. So, I figured I would ask where to go to get an idiots guide. I have no idea about Open GL, Direct 3D, SmartGART, OverLay, weaving, interlacing... any of it. I just dont know what they do, so figured I would learn.



Thanks guys!

System specs in :main Squeeze link

 

[bobsmith1492]

Did you install the drivers??

 

[KarenMarie]

installed monitor drivers, installed card drivers and went to ATI for the newest versions.

 

[Gunslinger08]

That's pretty strange. The native resolution of the 1905FP is 1280x1024, with a fast response time, so your settings look fine.

Are you running your games at 1280x1024? If not, that could be an issue.

 

[xtknight]

You have an LCD (with a native resolution of 1280x1024), so resolutions other than 1280x1024 will look pixelated/interpolated. Make sure your game is set to 1280x1024. The desktop setting won't impact your games.

You'll mostly be looking at the OpenGL and DirectX tabs. OpenGL and DirectX are two technologies that games use to draw their graphics. The most important options:

Antialiasing and anisotropic filtering: you'll want to leave these to application preference and set them in your game instead. For both of these, the higher the better.

Antialiasing makes edges look smoother. By nature, the monitor can not draw a perfect diagonal line, so the graphics card sends pixels that are approximates and the result being the circle looks jagged/toothed. Antialiasing decreases this bad effect.

Anisotropic filtering: The best example of this helping is when looking at a floor (in game). With it off, the floor will get blurrier farther down to save processing time. Anisotropic will instead sharpen the texture, and it makes it look a lot more realistic.

Texture quality (aka. image quality/mipmap quality): Textures are "blurred" to save processing time. The higher this goes, the sharper textures look.

Vertical sync: Hard to explain, but you'll want to turn this to app preference and turn it on in-game unless your performance goes way down as a result. Basically it makes your game look better when it's in motion, and makes everything move at once since some objects "draw" later than others.

 

[BlueWeasel]

I'm guessing it's the native resolution issue, Karen. Those games you mentioned are fairly old and I'm pretty sure they don't support resolutions up to 1280x1024 (Diablo2 was 640x480, or 800x600 with the expansion pack).

Unfortunately, any resolution other than the native (1280x1024) just aren't going to look very good. That's one of the drawbacks of playing older games on newer LCD monitors.

 

[KarenMarie]

Originally posted by: xtknight
You have an LCD (with a native resolution of 1280x1024), so resolutions other than 1280x1024 will look pixelated/interpolated. Make sure your game is set to 1280x1024. The desktop setting won't impact your games.

You'll mostly be looking at the OpenGL and DirectX tabs. OpenGL and DirectX are two technologies that games use to draw their graphics. The most important options:

Antialiasing and anisotropic filtering: you'll want to leave these to application preference and set them in your game instead. For both of these, the higher the better.

Antialiasing makes edges look smoother. By nature, the monitor can not draw a perfect diagonal line, so the graphics card sends pixels that are approximates and the result being the circle looks jagged/toothed. Antialiasing decreases this bad effect.

Anisotropic filtering: The best example of this helping is when looking at a floor (in game). With it off, the floor will get blurrier farther down to save processing time. Anisotropic will instead sharpen the texture, and it makes it look a lot more realistic.

Texture quality (aka. image quality/mipmap quality): Textures are "blurred" to save processing time. The higher this goes, the sharper textures look.

Vertical sync: Hard to explain, but you'll want to turn this to app preference and turn it on in-game unless your performance goes way down as a result. Basically it makes your game look better when it's in motion, and makes everything move at once since some objects "draw" later than others.

Ok.. that teaches me something...
I would really like to learn all about this stuff, hence the request for an idiots guide. I would rather learn EVERYthing than to come and bug you guys with all these sill questions. But what you posted goes a long way to making me understand stuff.

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel
I'm guessing it's the native resolution issue, Karen. Those games you mentioned are fairly old and I'm pretty sure they support resolutions up to 1280x1024 (Diablo2 was 640x480, or 800x600 with the expansion pack).

Unfortunately, any resolution other than the native (1280x1024) just aren't going to look very good. That's one of the drawbacks of playing older games on newer LCD monitors.

If it is the games. that is great. I am not a huge game player and would not have a problem getting new games. It just seemed strange to me that they looked so bad with nicer hardware than was there.

 

[xtknight]

Here's a guide on Anisotropic Filtering and why you need it. You are looking for stuff like this?

http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/Anisotropic/index1.php

 

[Parkre]

The next time you load up a game, click on the menu button ON the monitor and it will tell you what resolution you are running at. The games are pretty old and the eyecandy will just not be there. As for AA/AF I don't believe that is your problem. Hope this helps.

 

[KarenMarie]

ok. i will get new games. I dont really play games, to be honest. I just used them to see what the graphics card was like...

I used to have a BFG FX 5600 256MB graphics card... ages ago, and when I put those games in, it was like watching a movie. At the time, I also had a spare Visiontek 9600 PRO 128mb. I was told the 9600PRO was better than the FX5600, so I swapped them. Again, the games looked like movies. Now, 18 months later... I just got the 9800 AIW PRO, I tried the same games and they look like crap. Everything else looks good, but I wish the text on some wondows was larger... hahaha... like this one... but I would have to change the resolution and it looks nice like this except for the text size.

One more question...

Cable to monitor... DVI or VGA?