Why does this Dell LCD look like crap?

[psteng19]

So I bought my friend a Dell E152FP 15" LCD, running it 1024*768 (native res) @ 32 bit with an Asus GF4 Ti4200 64 MB through VGA (no DVI).

It looks OK until you inspect it a little more closely. Not even THAT closely. A casual user would notice after browsing a few websites.
Photo pictures look very blocky and pixelated. The transition between same shades of a color does not appear smooth. You can see exactly where it changes.
It looks as if it's not really running at 32 bit and at 1024*768.
It looks more like it's midway between 256 colors and 16 bit, and 640*480 except minus the huge size that comes with a low resolution.

I brought my laptop over and plugged it into the LCD and it looks fine.
I even thought it was a bad video card, but I swapped it out and it's still bad.
Could it be a software setting that I'm missing? (clear type is on)

 

[Ages120]

Um either image dithering is on or you get what you pay for. DUDE YOUR GETTING A DELL, cause we ran out of computers.

 

[MatthewF01]

you might try uninstalling your nvidia drivers (assuming you INSTALLED THEM in the first place 😉), restarting on the MS drivers, installing the latest from NVidia, then rebooting again...

 

[psteng19]

Originally posted by: Ages120
Um either image dithering is on or you get what you pay for. DUDE YOUR GETTING A DELL, cause we ran out of computers.

No because at work we use the same LCD's and it looks just fine.
I'll test the dithering.

Originally posted by: MatthewF01
you might try uninstalling your nvidia drivers (assuming you INSTALLED THEM in the first place 😉), restarting on the MS drivers, installing the latest from NVidia, then rebooting again...

Tried the native XP drivers as well as the latest from nvidia. Same results on both.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

u jus cant beat a good ol CRT 😉