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