Vista vs Ati Radeon

[Apache -=CW=-]

Hi...

I'm new to the groups so forgive me if I posted this in the wrong area.

I've been running Vista Premium for about 5 months now. It's not a bad OS,
and I have gotten used to
some of it's quirkiness.

Anyway, here's my issue. I've got an Intel 875PBZ motherboard with 2 gigs of
ram and a ATI Radeon X1600 Pro
AGP. I've tried the latest drivers, the original drivers, and probably every
one in between. The problem is that the
images/desktop ect... have too high of a gamma setting, that is, the images
are too bright/faded instead of being
nice and vivid. I had the same issues when I was still using my ATI Radeon
9600XT AGP. I can correct this using
the color correction thingie, but ti seems to drift off to this washed out
look. I noticed it esp when I got through
running Half Life2 or Counterstrike, but now it seems to just be a constant
thing. I even went as far as to completely
re-install Vista, but it seemed to be the same thing. I doubt it's the
monitor (19 inch LCD).

Just curious if anyone has any input on this. Thanks in advance

 

[JerryM]

Your monitor has a brightness control,
Try cutting it down to 70% and see what it does.

 

[Paul Smith]

Hi...

I'm new to the groups so forgive me if I posted this in the wrong area.

I've been running Vista Premium for about 5 months now. It's not a bad OS,
and I have gotten used to
some of it's quirkiness.

Anyway, here's my issue. I've got an Intel 875PBZ motherboard with 2 gigs
of ram and a ATI Radeon X1600 Pro
AGP. I've tried the latest drivers, the original drivers, and probably
every one in between. The problem is that the
images/desktop ect... have too high of a gamma setting, that is, the
images are too bright/faded instead of being
nice and vivid. I had the same issues when I was still using my ATI Radeon
9600XT AGP. I can correct this using
the color correction thingie, but ti seems to drift off to this washed out
look. I noticed it esp when I got through
running Half Life2 or Counterstrike, but now it seems to just be a
constant thing. I even went as far as to completely
re-install Vista, but it seemed to be the same thing. I doubt it's the
monitor (19 inch LCD).

I find most monitors to be set far too bright out of the box. I think most
are calibrated for bright offices rather than homes.

However saying that I also recall there being a bug in the Radeon drivers,
over a year ago, which did increase the gamma too high, unless the Catalyst
Control Panel was installed and its background services were running. This
was fixed ages ago, so I can't imagine its that.

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Desktop Experience.
http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/
http://www.windowsresource.net/

*Remove nospam. to reply by e-mail*

 

[bmoag]

It is not your monitor.
When you make an adjustment in the ATI control panel to gamma, brightness,
whatever adjustments you like, you are creating a monitor profile.
High end computer games like Half life or Counterstrike, unload the monitor
profile when you play them.
When you exit the game and go back to the Vista desktop it is as if you
never made any adjustments.
This happens in XP too with 3d games. However Vista does not hold onto
monitor profiles as stably as XP under many circumstances. The monitor
profile can be unloaded in Vista by many events, including all those
pointless warning screens that come on if you have not turned off the user
account controls.

 

[Apache -=CW=-]

Thank you for the input. My monitor doesn't have a brightness control. But I
have tried the monitor profiles and that
seems to be the solution. I have also noticed that my second PC that has a
9600XT does the same thing, so it appears
to be an ATI thing. That PC is running XP-Pro, so it's not a Vista issue.