I recently replaced my old GTS 250 graphics card on my Windows 7 machine, and picked up this Radeon 7850 on sale for $150. This new card has 1 DVI port, 1HDMI port, and 2 mini display ports. My old card had 2 DVI outs, so I had to use a new cable for one of my monitors.
My old 1024 x 768 CRT monitor gets the DVI out, since I have an adapter for it, and it is limited in terms of what it will accept. I’ve picked up a cheap HDMI cable for my newer 1920x1080 LCD monitor, and I haven’t been real happy with the picture. Things aren’t as crisp, IMHO, particularly text. I noticed also that I have red sparkley areas in games and pictures. When same pictures are viewed on my CRT, the red sparkleys are gone. I evidently need a new cable.
What do I get? This is my monitor. It has DVI in, VGA in, HDMI in. And again, my video card has 2 free mini display ports, and one free HDMI port. What cables do you believe would deliver the clearest picture, given these options?
I’m kind of behind the times when it comes to newer TV/monitor technology. I tried the HDMI and got a less-than satisfactory result, so I appeal to the SD masses to fight my ignorance.
I only have an HDMI cable to use with my LCD monitor. Playing around some, I tried the DVI cable with my LCD and the picture is sharper, but then I can’t use my older monitor at all, at least not with my current cables.
Perhaps I should look into a mini-DP to VGA adapter for my older CRT monitor. Do you know anything about them and how well they work? I’d rather have the clearest picture on my newer LCD monitor, but I’d also like a usable picture on my older CRT monitor with the VGA-only input.
It doesn’t really matter if you go mini-DP to VGA or to DVI. Since you probably won’t ever buy a VGA-only monitor again there is more potential for re-use of the mini-DP to DVI adapter, if, for example, your CRT dies.
HDMI and DVI are both digital, so I wouldn’t expect a difference in image quality.
When using the HDMI cable, is the picture displaying full screen (i.e. desktop fills the display without a black border around)? I recently tried connecting a new monitor to my ATI video card using an HDMI cable, and for some reason it defaulted to scaling the image, resulting in a very fuzzy display. It only seemed to happen with HDMI, not DVI. This page explains how to fix it, but it’s slightly different on a newer version of the Catalyst Control Center. (It’s still labeled “scaling” but it’s elsewhere in the menu system - shouldn’t be hard to find though.)
HDMI should give you the best picture–it’s more or less DVI, with sound.
I doubt the problem is the cable, but 4 or 5 dollars on Amazon will get you a new HDMI cable.
I’d make sure the Card is sending over a 1920x1080 picture, exactly matched to the monitor settings, also at 1920x1080. In general you’ll get the best picture using the native monitor resolution matched to the Card output.
Mini DP to DVI. If that could get me the same quality picture as DVI to DVI, that would make more sense in the long run. I REALLY want that good picture I’m getting from DVI to DVI.
You wouldn’t expect it, but I’m finding it. It’s noticeable.
Thanks. Yeah, I had that issue as well, but I fixed it on Tuesday. That was pretty annoying.
HDMI is DVI + sound (+ethernet + power, etc in some specs). So HDMI and DVI ports both are carrying the same digital signal. If they look different on your monitor, it is either something in the software of the card (like the scaling issue - stupid default). Or it is something in the monitor itself - likely what sharpness/picture settings it is using. If you dig through the monitor settings you probably can get HDMI & DVI to look identical
I will take one more stab at making the HDMI work to my satisfaction, playing with my monitor’s controls and Catalyst Control Center, but I’m not sure it will help. I already played with it some.
The text is looking less crisp using the HDMI, as compared to the DVI. In one game, the text that is supposed to be yellow instead looks like a mix of yellow & white. If I take a screenshot and look at it on the CRT monitor, it just looks yellow. Also, there are weird occurrences of what looks like red ‘snow’ or static in areas that clearly should not look like that. That is with the HDMI cable. Using the DVI cable, it looks just fine.
If messing with monitor controls & CCC fails, I’ll go with the DVI for my main LCD monitor, and I’ll get a mini-DP to VGA adapter for my CRT. It’ll probably see very little use once my CRT dies, but such is life. I want a clear picture on my LCD, I want to use a 2nd monitor, and I don’t want to buy a new monitor at this time. Looks like that would be the only course of action left to me.
ATI cards use rely on the EDID protocol to know how to connect with a display (what resolutions it supports, refresh rates, etc.), and I don’t think VGA supports that. As a matter of fact, that might be why you’re having issues with the HDMI cable.
You’re not displaying the desktop at the monitor’s native resolution. Just make sure either by going into the CCC panel, or by right clicking the desktop and then going to screen resolution (in windows 7/8) and making sure the resolution is 1920x1080 (which appears to be your panel’s native res).
Also, you installed the latest catalyst drivers from AMD, right? Not the (probably incredibly outdated) ones that came with the card, I hope. If you did install the drivers that came with the card, just go to amd.com and download the latest drivers.
I have two monitors. One (the CRT) can ONLY use VGA, or DVI with a VGA adapter that I have. My problem is, that seems to be the clearest of the two options I currently have available (HDMI or DVI) and I would like to use it on my big LCD monitor, but I can’t since the CRT only has the one input available. I guess I’ll give a mini-DVI a shot.
I am using the latest drivers from the website. I would never use drivers supplied in-box unless I had no other choice, since they are updated so frequently. Both CCC, and the screen res Windows config accessed from desktop, give the correct resolution - 1920 x 1080.
The sharpness issues sound like the monitor is in a “TV” mode or adding overscan over HDMI.
Note you can also get a cheap HDMI->DVI adapter and plug in the LCD monitor via a DVI cable - if the issues are on the monitor side that would fix it as well.
Catalyst control center actually is “underscanning” by default, which leaves you with black bars around the sides and top of the image on many monitors. Which is to combat some TVs,etc having “overscan” on by default and cutting off the edge.
But I agree, it is the dumbest default ever since far more people are connecting it to a proper monitor via HDMI rather than a TV (and honestly most LCD tvs have overscan turned off by default now - but they aren’t displaying a perfect 1:1 picture like they should - they still do some processing of the image which is screwing it up)
I went back to the Underscan - Overscan section of CCC again, since everyone kept talking about it. I thought I had it set correctly. I didn’t, because, as it turns out, a setting on my monitor needed changed for the correct setting in CCC to look right. I noticed that the slider wasn’t ENTIRELY over to the 0%, but one tiny notch off of that. I slid it all the way over, and the edges of the full-screen window went beyond the edges of my monitor - but the picture looked sharper.
So I went fishing in the monitor controls (and the controls on this thing truly ARE ass). I found my way to a menu that said OVERSCAN, FULL, and 4:3. It was on OVERSCAN, so I set it to FULL, and now the text is clearer AND the windows fit my screen.
What screwed me up was I didn’t have the slider all the way over to 0% in CCC. I left it one notch over because that was the way it perfectly fit my monitor. That little bit of oddness made things look a little off, particularly thin, regular things like text. I needed to change a setting on my monitor as well as in CCC to have both good-looking text AND windows that fit entirely on the screen.
Thanks everyone. It took me a long time to get this video card upgrade, and it made things look WORSE. Not a happy thing, but that’s all behind me now. FINALLY!