9800Gx2 + LG lcd = disaster >.>

[Akubane]

Yo, probably right forum. Anyhow i'll keep it brief.

9800Gx2 came in the mail today
removed 8800u
added 9800gx2
did the whole driver uninstallation/installation in safe mode w driver cleaner etc etc..
installed new gx2 drivers 175.16

aaand screen picture quality dropped from 11/10 to about 1/10
not only that but its not even centered >.>
Its washed out, fuzzy, stretched (like its trying to fit 1680x1050 into the higher res without adding more pixels) pixelated aaand i have no clue why lol. resolution set properly to 1920x1200, 32bit color.

i can't manually position this screen, options are all greyed out.

looked fabulous on the 8800ultra, so anyone know whats goin on?

edit~ oh and it seems it won't display anything under 1920x1200 at all.

[Mak213]

Have you checked the nvidia forums to see if there is known bugs with these drivers. Granted they are brand new but that doesnt mean they are bug free.

[Akubane]

did a quick search and didnt catch anything. i just tried the 175.63 beta drivers, same issues.

ill check the forums again after i try older drivers.

bleh

edit~ nothin. tried 5 different drivers and forums had nothin.

[Akubane]

After an hour on the phone with EVGA tech support, and both of us browsing forums and testign crap out we found the problem.

9800gx2 is detecting my LG monitor as an HDTV through HDMI. hence crap picture, bad resolution and off centre.

so the 9800gx2 doesnt properly support HDMI with all setups as advertised >.> which sucks because i went out and bough 100$ hdmi cable (cheapest there was lol) due to the evga guy i had earlier telling me it was because of the HDMI - DVI cable I was using.

Now my LG monitor doesnt even have DVI connection lol so i'm out of luck there. not that I have a DVI to DVI cable anyway.

Theres one other 'workaround' someone on the nvidia forums found that the EVGA guy suggested I try, going through the registry and forcing the nvidia drivers to stop recognising my monitor as an HDTV

Only problem is the guy didn't state which LG monitor he had, and I'm not much into this sort of thing.

Originally Posted by some dude

Hey guys,

I've discovered a workaround for this problem. Basically you can use a registry key to override the monitor advertising itself as an HDTV (by setting the number of EDID extensions to 0). Using the following steps, I am now getting proper 1920x1200 resolution on my LG monitor:

1. Start the installation of the latest Nvidia drivers and cancel out once the files are extracted
2. Open nv_disp.inf. By default for the current drivers this is in C:\NVIDIA\WinVista\169.25
3. In the [nv_SoftwareDeviceSettings] section add the following:
CODE
HKR,, OverrideEdidFlags0, %REG_BINARY%, 1E,6D,3F,56,00,00,FF,FF,04,00,00,00,7E,01,00

NOTE
The first 4 bytes (1E,6D,3F,56) in my OverrideEdidFlags0 are specific to the LG monitor I'm using. For other monitors, you will need to replace them. Using Phoenix EDID Designer, extract the current EDID and open up the byte viewer. The bytes are in byte 8 through 11.

4. Uninstall your current drivers and reboot
5. Install the modified drivers by running the previously extracted setup.exe. By default for the current drivers this is in C:\NVIDIA\WinVista\169.25. You'll get a warning about the driver not being signed because of the modified inf. Just press OK.

Problem, I got phoenix EDID Designer.. but what's this about extractign the current EDID. I don't even know what EDID is lol, or where to extract it from. Let alone bytes 8 through 11.

You happen to know what that means? lol

I hope nvidia has plans of straightening the driver issue out. more and more 24"+ monitors are coming without DVI inputs.

edit~ ok i figured out the byte viewer thing. Though there were two options forr files to extract. Both were related to my monitor, I picked the one that held the model number.

lets hope this works..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
edit~
no dice. workaround failed. i can get the res and positioning back if i use vga to vga>dvi adapter.
picture looks horrible though. not crisp at all. almost fuzzy lookin.

i hope nvidia fixes this in their drivers soon, what a waste of 800$ heh. ****ed

[veedubfreak]

That'll teach you to buy a monitor with no DVI input. Thats actually one of the reasons i skipped buying that lg when it was on sale. I just knew there would be issues with it not having a dvi input.

[Akubane]

heh. I just don't know how they can screw up drivers for the 9800gx2 when they work fine on the 8800ultra.

there shouldnt be any issues using hdmi. thats the issue. lol

besides there weren't any other decent mva panel lcd's left >.>

dunno I might just swallow the restocking fee and ditch the card. it's useless if it cant even output a decent picture.

[Mak213]

That just sucks. Sorry to hear about that. This is part of the problem adopting new technology as it comes out. Drivers are buggy even right away. Getting them to work on XP and Vista at the same time is a treat.

[Akubane]

yeah its a pretty big downer thats for sure. I just hope it's something they're looking into. during all the diffrernt installations i ended up installing the drivers in safe mode once, after a restart it didnt even regognize that there were drivers installed. Funny part is, without drivers the picture was fine. wasn't a problem.

only thing is i can't do anything without drivers lol.

[Mak213]

I am sure that if you go to their forums and if this is not mentioned make sure to bring it up and give pics as well. Make sure they know of this issue so they can get working on a fix as it isnt a small issue at all.

[Akubane]

yeah good plan, may as well do that now.