Solved Minor graphic issue

michael_hackson

michael_hackson

Hello. There is one thing that has been bothering me for a while but since I haven't been able to really come down to source of it I have postponed posting anything about it.

The weird thing is that the on-screen quality is switching through, what I believe may be, the initiation of the Nvidia driver. If I remember it correctly I had these issues already on the XP with the installation of 340.xx drivers. When I used the 332.xx or whatever old I had before there was no situation like this, however the graphics were not as clean either. :p

Does anyone have any clue about why the on-screen quality is changing from times to times? It's as some days HD is applied and others not. Should I just accept the fact that I am running my system on a 11 years old PC, original parts? x)

Graphic card is Geforce 8600GT.


Have a nice day all! :D

- - - michael_hackson

Edit: With some more time it's most likely hardware related. I ponder if some instability may have been related to I combined pkg and port when learning FreeBSD. With a reinstall I go with pkg only and experience a more stable outcome.
 
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I would be more suspicious of the monitor cable, the monitor or the card itself than the graphics card driver.
 
I remember having issues like this with GeForce cards long ago, too. It was really strange. Picture looked sharp, overly sharp, and then washed, and the like.
Even hardware resetting using reset button didn't solve this.
The only way to resolve this was cycling power, having the card a full reset. This always resulted in a clear display.
 
Looking around for the issue but the washed out colors may be fixed by (re)setting the color scheme in the NVidia control panel. Apparently these get screwed up sometimes. It's definitely worth a try to see if that fixes the issue.
 
SirDice,
SirDice said:
I would be more suspicious of the monitor cable, the monitor or the card itself than the graphics card driver.
Click to expand...

Now that you mention it I actually had some minor manageable issues with monitor in the past but what makes it a little weird is that things start to happen again at the time I make a graphic driver update. Maybe it's just that it has a hard time to apply the HD effects. My own thought to all this was if it could be down to how the voltage is distributed to the hardware: wear and tear could affect this, no? Having the monitor as reason seems highly likely though.

- - - - -

Snurg,
Snurg said:
I remember having issues like this with GeForce cards long ago, too. It was really strange. Picture looked sharp, overly sharp, and then washed, and the like.
Even hardware resetting using reset button didn't solve this.
The only way to resolve this was cycling power, having the card a full reset. This always resulted in a clear display.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I am experiencing, couldn't describe it in any other way. And as you say, it doesn't matter through reset.
What is this cycling power you are talking about? Checking that the card gets the right amount of power or am I missing something? :O


- - - michael_hackson
 
SirDice said:
Looking around for the issue but the washed out colors may be fixed by (re)setting the color scheme in the NVidia control panel. Apparently these get screwed up sometimes. It's definitely worth a try to see if that fixes the issue.
Click to expand...

Colours are all great. The only thing looking washed is the picture itself, it's a blurry, slight half-dimmed feel to all of it.
Until the next time, at some lucky boot when everything is sharp and crystal clear again haha. x)
 
Snurg said:
cycling power = turn off, then turn on again
First poweroff, so that the PC is physically switched off. Wait a few seconds so all voltages can discharge. Then pressing the power button to start it again.
Click to expand...

Ah! That was my second guess. You help me realise that cycling power actually helps my case as well. It doesn't work 100 % and not at all when using PC regularly but if I let it stay in off-state for two or three days and then starts it, there is a higher chance that it works as it should.
 
To be honest, I do not know what the cause of this blurred display was. It was with 8400GS I bought about 10 years ago.
I tried all possible things, like you. Changed cables, played around with drivers/settings, tried different monitors, resetted/rebooted numerous times.
Wasted hours. Next day when I powered up the pc again, the problem was magically gone.
Occasionally it happened again, then I just cycled power, and it usually was clean again then.
 
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