kyro2 contrast

[sasa]

I recently installed herc 4500. I was impressed with 2D text clarity in windows (on pair with G400!), 3D speed. Card is noticably slower in 2D (winXP). I can live with that, but contrast is poor. I have trinitron 17 inch, and it is really noticable (2D wise) how poor is contrast. White is not so white any more. I had various cards in my comp. Same contrast problems I had only with old Rage2 + bla bla bla. Even gf2mx had normal contrast.
Here is the question: Is there something I could do about it? Any bios fix? I have latest XP driver, but I dont believe that contrast problem is driver related. If I can not solve this I will sell the card.
and yes, I tried to boost contrast in drivers, but it solved nothing...

[mdhome]

Sasa
The beyond3d.com site has a fair number of Kyro 2 followers.


regards MD

[Novdid]

Use the temperature settings on the monitor to make the white whiter. It seems you need to reconfigure your monitor to solve your problem.

That was what I did. I run a 4500 with an Iiyama VM Pro 451.

[Nuno]

That´s the way that is basically. Image sharpness is impressive (and I agree that it´s very close to G400) but it not even near it if we talk about the "vibrance" of colors. I suppose it´s even more noticeable on high quality monitors, but even I have noticed it too.

Try to use the latest drivers (9.xxx). The gamma setting was way to high on 8.xxx. 9.xxx are much better, but I still think 7.xxx drivers were the best regarding 2D quality.

Powerstrip 3 is usefull too. I´m using it to keep refresh rates in 3D under win2k and it allows to tweak image setting. Try several gamma/brightness/contrast combinations.

[sasa]

I tried every setting with monitor and driver, no help at all. I guess that is hardware related with kyro2. Therefore I think the card sucks. I am playing Wolfenstain (new one) and everything is washed out. Lack of contrast is extremly noticable. Damn! I was so happy when I bought (very cheap) herc4500. Now I am sorry I didn't buy GF2 Titanium. I heard it has much better 2D than previous GF2. Even lousy GF2MX has excellent contrast and colors, in fact every card has at least good contrast. I aint gonna keep it for long..

[omegaRED]

Sasa, try PowerStrip : http://www.entechtaiwan.com/

I dont know how much it would help, as i have a G400, but its worth a shot. You can adjust gamma/contrast/brightness under Color profiles ... tho dont expect to get G400 colors on the Kyro2

[Novdid]

Actually, imagequality in 3D in my opinion is better than it was with the G400. Contrast is wonderful, aswell as colours.

[Nuno]

You may have got a faulty card or have the monitor input level set at anything else than 0.7V
It´s not really on par with G400 for sure, but it´s better than any Nvidia display I have seen.

[sasa]

I just finished wolfenstein. Great game. Regarding monitor input setting I tried that too. I dont think card is faulty, because contrast is not extremly low. For example, I had to put monitor contrast to 95 to get same picture as G400 on cca 85. And there is big difference between those because one can see difference between 85 and 86 setting...
Thank you all for answering. I have another question. I did clean install of xp, with latest drivers (viakt133a, athlon) for MB and kyro (9,031). With certain games/benchs I am having problems.
For example 3dmark2000 always drop to desktop, 2001 is all ok except loby high test (really slow, visible people through walls).
I believe this is driver related, OGL runs ok. I am waiting new driver revision. Is there anything else I can do about that? And yes, reason why I am miserable: F1 2001 doesnt work at all...

[Nuno]

3dmark2000 must be patched to v 1.1 to avoid it exiting to the desktop on a NT environment.

As for the 3dm2001 lobby scene, that happens if you have either Dx8.1 or 9.xxx driver installed. They fix the render into texture bug that Dx8.0 had but exposed a new bug on 3dmark2001. That lobby demo (and the car chase on hi detail if you notice closely) have a z-buffer issue, because they took some kind of non-conventional approach on the code that completly confuses Kyro on-chip z-buffer. If you want to fix it, go to the driver advanced options and enable external z-buffer for 3dmark2001 - It´ll do z-buffering like a conventional renderer and it´ll render the scene correctly. You´ll loose around 100-200 points though.

That bug is very strange, because Max Payne uses the same(?) game engine and it runs perfectly on the KyroII.