# Bought new graphics card, colors look really bad



## xax_su (Sep 20, 2008)

So I bought a new gpu. Asus strix gtx970. I had an ati 6950 card previously and using the same display and cables the picture quality was much better. So I'm thinking I have some kind wrong setting somewhere. Because with the ati the colors etc were fine I also know that the monitor and the cable are fine. On my old ati card I did have this issue too but rolling back to older driver version fixed it then (switched back to 14.4 version ati driver)

As far as the bad image quality goes blacks are not really blacks. They are lighter. Most obvious issue is with red color. For some reason all red things are just really blurry and kinda off balance. Rd color seems like it has shifted little bit towards magenta/purple. I also tried calibrating my monitor using this site:
Gamma calibration - Lagom LCD test
My gamma looks like it is completely out of whack. According to that site gamma should be 2.2 but for me it looks like it is 1.2! Naturally blue is maybe little "purplish" too and green is shifted to lighter color...

The screen is 42" lcd tv. LG 42LD 450N. The tv is connected to the card via hdmi cable. I've also tried a dvi-hdmi cable but it made no difference.

I'm also suspecting there are some shenanigans going on with the nvidia driver. I'm getting some strange screen flicker when I try to adjust the rbg full to limited and vice versa and the driver seems to always default to rgb full. I've tried setting it to limited or switching the rbg to YCBrCr444 and same thing. What happens is my screen goes dark, comes back and I see the ycbr is selected then monitor goes black and comes back again and rgb full is selected. It doesn't allow me to change the color mode.

This could be also caused by the tool I downloaded which is supposed to change that rgb full to limited (NV_RGBFullRangeToggle.exe).

My tv does report that it is using "wide" color gamut. The monitor is set as "pc" and the gamma is set to medium and black to low. I don't know if the tv supports rgb full or limited though.

machine specs:
windows 8.1
asus strix gtx970
LG 42LD 450N tv
latest nvidia driver


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

Have you run the calibration option in the nVidia control panel?


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## xax_su (Sep 20, 2008)

What's that? You mean adjusting the individual colors? Yeah, I've kinda tried it but I don't really know how to make it better. When I try adjusting colors I just go from bad to worse .


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## BowHunter41 (Apr 19, 2015)

ATI/AMD based GPU's many times have better "boot up initial" colors. You can achieve the same with NVidia with some minor tweaking though. Perhaps you did not fully wipe your AMD drivers? By wipe I mean an uninstall and also a cleaning with something like this?

The way you are describing the colors sounds like the Hue is off.


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## xax_su (Sep 20, 2008)

BowHunter41 said:


> ATI/AMD based GPU's many times have better "boot up initial" colors. You can achieve the same with NVidia with some minor tweaking though. Perhaps you did not fully wipe your AMD drivers? By wipe I mean an uninstall and also a cleaning with something like this?
> 
> The way you are describing the colors sounds like the Hue is off.


I'll try reinstalling the drivers. I also try driversweeper although when I last had this issue with ati drivers that did not help.

If the hue is off can it cause blurriness too? Because something like red on black looks super blurry. With rest of the colors there is little blurryness but red (or black) is clearly the worst.

Could it be that at some point I have installed a 3rd party graphics software that has messed up something with the registry of windows? Like ati tray tools? I know I used that at one point to adjust something with my ati drivers some year or two ago.


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## xax_su (Sep 20, 2008)

I'll update this post actively as I go on:

1. So some more info. First I removed nvidia drivers. The computer restarts. With the defauilt windows driver I now have good colors and no blurryness at all. So without a shadow of a doubt it is some kind of driver issue.

2. Ran the driversweeper in safe mode. Had it to remove all three drivers (ati, intel, nvidia). Then booted back to windows normally. No difference at this point.

3. Installed nvidia graphics drivers. Colors look horrible blurry again.

4. Nvidia has chosen limited rgb color range. I'm changing it to full and restarting now.


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## xax_su (Sep 20, 2008)

I can no longer edit that last message so I make a new one. I hope I'm not breaking a rule by doing this:

5. After rebooting with rgb full the screen still looks blurry and colors are bad. Nvidia driver does show it is using rgb full now.

6. I'll try YCbCr444 next...

7. same issue... (I think rbg looks little less blurry. There is no difference between rgb full and limited.)

8. I was just checking my monitor settings. There is a line which says "xvycc off". I can't change that to on though.


Please help, I'm getting totally clueless here


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## Pilgrim3 (Jul 5, 2015)

Did you manage to resolve your problem? I have a similar issue as you, upgraded from a 6950 to a gtx 980 a few weeks ago and it's been giving me grief. 

Initially I also had a fuzzy image on my tv (have the gpu hooked to a tv and monitor), but I managed to make it a little better by resizing the desktop (as it was overscanning) through my tv (view mode->dot by dot. It was initially on stretch). Although some blurriness remains, this is mainly due to the way nvidia renders things.

As for the image quality, going ycbcr444 seems to be the most balanced option for me although it still crushes blacks, the image remains way "brighter" than on the amd card all the while oversaturating certain colors. The annoying part is whatever calibrations you made in the nvidia control panel don't apply to most games. On top of this, some media looks like it's being displayed at much lower bitrates than 32bit (closer to 16bit or even 8bit) and there's also color banding.

I've been wondering whether I got a defective card, but after some research I'm pretty sure it's the standard and that amd simply gives out slightly better iq. This might explain how nvidia cards tend to pull decent fps whilst drawing less power.


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## BowHunter41 (Apr 19, 2015)

I use ycbcr444-- with HDMI as well. Try these settings. I had to tweak a few things with the LCD settings as well but looks better than regular RGB with DVI overall. Yes as an avid gamer myself I realize only a few of these settings affect in-game colors but they do make a difference especially digital vibrance. That setting varies card-to-card though even when using a different nVidia card. I do agree that the default IQ settings on an AMD card are much better though. Anyway here are the settings I use.

In the adjust desktop color settings, with a the selection of "Use nVidia settings"


Brightness=65
Contrast=47
Gamma+0.91
Digital Vibrance=59


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

Ideally you would calibrate the monitor/TV and not adjust the video output. 

On most monitors/TV's, each input is calibrated seperately. So comparing the input on the DVI port and the HDMI port could be completely different using the same source (ie: computer).

I only bring it up as most people, when adding or replacing hardware, immediately start messing with drivers/driver settings and don't even consider adjusting the output device. ALL monitors and TV's, regardless of source, need to be calibrated for accurate color reproduction.


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## BowHunter41 (Apr 19, 2015)

I disagree - Ideally for TV's yes, but not for the demanding daily gamer  Been there been doing that for 15+ years. Watch any youtube gameplay of Far Cry 4 and notice the lush environment. Take note how some gameplay from some people look totally washed out color wise. It's the default card color settings with NV drivers whereas AMD with defaults looks quite nice, with NV not so. Takes tweaking, and that type of tweaking isn't totally best done on the LCD itself and 90% of the time can't be done on the LCD itself to get optimal color saturation. Takes some control panel adjustments.


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## xax_su (Sep 20, 2008)

Pilgrim3 said:


> Did you manage to resolve your problem? I have a similar issue as you, upgraded from a 6950 to a gtx 980 a few weeks ago and it's been giving me grief.


No, I've pretty much given up as I'm completely out of ideas to try. My last option would be to try adjusting chroma but I don't see it anywhere on the driver...



Pilgrim3 said:


> I've been wondering whether I got a defective card, but after some research I'm pretty sure it's the standard and that amd simply gives out slightly better iq. This might explain how nvidia cards tend to pull decent fps whilst drawing less power.


I had the exact same issue with the latest ati drivers with my 6950 and this new nvidia gtx970 with its newest drivers. It is just some driver setting I'm sure. It was 100% without a doubt a driver issue with my old ati card (looks great on old driver, looks bad on new driver) and that driver issue was also one the main reasons I went with nvidia card instead of ati when I upgraded from my 6950.



JimE said:


> Ideally you would calibrate the monitor/TV and not adjust the video output.
> 
> On most monitors/TV's, each input is calibrated seperately. So comparing the input on the DVI port and the HDMI port could be completely different using the same source (ie: computer).
> 
> I only bring it up as most people, when adding or replacing hardware, immediately start messing with drivers/driver settings and don't even consider adjusting the output device. ALL monitors and TV's, regardless of source, need to be calibrated for accurate color reproduction.


It is a driver issue. I can have good colors with old ati drivers and bad with new ati drivers just like I have bad colors on new nvidia. I've tried hdmi-hdmi cables and hdmi-dvi cables, I've tried messing with my tv settings, tried both hdmi slots on my tv, tried all the slots on the gpu.

It is definitely not screen resizing or scaling issue for example as only red on black looks horribly mushy where as this black text on white is sharp.



BowHunter41 said:


> I use ycbcr444-- with HDMI as well. Try these settings. I had to tweak a few things with the LCD settings as well but looks better than regular RGB with DVI overall. Yes as an avid gamer myself I realize only a few of these settings affect in-game colors but they do make a difference especially digital vibrance. That setting varies card-to-card though even when using a different nVidia card. I do agree that the default IQ settings on an AMD card are much better though. Anyway here are the settings I use.
> 
> In the adjust desktop color settings, with a the selection of "Use nVidia settings"
> 
> ...


Thanks for the ideas. However on my screen everything has very red tint with those settings.


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