Tom's Hardware > Forum > CPU & Components > Other Components > LCD monitor wont display AA
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Peregrine2   04-27-2006 at 08:04:06 PM

I always get the wierd ones. After alot of research into what I was getting, I bought a Samsung 940b. An improvement in both Color and Picture quality(for the most part, outside ofAA) over my CRT. However I noticed something off with it from the start. Couldnt put my finger on it. Mainly, I was playing a game with sucky graphics and it was hard to pick anything out. So I loaded up a game I previously have played and noticed, there was no AA at all. I dont think the game even had any options for AA in the Video section, so I just chalked it up to an abnormality. I did notice all the time it was a little "grainy", but figured I was just seeing things. Then I loaded up City of Villains, and noticed, the AA was completely off. So I figured I just had never turned it on. I turned it to 2xAA and it freaked out. It slowed waaaaaayyy down(I have a very nice machine), so I turned it off. I changed a setting, restarted, and turned it back on, screen was black, at least until I turned it to AA off, in which case, it returned to normal.

Now I did update my graphics card drivers, but only AFTER I noticed the "grainy" quality earlier, and it really hasnt changed anything. Any ideas of what this is? I cant imagine it could be a bum LCD, since this should be graphics card related, but the timing would be impeccable.

19inch Samsung 940b LCD
ATI x850 Pro 256mb
Athlon X2 3800+
2GB OCZ DDR400
ATI Catylist 6.4
DirectX 9c

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rodney_ws   04-27-2006 at 08:39:33 PM
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Anti-aliasing happens at the video card level... your monitor/LCD is just a receiver for output from a video card. Enabling AA in almost every circumstance will cause a performance hit in frames/second... for many people, the increased visual quality is worth the loss in frames. I don't know much about the game you mentioned, but I can say with a high degree of certainty that this problem has nothing to do with your monitor/LCD.

If you still have your old CRT monitor, why not hook it up to verify your rig can push AA on that particular game? I would wager that you have the same problems on both the CRT and the LCD.

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steckman   04-27-2006 at 09:43:42 PM
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rodney_ws is right that AA does not affect your monitor in anyway.
When you got your new monitor did you perhaps move from using a DSUB output on your video card to a DVI output? If so, there could be some hardware defect related to your DVI out.
Did you increase the resolution you were running those games at on the new monitor? Increased resolution combined with turning on AA would easily explain a performance derease or perhaps even inability to render a scene.

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Peregrine2   04-27-2006 at 11:10:33 PM
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Im well aware of the fact that AA should not be handled by a monitor. But theory is always one thing, and bad programming another.

I figured the only thing that would make sense, is that since I switched to DVI, that it could be something wrong with the DVI port on my graphics card. But I switched it to analog this mourning, still no luck.

Its nothing performance related. My machine is good enough so that I can crank up AA if I want, and have done in the past without problems. The game I mentioned, City of Villains is not resource intensive by any means, and going from max fps to none just by turning on 2xAA makes no sense whatsoever.

Im more wondering if anyone knows of this occouring anywhere else. Something along the lines of the LCD drivers, or the graphics card(in this case ATIs Catalyst software) software just not allowing AA to be even an option.

As for hooking up my CRT again, I did give it away, but I really dont want to bother, such a hastle. Ive had enough hastles recently with horrid programming or design with computer parts and accessories(well, some just because they are old). I think ill just wait till I can compare it sidebyside with someone elses(thinking of getting together with a friend sometime soon).

As for resolution on the games, not a performance issue. I only had to change the resolutions from 1280x960 to the native resolution of 1280x1024.

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steckman   04-27-2006 at 11:25:27 PM
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Have you tried running the games at the resolution you were using before? I only suggest this because we had a client who had an issue with a PNY PCIe 6800 Ultra which only showed up while using an OpenGL application at the native resolution of a 24" Dell LCD. After many hours of investigating it was determined to be a flaw with their board (whether it was the drivers of the hardware, I don't know).
Basically I'm suggesting that you eliminate as many variables as possible between your old setup and the new one.

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Peregrine2   04-27-2006 at 11:48:11 PM
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Ill definately give that a shot. Fortunately I think most of my resolutions were 1280x960 so its reasonable. This is the type of idea im looking for, because this is not a normal thing, and it transpired exactly when I changed monitors.

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