Blacks and shadows look terrible.

[jeffvmahar]

Hey everyone, I just upgraded my old nvidia 8800gt to a MSI r7850 power edition. Ever since my games shadowing and dark areas have looked terrible. It really to hard to put into words. I believe it has something to do with the gamma or brightness. Its like all detail is lost and the textures just look really bad.

Here is a photo to try to help better understand.

BTW I have all the latest graphics drivers

 

[scout_03]

did you try to set back you monitor settings on default

 

[bloc97]

did you try to set back you monitor settings on default

Obviously its not a monitor problem he has here, since he is able to take a screenshot...

 

[bloc97]

Hey everyone, I just upgraded my old nvidia 8800gt to a MSI r7850 power edition. Ever since my games shadowing and dark areas have looked terrible. It really to hard to put into words. I believe it has something to do with the gamma or brightness. Its like all detail is lost and the textures just look really bad.

Here is a photo to try to help better understand.

http://s11.postimage.org/58ocb7dir/Screen_Shot2.png

BTW I have all the latest graphics drivers

What output are you using? DVI, HDMI, VGA? Without this info, I cannot help you much more.

-Bloc97

 

[Kari]

Obviously its not a monitor problem he has here, since he is able to take a screenshot...

well it could be, atleast I can't see anything wrong with the screenshot?


anyways, to help with visual monitor calibration:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

 

[scout_03]

brightness and gama have to be ajust that will make the picture more clear

 

[jeffvmahar]

I am using HDMI, and the screenshot really doesn't show too well the issue. For example if I am looking at a tree trunk in warcraft, I cannot see any of the detail on the bark. I looked at it on my brothers PC and it looks fine, like it is supposed to, still dark but no loss on the texture.

I really wish I could explain it better. The best description I can come up with is that instead of being dark, the textures just look like ***.

 

[scout_03]

one thing i could suggest try your brother card in your system with hdmi and try your card in is with the same setting he use and compare picture

 

[jeffvmahar]

Here is another picture that kind of give you a better idea. Normally in better light there is alot of detail and texture in the orcs face and skin. when I get into certian lighting it just looks terrible

 

[scout_03]

di you try what i suggest before to find if it is your graphic card or the monitor who make this

 

[jeffvmahar]

my brother doesn't want me to swap out his GPU, he's kind of anal. But I did calibrate my monitor and its looking really good. The black test is great. I am very fussy about monitor calibration and usually do a very good job at it.

It should be noted that everything else looks great. its just under certian lighting in games it just doesn't do it right? I dont know if its a drive issue or what, but I am pretty sure its not calibration. Could it have anything to do with AMD Vision Engine Control Center?

 

[bloc97]

Is it dark only in this particular game?, in every game? Or even dark when you are on the deskop?

-Bloc97

 

[jeffvmahar]

well so far in Warcaft and Skyrim. But only in certian lighting situations. I checked under the same conditions on skyrim on my brothers nvidia pc and it looked much better in dark areas.

 

[jeffvmahar]

Anyone else have any idea what could be causing this?

 

[Kari]

can you try any other connection type? hdmi can sometimes default into a limited range (16-235) rather than the full rgb 0-255. Thou amd drivers should recognise when a monitor can take the full range over hdmi connection... IIRC DVD players etc use the limited range, so it is a bit of a design flaw in hdmi. Nvidia's drivers are stuck at the limited range over hdmi and needs a driver ini tweak to enable the full range, amd's drivers should do it automagically. Thou this only causes real problems when the monitor is getting an unexpected signal type.

But if you can see the different black levels in the lagom test image, you shouldn't be suffering from this...

 

[jeffvmahar]

Another thing worth noting is the different effects I get when I calibrate my brightness using my monitor vs adjusting brightness with AMD Vision Desktop Color.

When looking at a brightness calibrtion image and adjusting with my monitor the brightness goes down and the blacks fade, but you can still make out detail. When I adjust the brightness using Desktop Color in AMD Vision, the blacks get all muddled together and go super dark and you can no longer make out any detail.

 

[Kari]

Allways adjust everything possible straight from the osd on the monitor. System level software/driver compensation messes things up somewhat as you've discovered already, the more the driver compensates one thing the more mess it will make on everything else. IMO better set everything back to factory defaults just in case there is something messing things up already.
Some special software can make changes to the monitor just like the osd does but AMd or Nvidia drivers really can't.

 

[scout_03]

look under desktop management in amd vision control then desktop color did the reactivation of amd color is greyed and what number you see under gamma, lumiosity and contrast ?

 

[FPSmadMEDIC]

Hi I just upgraded from the EVGA GTX 550 Ti FPB 1GB to the XFX Radeon R7850 Ultra OC Edition and I have this problem in Skyrim, League of Legends and Battlefield 3 the last being the worst my shadows look fine until the darkest areas and then itturns into this blotchy mess of black and dark blue I will have to upload a screenshot later of it. I have been hunting the web for a week now looking for a solution and nothing so far. Its the same with the 13.4 Driver as the 13.8 beta driver so im at a loss. . .

 

[FPSmadMEDIC]

It was all in the Brightness and Contrast settings in my monitors that was the issue, I dropped the Brightness to about half the Contrast (raising contrast some in the process too) and that fixed the issues. I had my League of Legends launcher running and by the Play button to log in there is that bottom bar... It was all blotchy for me just like Skyrim and BF3 so I used that as a guide to fix the odd coloration.