The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Sorry, "redonkulous".

 

Nope. It's just a silly term I've come to use at times

 

"Redonculous" GREAT word, Kevin. Instead of the good old days when shaff took all of the heat, now ddp will be checking everybody's credentials to see who gets the most attentulousness!

hahahaha



I think I like DXR's attitude about things:

Hmmmm! Well, maybe I'll play with those two overclocks I was trying. You're right - in bleeding edge games a couple of fps can mean smooth, or not!! (Although when you remind me that nvidia lies about temps and I'm probably really running over boiling point - THAT scares the cr*p out of me! hahaha)

Hey guys, I have a crazy confession! You know how I've been raving about how friggin gorgeous WaW is - blaming it all on the nvidia gamma wizard! MOST BEAUTIFUL GRAPHICS EVER! blah blah blah

Well, I discovered something by fooling with the Rivatuner low level driver tweaks, trying to overclock the 8800GTX. There's a rivatuner setting for Color that I stumbled on by accident, looking to see what the other things did, AND IT WAS ALREADY TURNED ON!!!



Look at the bottom setting - this is how I found it. One setting was on max - THE DIGITAL VIBRANCE SETTING!! hahahahaha

I swear I never touched that setting, and I never enabled it. So I don't know how the box got checked to enable it on windows startup, and I don't know how the bottom setting, digital vibrance, got turned ALL THE WAY UP!

That's probably one more strange thing this motherboard has done on me, since it recently dropped my front speakers forcing me to reload the sound chipset drivers. Now I test my speakers before I start gaming. (But I admit I love this crazy motherboard - if not for acting up like that from time to time - I wouldn't have the use of this computer right now, lol.)

Anyway, I think I like this thing - DIGITAL VIBRANCE.

I noticed a week or so ago that my logon user photo for windows - the same one for my berkeley steam profile - looked unusually red-haired, as Sam described it. It seemed like it hadn't been that bright before - but now I'm wondering if some of the color saturation that results when you have the thing turned up, was why I loved the look of World at War so much. Maybe it wasn't the nvidia gamma wizard at all - maybe it was just the little rivatuner software. If so, I'm gonna be looking for something like that when I get the 6970.



I'm playing with it right now on the beginning of MW2, at the compound where the two dudes are playing basketball. A change in digital vibrance takes effect immediately when you move the rivatuner lever. It saturates the hell out of the colors.

I can't actually bring the saturated picture in, and compare to the unsaturated, because the screen shot in Word, or wherever I place it, changes according to the color vibrance setting. So all I can do is go to my photo editor, and try to simulate the change, by adjusting contrast and brightness, then adding in a lot of red.

Have you ever been outside during the sunset, when there are a lot of clouds in the sky, and the red color is everywhere? That's what it does to the scene at max. I tried it, alt-tabbing out of the game, changing the slider, going back in. The effect is amazing!!!

The game looks gorgeous even with the effect turned off. But a red ice chest goes from pale red, to glowing red, depending on the position of the lever. Has anyone ever heard of digital vibrance before?

Now remember, before you say, "that looks terrible" THIS IS JUST A SIMULATION! The colors look WAYYY better than this, and the effect isn't just to jazz up red, or course, it's to add more vibrance - whatever the hell that means!!



Is anybody else familiar with this?

Sam - does Catalyst Control Center offer something similar to this so I can spice up the saturation on my gaming colors when I replace the 800GTX with the 6970?

Rich

 

I knew it - he'd say he was innocent once again!! What did I tell you!!



I'm playing with the setting also on Dragon Rising. I think overall I like it about half way - medium. The games look okay with the effect turned off - but the colors get richer and to my eye more enjoyable when the effect is turned on about half way. That's probably what I was noticing with World at War - I'll have to go into that game again, and then mess with this new vibrance thing I've found, and see if that was what was getting me all excited.

 

Here are a couple more pictures on this digital vibrance issue.

Here is a fuzzy low res picture showing mountains, and then a lily pad.



And here's a higher res closeup of the lily pads.



Apparently digital vibrance was something that nvidia pushed for a while, and then a few years ago, the ati guys said they had a match for it called color radiance, but that seemed to have disappeared.

However I am reading around that ati colors have always been a little more saturated to start with, and that avivo color settings (that post of Sam's a week or so ago) should allow increasing the saturation, as desired, to match digital vibrance.

I hope so, because I like the deeper brighter colors a lot!!!

Rich

 

I'm going to try and swap my 5850 with a 4890 in an attempt to isolate a problem, am I correct in assuming there shouldn't be any issues with the drivers?

TIA,

redmaw

 

Never assume anything in while repairing computer's.

 

Yeah, but at the very least it should be able to limp along until the 5850 returns. Reinstalling the OS twice just to keep the system running properly is just too much of a hassle.

 

i assume you've isolated your problem then?

 

With Nvidia, Geforce series cards all use a common driver. Unless I'm mistaken. I would think Ati would use something similar. So if one were to go from a Gtx 260, to a 295, one should not have to reinstall drivers. Same for 4870 - 4890??? Right sam? Now if one is going from an Nvidia card to an Ati card, un-installation is Vital!

 

Not quite, but all indicators point the gpu's fan as the cause of the squeak. Unfortunately I can't just unplug it and see if that fixes the issue (well technically it would but not in a desirable manner lol).

oman,

That's my understanding of it, especially since the driver d/l page is the same for all HD series cards. However there could be something going on behind the scenes that I am unaware of.

 

wow, my notifications for this thread obviously haven't been working. A lot to read.

Dropped speakers is the genesis of a lot of failed Asus boards. It only goes downhill from there most of the time, I'll warn you. Next you'll either start getting your USB ports not working, or you'll get the occasional system hang for no reason. It was at this point I RMA'ed my final Asus board.

That's some serious recolouring going on in that second picture, good god, it's almost sepia.

I used increased saturation and reduced gamma in games for a while. It looked cool, but not the least bit realistic which is why I ended up turning it off.

Maw: Unfortunately you can never assume that. Just see what happens. You won't need to reinstall windows, but you will definitely need to reinstall the driver, that's the only thing I can guarantee.

 

Maw: Don't need to unplug the fan, force it to a different speed and see if it recurs.

 

Well that's good to hear, driver reinstall is definitely better than OS. Time to go track down a spare ATI gpu now lol.

 

you could also hook the fan up to a 9volt battery.

 

It's the fan on gpu's cooler that I believe is the culprit, and afaik there's no way to disable that fan.