Blurry In Game and Slight Studer : 8600m GT

I have been trying dozens of drivers and cannot figure out the cause of this issue.

Notebook: Dell Vostro 1500

T7100
320gb HD (issue started after swap to this hd but doubt any relation)
4gb Corsair Ram
8600m GT DDR2

XP SP3


In game and benchmarks such as GTA SA through to TF2, etc I encounter the game to be blurry instead of crisp. I am currently using 177.70 from LV2Go and powermizer off.

This blurriness is causing a slight studdering and the image being blurred is enough to make gaming replusive but the studdering just makes it 100% ubearable.

I ALWAYS run games at native resolution so do not suggest raising the resolution.

Here is an example of how it looks in GTA SA (High settings no AA):



If you look at the map it is a good example. The map should be very crisp and as you see its very blurred. And the railroad tracks are very jagged next to usual and Carl or whoever it is (the black dude) is noticibly blurry aswell.

Thanks in advance

 

My guess is this:
Jaggies caused because of no AA. Map looks fine to me though. Although that pic is really small on my screen.

 

Usually its a different Jagginess without AA, I usually have AA on full but I couldnt as it was just plain painful how bad the quality of the images became.

Unfourtunatly its harder to see the detail as I lowered image size in order for it to fit on here but should still be noticible. It is far worse in game

 

I'm sorry, but i don't really notice anything unusual in that screenshot.

 

Perhaps you could post a link to a full size one so we could see exactly what it looks like? Sorry for double post.

 

Usually in game it is crisp and the poles are not half as jagged.

The image quality is not decreased

Also if you look on top left part of the fencing on the over hang walkway is mising and the map shows the general blur

 

what images are you comparing your screen shot to? Without a comparison I really dont see anything wrong with it. What resolution is your screenshot anyways? Most games running in 1280x800 are a little more blurry than their 1280x1024 counterparts.

You should go to tweakguides.com and check out what they say about Nvidia control panel settings. The blurriness can be caused by the textures settings in that panel.

 

I always run at native 1440 by 900 px.

I did a quick search on tweakguides and I am looking right now

Edit: so far no dice

 

Ok after further testing I notice now that brightness is high even when set to lowest. Blacks = greys etc.

 

That looks about as good as it does on my setup...

 

I know its not normal for my system as I have had it far far better. It is actually worse in game then screen shots.

 

Is your GPU set on 'performance' mode? Maybe it'd look nicer on 'quality'?

 

I dont have performance mode as I run XP but power mizer is off. And it is set for the application to decide.

From what I notice it appears its textures that are blurred causing the issue.

Thanks for the reply

 

Well I have just replaced the hard drive with my old hard drive and loaded up games and far smoother. It appears this hard drive (smaller) has slower load times then the new one but general apps run faster aswell.

Could anyone clarify which driver is this.

It says in device manager driver version 6.14.11.7770

 

that would be nvidia driver 177.70.

 

Thanks Andygb.

I guess its the HD then since I had tried that driver on my new hd.

What would be causing this from the HD?

 

Your map is blurry because the GTA map was ugly and pixely to begin with, but it's made worse by the fact that you're forcing widescreen for a game which does not have widescreen HUD support. So the HUD looks distorted and blurry because it is scaling from 4:3 aspect to 16:10. There is nothing to fix this for the GTA games. If you want your game to look sharper overall, run it in cropped 4:3 aspect ratio.

 

no no, what the previous poster meant was the option "Texture Filtering - Quality" in the nvidia control panel. You can set the option to High Performance, Performance, Quality or High Quality. The default is option is quality.

Edit:

I thought GTASA supports widescreen, you can selected 1280 x 800 resolution in the game's option menu, and everything looks sharp and normal. I have no idea what you are talking about, perhaps a different GTA title...

Edit2:
I take back what I said, it seems like GTASA only support 4:3 and 16:9 natively, so 16:10 may cause some distortions.

 

It's blurry because the driver is more aggressive at AA.
I've noticed some drivers made COD4 look more blurry than others, and some bad at eliminating aliased objects even when on the same setting in the Nvidia panel (Quality)
It's the texture filtering you are complaining about. Find a driver that works. Image quality is subjective but drivers can make games look a lot different.

 

Did that and I started artifacting like crazy with the start of any animation my notebook.

Put old hard drive back in with same drivers as the new one had. 177.70 and it actually looks Far better, runs smooth, about 10 fps more to be exact. It appears its the new hard drive causing the issues but the question is why? Is it the windows install (already tried clean installing)? Is it the hard drive?

I do notice firefox and other software having issues on the new drive vs old.

 

dude get some glasses, your playing the same game as everyone else it looks the same and plays the same..if u dont like the look get the enbseries mod...i have a link and config in this forum page 2 now i think...

 

THERE IS GRAPHICAL ISSUE LEARN TO READ PREVIOUS POSTS.

When putting in old hard drive image quality is FAR greater and frame rate is easily a +10fps gain with same drivers, same set up. Therefore even after clean installing it is determined to be a hard drive issue.

Framerates

Game New HD Old HD

GTA SA 15 61

Carnage (racing) 10 32

TF2 13 43

NFS PS 8 46

Bioshock ~7 50

As you can clearly tell somthing is wrong.

Are many users here too ignorant to read as of late? If plan to flame without reading please try and read. It has been growing the amount of users that dont read and post and end up looking dumb so avoid it and take your time.