Help with WoW color management on Vista

Hi all..love the site...

I recently bought a sager np5790 with the following specs:

Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7500 / 4MB L2 Cache, 2.20GHz, 800MHz FSB
WUXGA LCD with Super Glossy Surface (1920 x 1200)
NV 8700m GT (the 7950 is on back order)
2 Gigs Ram
Vista 64 bit

At this point, I mostly play WoW, but am interested in trying out some newer games.

On to my problem...

For some reason, the colors in WoW look extremly faded with this set up...almost like im playing in black and white. I cannot over-emphasize how noticible this issue is. This is extremly disappointing to me, considering how much I paid for the laptop. On my old machine (also a sager with nvidia and XP) i was able to correct this by using the digital vibrance feature on the nvidia control panel. On my new machine however, there are 2 problems:

1. Digital Vibrance is currently disabled (almost certainly a driver problem, I dont think there is an update yet to correct this for my gpu...let me know if I am wrong about this)

2. Unlike my old machine, adjusting my desktop color settings (or my video color settings) has absolutly no effect on WoW. This one has me completely stumpped, despite hours of research. I have no idea if this is a driver problem, a vista problem or a wow problem. I've seen Wow run on a new HP 9500t with vista and a NV8600 gs, and it had the same problem.

So, now Im stuck... I have no idea how, or if its even possible, to make wow look even as good as my old, inferior laptop. So i'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem, either on wow or any other game, and if anyone knows some way to fix it. Any help or ideas at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!!!

 

I've heard of this happening to a number of people. I've also heard of a couple of different solutions (one of which may correct your problem).

Some people have reported encountering that problem when Windows is set to 16-bit color, and that changing the windows setting to 32-bit color fixes the problem.

Other people have mentioned they have corrected color problems in games by setting the game to run in compatability mode.

Some Asus users have reported better color and visual screen quality when they disabled Splendid Video Intelligence Technology on their system. Sager may have software like this (under a different name) running on their systems.

With ATI cards that has happened when SmartShader features are set (this is probably not the problem for you, since I don't think Nvidia cards have a SmartShader feature).

One other thing to try if none of the above resolves the problem for you is to change the resolution of the windows destop to the same resolution the game is playing. When systems change resolutions entering games they refresh the display (some times ineffectively).