tweak refresh rate in Windows XP?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom Horsley
  • Start date Start date
T

Tom Horsley

I have just gone through a long process fixing the screen
flickering on and off under linux. My solution pounded
the X server till it gave up and let me specify a mode
line that ran the monitor at slightly less than 60HZ
(I don't know if this is a monitor problem or card
problem, but I've seen other reports of folks with ATI
cards having flickering problems like this on high res
LCDs with DVI input).

The Windows drivers on the same machine work much better
than the (default) Linux settings worked, but I still see
occasional flickering on and off before the picture
stabilizes.

Is there a tool I can use (maybe even a setting I haven't
been able to locate in the ATI control panel) to force it
to run at just a slightly lower refresh rate?

If there is any interest, the tale of my Linux quest
is here: http://home.att.net/~Tom.Horsley/easy-linux.html
 
Tom Horsley said:
If there is any interest, the tale of my Linux quest
is here: http://home.att.net/~Tom.Horsley/easy-linux.html
Click to expand...

Tom, thanks for my laugh for the day. I went through a
similar odyssey last year trying to get an Adaptec SCSI
card working under Linux.

Adaptec. You know, the world's most popular SCSI
adapter.

EIGHT driver versions later and the damned thing still
didn't work. That's when I threw my copy of Linux in the
freaking trash can. Let the propeller heads have it.
 
According to this page you have a Radeon X700?
http://home.att.net/~Tom.Horsley/zooty/zooty.html

The card has a single-link DVI port, which means it probably needs to go to
reduced-blanking mode to run at 1920x1080. In the ATi Control Panel there's
one checkbox to "reduce DVI frequency for high-resolution displays", and
another one to "use alternate DVI frequency". Have you tried them, one at a
time?

High-definition TVs don't always make easy computer monitors, especially
with a relatively unpopular OS.
 
The card has a single-link DVI port, which means it probably needs to go to
reduced-blanking mode to run at 1920x1080. In the ATi Control Panel there's
one checkbox to "reduce DVI frequency for high-resolution displays", and
another one to "use alternate DVI frequency". Have you tried them, one at a
time?
Click to expand...

Actually, the driver figured that out. It came up with both of them
checked by default. Things get much worse if I turn either of them
off (though the help page isn't very clear on just what the "alternate"
thing means :-). It works pretty well with the boxes checked, only
an occasional flicker, but I wish I could convince it to crank the
rate down to 58Hz - judging from my Linux experiences the flicker
would vanish entirely.
 
Back
Top