 Newsletter sign-up (we value your privacy, unsubscribe at any time):
|
Is there any way for me to adjust my generic pnp monitor driver settings? Ie. change the refresh rate? I have a Viewsonic VP201b flat screen (LCD), connected via DVI to my PC.
I installed the signed Windows Vista 64-bit driver for it from the ViewSonic site, so now the monitor is recognized as VP201b, but I'm still unable to change the refresh rate and I get flicker and pixel distortion (a bunch of red pixels along the top, and sometimes in random patches on the screen).
Hi Sam,
Good question. First off, have you tried simply using the latest generic pnp monitor driver from Microsoft instead? It looks like the Viewsonic VP201b driver is ancient, and we ourselves have had trouble getting their drivers to cooperate with Vista.
If you have an ATI graphics card, try opening the Catalyst software and checking "reduce DVI frequency on high resolution displays" - or something to that effect.
Finally, you may want to check out Riva Tuner - software that will let you tweak your monitor settings. Be careful, however - you can damage your monitor if you apply settings it can't handle.
You can use Riva Tuner to create your own custom monitor .INF driver file using the following steps:
Using your own driver file, you won't have to worry about applying incompatible video card settings, or using third party refresh rate tools that may damage your monitor.
Thanks CWD - but what exactly is the advantage of creating your own INF file? Will it have more settings than the generic PNP file?
My problem is that I'm getting distortion on a flat screen that I've ported to a new PC. Actually, it used to have an ATI card so I was able to check the "alternate DVI operational mode" and "reduce DVI frequency on high resolution displays" check boxes, which fixed the problem.
However, now I'm simply using an onboard graphics card and I'm getting some distortion, but the graphics utility (very simplistic) doesn't have the option to reduce the DVI frequency.
What does reducing the DVI frequency do exactly anyways?
Here's another thing to try, but please be careful, as changing a monitor's scan frequencies to outside a range it natively supports can damage it.
Run Riva Tuner, and on the Main tab, select the Customize button followed by low-level refresh rate settings. From there, select the Monitor driver wizard tab. Finally, towards the bottom, click the Get EDID info and Get driver info buttons, and see if either the horizontal or vertical scan frequency value changes when you switch between the two.
If it does, it could mean that one of the drivers is setting the inappropriate scan frequency. Check your monitor's specs to see what the frequency range is, and then adjust it accordingly. As we mentioned, please take extreme caution when changing the values, and double check them with the specs before hitting the Apply button in Riva Tuner.
To prevent this setting from resetting every time you restart your PC, you'll want to make sure you have the monitor driver loaded that supports the correct frequency range. When you load the EDID and driver info, look at the Model description under Monitor identification in Riva Tuner to see which driver corresponds to which frequency.
Just thought I'd follow up on this - turns out the only way I could get this to work was to buy a new video card (ATI Radeon HD 4350), and after a heck of a time trying to get the Catalyst Control Center to install (kept getting MOM, CLI, and CCC.implementation errors) - I got it to work by installing version 8 (instead of 9). And that after installing the correct monitor drivers.
Long story short, the solution was to browse to Digital Panel (DVI) -> Attributes -> and under "DVI Settings", checking "Reduce DVI frequency on high-resolution displays". The "Alternate DVI operational mode" was already checked.
Btw - I just noticed that every time I reboot my PC the artifacts at the top of the screen would return. Logging into my Catalyst Control panel, unchecking "reduce DVI frequency on high-resolution displays", hitting apply, checking it again, and then re-applying, would solve the issue.
Anonymous
In case it helps anyone - I just upgraded from Windows Vista to Windows 7, and the Windows Upgrade Advisor asked me to uninstall Catalyst Control center prior to upgrading. The Windows 7 install went smoothly, but when I reinstalled the latest version of Catalyst recommended by ati.amd.com (using their driver search), I got Catalyst Control Center (CCC) 9.11 installed.
Unfortunately, the "reduce dvi frequency on high-resolution displays" was no longer present. In fact, quite a few options seemed to be missing. I uninstalled CCC 9.11 and reinstalled my old CCC 8.12 (which I used on Vista). Lo and behold, install ran without issues, CCC 8.12 runs fine on Windows 7, and my Digital Panel (DVI) settings options are back, along with the "reduce dvi frequency" and "alternate DVI operational mode" options (which I both have checked).
Gone are the flickers and shakiness on my 1600x1200 DVI LCD flat panel display (21") 
Anonymous
This is really weird. I have a dual monitor setup (Viewsonic VP201b and Acer T230H (touch screen). I had both monitors installed and recognized by and old version of CCC (2008), and saw the "reduce dvi frequency" option, which helped get rid of the flicker on my Viewsonic.
But guess what? I restart and the monitors aren't recognized anywhere. Even in Device Manager, it says "generic pnp monitor."
WTF??
Anonymous
Guys, for those of you using a Radeon graphics card, and trying to get CCC to display the "reduce dvi frequency" option (actually I'm just trying it to recognize my dual monitor displays, and display the monitor name, as opposed to just the graphics card name (ATI Radeon HD 4350).
When working, CCC will display the model name in paranthesis (ie. [VP201b] and [T230H]. More importantly, a slew of additional configuration options will be made available, including the coveted "Digital Panel (DVI)" screen that lets me choose both "Reduce DVI frequency on high resolution displays" and "Alternate DVI operational mode" (I'll need to uncheck and recheck "Apply" on reboot to get it to kick in).
Anyways, after uninstalling and reinstalling and fiddling with this forever, I've found the solution is:
* using CCC version 2008.1201.1504.27008
* using ATI Radeon HD 4350 driver 8.632.1.2000 (from 8/17/2009).
If I upgrade either CCC or the ATI driver (which Windows Update has been asking me to do), all goes to **** and I lose my options in CCC.
Hope this helps someone!!
