Viewsonic VP191b

idoru66 · 24 Apr 2006 at 19:28

Having been ogling the Viewsonic VP930 for some weeks, I was able to snatch up one of the VP191bs that was on last week for effectively half price - received the monitor today, no dead pixels at the moment (miracle!), a real step up from my ageing Dell-badged Trinitron I bought 5 years back. Not sure about gaming, but it is shaping up to be everything I'd hoped from an office/work perspective.

One query - I have an nVidia 7800 GTX, and I've been used to running (as I have with previous nVidia cards) with Digital Vibrance set to the maximum 'Low' setting to enhance colour saturation. With the VP191b, however, pushing DV to anywhere above minimal levels seems to result in a reddish tinge around text on the desktop... any thoughts? I have done a basic calibration of the new monitor, but not used any expensive software to do so...

Baddass · 24 Apr 2006 at 19:40

hmmn, sound weird. Are you running at 60Hz refresh rate? Over DVI too?

idoru66 · 24 Apr 2006 at 19:52

Yes, DVI and 60hz. Have just dropped the colour setting in the OSD from 6500K to 5400K which has helped a bit... The reds in OCUK on this site are very saturated/bright, so it may be that I need to calibrate the monitor with a greater degree of patience.

I downloaded the Monitor Calibration programme from your site, but got a bit put off as I was in a rush earlier, and didn't follow it through.

Contrast and Brightness set to 50% in the OSD, colour at 5400K; on the nvidia control panel, Brightness 90%, Gamma 100%, Contrast 105%, a minimal amount of digital vibrance.

fish99 · 24 Apr 2006 at 21:51

It's ok with digital vibrance on lowest though?

I think in general you're better using monitor settings to get the colours you're after and leaving digital vibrance off. It tends to give an artificially saturated look to the colours. I think it's meant for gaming really, and maybe to compensate if your screen is a bit dull (an old CRT or something). I wouldn't think it was needed on a good screen like a VP191B.

idoru66 · 25 Apr 2006 at 17:29

Interesting... over the last 24hrs I also felt the text was looking a bit fuzzy/out of focus. Today, I switched off Cleartype font smoothing - and both problems vanished.

Coming from a CRT, I can probably live with the slightly less smooth look of Truetype, but still, bit odd, no? Btw Microsoft's Cleartype Tuner didn't really help, in fact made things worse in some instances.

Still pretty happy with the screen, although last night became clear that there is quite significant backlight bleed in all four corners when the screen saver is on. Doesn't seem noiceable in games (FEAR) so far...