Poor HDMI Quality (New GFX Card?)

BaggyHTID

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Hey,
I've been lurking on here for a while but never really posted.....

I'm running an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, I’ve had this connected to my Sony KDL-40W4500 by VGA, and previous Samsung’s via VGA, and the quality has always been great, real crisp picture.

I've recently tried HDMI, and must say the quality of the image is awful, the desktop looks terrible, nowhere near as crisp as VGA and the text looks very blurry and hard to read.

I was wondering if this is due to a rubbish graphics card, I was thinking of getting a new one so I could do audio over HDMI, can anyone recommend a decent card that performs well over HDMI? I have an xbox360 so there's no gaming done on the pc :)

Cheers
Baggy
 
I have a 4670, its a nice card, and works perfectly. It will also be a big step up in speed over the 2600. The 4550 will do though, its cheaper and performs just as well for movies.
 
It's not the card.

Have you got any black borders/missing edges? I could be a badly adjusted overscan setting in the catalyst control center.
 
Change card:smashin: if you want to use that screen to full Advantage .. you could update drivers, but i am dam sure they deleted support ..
 
No they havent, but the 2600 doesnt have audio over HDMI, so a change will be needed for that.
 
Cheers for the replies guys.
I have got small black borders with HDMI, VGA fills the screen perfectly, so it might be the overscan settings, doesnt't make sense why the text is so blurry though.
I'm gonna order a new card anyway, anyone know whats best for about £100?
 
If your not playing games £100 is way to much. All ATI 4000 series has audio over HDMI, and all play HD movies perfectly well.
 
i think i might have found my perfect card already heh :D
Sapphire Ultimate Radeon HD4670
seems perfect, no fan and its got a built in HDMI port so no dvi dongle,
cheers for the help people
 
The HD2600 has audio over HDMI too - unlike the HD4000 series however, it only has SPDIF audio over HDMI (the HD4000 series can do 7.1 LPCM over HDMI), and even then, you can only get HDMI audio with the HD2000 series specific ATI DVI-HDMI dongle (the HD3000 one won't work).
For video only, any DVI-HDMI dongle will do!

I have to agree with EndlessWaves here though - unless your 2600 has some kind of peculiar HDMI issue, then your issue is unlikely to be the card. itself, more likely drivers and or config (and a HD4670 will be using the same drivers)
 
Cheers for the replies guys.
I have got small black borders with HDMI, VGA fills the screen perfectly, so it might be the overscan settings, doesnt't make sense why the text is so blurry though.

Yes it does - it is almost certainly the case that your graphics card is scaling your desktop to compensate for overscan expected via HDMI (as HDMI is used to connect to TVs which usually default to overscan)

If your display isn't in 1:1 mode (which is an option in the Sony TV menus somewhere) it too will be scaling for overscan (by cropping and zooming) adding another level of blur. The fact that you only have small black bars suggests your TV isn't 1:1 mapping - as the bars are huge at the default overscan setting ATI uses when it is 1:1 mapped.

To get 1:1 pixel mapping with absolutely no blur (which should improve on VGA - particularly in the UK where you will want TV and DVD at 50Hz - which your VGA output may not offer) you need to get your display to 1:1 and then to go into Catalyst and reduce the overscan compensation to 0.

VGA connections are assumed to be displayed on PC monitors - and TVs assume they aren't video sources - so neither device usually compensates or simulates overscan.
 

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