Artical in CPU magazine explains something interesting about XP refresh rates and eye strain.

I have a gateway EV700 monitor and a SiS 315E video card. My monitor does not work on anything less than 1024x768 at 75 mhz. I set it there in XP and windows has not touched that setting or else my monitor would have flashed a message saying the display settings are not correct. Maybe because my video card is only a month old or the fact I have SP1 I have no clue.

Dog gone it. I just checked. Sure enough mine was back at 60 again. And yes it makes a differance especially if you view the screen from an angle and a distance. I noticed this while pouring a soda the other night. I've reset it a couple times but thought I had it. I would like to know of a sure fire way to solve this.
Any body know where to grab such a utility, or tweak.
G4 Ti 4400 Adaptor Bios Version 4.25.0022

p.s. Thanks for the heads up IPlural

Well you can do a videobios flash but that dosen't do much. Do you have service pack 1 for XP? that helps. As for tweaks, Nvidia has a tweaking utility of there own that might help.

nView Desktop Manager. I tried a couple things before too many darn switches. I wish somebody that has neeper knowledge could show us the magic button. 60 refresh is archaic on a modern monitor.

SP1 might address it, wait a second and I'll go inside and get the link to the freeware utility in the artical for doing it..

www.pagehosting.co.uk/rf
http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rf

I don't think SP1 does fix it though, Kona, do you have the tweak app for your vid card installed and enabled? also it might have been solved with your driver set...

Yeah I have it installed and running. It is call SiS utility tray. But I am running a SiS 64mg card, not the nice nVidias.

hey, it works and does a good job of it too

the utility will keep XP from messing with the refresh, I know it was bothering me and I could not figure out what was happening to it.. I have a 200 box with the monitors sitting side by side and you could really see the difference, the XP box has the GForce in it, but I don't load the tweak because I noticed it sets up a udp link back to their servers...

or did, newer one might not

Right on! I ran the programdouble checked the results in display properties, adjusted the screen left and up and I am now running 800 x 600 with 144 refresh where I was stuck at 60 before. And that is what the monitor packing box said I was supposed to be getting. I have already backed up this dandy little utility and a copy of their web page to my back up HD.

Thanks a whole bunch. I owe you a dozen bottles of asprin.

Oh ya that was also with a hard and soft reboot.

Strange....no SP1....happily on 75hz.....dunno what the drama is...

dun no...it's an export version though? I'll have to get the link to the site of soeone who has been pushing to get otehrs to help get MS to remove that default. I do know my Viewsonics and NEC's all kick back and so do the vid cards on reboot, well they used to...

Hey Jafo try something in the 100 to 140 hz range then you'll see problems. Most high end cards require those high rates.

Why?

This little crae always runs at 60Hz. Latency is high enough, 'cause I only see flickering/screen refreshes from the corners of my eye.

Or if not the card, the monitor. My flat screen dose not like anything less than 100 or 95 hz but my gateway likes 75hz

#16 by craeonics - 3/16/2003 7:54:10 AM
Why?

because for some people 60 can very well be the cause of eye problems headaches etc...

if not fo ryou fantastic
But I know that when I was doing mechanical design for a short time in 1989, after staring at the monitor for hours on end, even looking away to foice my eyes to give them a break, I would always leave with a raging headache...

even now, with my displays set to 1280x1024 and my sitting in front of them all the time, if I am more than five feet away from the cable box the number for the time or channel it happens to be on are nothing more than a lime green smear...

I run mine 19" at 1600x1200 75Hz if windows was reverting to 60Hz tust me I'd know all about it...at 1600x1200 60Hz its is physically impossible to look at the screen it hurts your eyes like hell. I think whoever wrote that article must have been reporting a personal experience and not something that applies to everyone...

kona....graphic cards [modern ones] may be able to push refresh rates to silly levels....but feel free to fry your monitor as that is always going to be the weak link in the chain.
Anything much more than 75hz is of little improvement. It's the 50 to 60 hz level that causes eye problems, though again it depends on adjacent power frequencies...in Oz that's 50hz [240v] which is the source of much of the flicker....hence 100hz televisions giving a far more 'static' image.

I'd be loath to push any cathode ray tube over 100hz....over push 'em and they just go black...permanently...

there is that, the sickening burnt ozium smell right before you hear that little *snap* and the screen sucks in on itself in an implosion of death

someone wrote a virus that actually was done to prove that you could kill a monitor with one buy screwing the refresh rates, that was around 1988 if I remember correctly...

This is very interesting, considering I've been trying to get my refresh rate above 60hz, but having no luck. I think my monitor is too old to handle it.
I tried that RefreshForce app, and had a totally unreadable monitor.

with the older non-interlaced monitors, you could force them above but they would then trip interlaced, so it would kind of defeat the purpose

You know what you could do, CompUSA, Best Buy and the others have the display models on the shelves for a certain time period, and then go through them and clean them up, give you an in house service contract and sell them way below sticker price. When we started out we picked up some Compaq servers like that for our internal use and they worked great, still do though they were sold to a friend for his hosting startup a couple of years ago...

anyway, just a possibility, I've seen 17 inch Sony flat screen monitors go for under $100.00 when they were going off the shelf in a new cardboard box for over $400.00

That was a while back, but...

Reforce is the program I used with my GF3. It apparently modifies or creates a custom inf for your moniter that locks it into the rates you want. I really had little problem except for DX and ogl Games doing the default to 60 and this fixed that. Think someone already posted a link to the site as this guy made it as donateware. Free to use but if really helpfull financial assist appreciated. Anyway as I dont haveg linkhandy can do websearch for reforce and Refreshlock both by same person ones a try on the fly changer the other is the one that does a perm mod to inf

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