Using a refresh rate higher than 60Hz in Vista

I've been reading around for quite a while now, looking for an answer to my problem with no luck in sight (so far).

I've recently upgraded to Vista using a dual boot setup with XP. I have a 42" Sharp Aquous (1080p) display through DVI-HDMI. In Windows XP, using the default "Plug and Play Monitor" driver, I'm able to use 75Hz or 85Hz at 1920x1080 (which the monitor does support).

In Vista however, with the "generic pnp monitor" driver, it won't allow anything other than 60Hz, regardless of the 'hide modes' check box. Now, some people would say that 60Hz should be fine for an LCD monitor, but here's the problem. With 60Hz, for some reason, the actual screen display size is somewhat smaller than the actual screen size (about a 1-1/2" border all around) which was the case in XP as well (issue with the sharp display i suppose). In 30Hz, the display size is perfect (just as in 75 or 85Hz), but at 30 it becomes very blurry and terrible with any motion on the screen. So basically, I can only use this monitor at either 75 or 85Hz.

This has to be a Vista OS problem (and not at fault by the ATI display drivers). I've read that some people have had similar problems with their CRT monitors as well. Some have suggested using refresh rate forcing programs, but since they were all made for XP, none of them work in vista (I've tried reforce, refreshlock, pstrip and reschange).

Any ideas on how to remove the 60Hz cap, or make a custom monitor driver that will allow it?

Thanks!

I also can't live with using 60Hz, despite the fact that it becomes a 40" monitor instead of 42", but because it's displaying 1920x1080 at smaller scale, it ends up compressing the pixels which gives a really bad blur effect.

What an interesting problem.

The refresh locking programs afaik just fix an issue with XP being locked at 60Hz in OpenGL video modes (Vista also has this issue and there is a nvidia utility to fix it)

I have come accross a similar issue with a 32" LCD in that we had to connect both DVI ports to be able to produce higher refresh rates at higher resolutions, otherwise we were forced at 60Hz and a funny res and that was on XP. I think it may have something to do with DVI limitations.
Could it be possible you have a similar issue?

Hi Guys

I have just joined the forum whilst looking to fix this error.. :-0

I have a brand new Samsung 46'' 1080p and have exactly the same problem, I have done some searching but have not found any thing conclusive..

When I run 1900x1080 the 5% of the screen al around the desktop is missing, I am running a 8800gts and the latest nVidia drivers from guru3g.. There is no way I can adjust my desktop size to fit of the TV to fit like can be done with an lcd monitor..

I will keep looking... cheers..

sirjames@cgitc.com
Vista64MCE, 5600+, 4GbCosair, Leadtek-8800GTS

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I have the same problem with my widows Vista Home ,too.Thats really a big problem with my CRT monitor. I cant stay too much !

It's been a while since I last posted here. Thought I would update.

After getting rid of Vista and just using XP (64-bit), I had a similar problem, but was able to enable higher than 60Hz support in ATI's CCC (control center). But even in 75 or 85Hz, i would have to change the TV's input to HDMI2 for example, and back to HDMI1 (computer) in order for the screen to asjust properly to it's borders. After installing a newer version of ATI's drivers (April v7.4), now regardless of it being set to 75 or 85 Hz, the screen would not adjust properly, even using the input change trick.

Next, I had an idea. I uninstalled all the ATI drivers, and installed v7.1 (from January), and presto, automatically it gave me support for multitudes of refresh rates in the windows display settings (without installing CCC), and gave proper dimensions for the screen automatically (in 75Hz, or 85).

I havent tested this in Vista yet, but will try with a new install. So the problem lies with the ATI display drivers. I suppose I will just have to use the older version, and use ATT (Ati Tray Tools, latest version) instead of ATI's CCC. I wonder if I should try sending ATI-AMD this info, since if it's only limited to HDTV users, then i doubt they will bother (at least for now).

Hope this helps anyone else who has a similar issue. Again, this might only be ATI related, and those Nvidia users probably don't have this problem. Would like to hear from those people on their experience.

^Even i was stuck @ 60hz for my Samsung 940BW w/X1900GT.
You can "force reresh rate" to be 75hz in CCC altho i think 7.4 and 7.5 add 75hz support by default.

Same thing here, I wish I would have came across these forums earlier, I usually don't hunt forums but this sire is useful so far, I am running x32 Vista Ultimate, currently downloading x64 as we speak, I have a ViewSonic VX2025wm 21"widescreen LCD and have donwloaded both their signed and unsgned versions for Vista, it sill shows up Generic PnP Monitor and only capable of 59 or 60, 75 makes it distort but still visible enough to set it back where it needs to be. I'm running ATI cat 7.5 w/ Radeon X1900XTX why cant I get better refresh?

This same thing bugged me for a long time too, I used to have a llyama vision master pro that could have a resolution of 160Hz so having to drop down to 60Hz I was far from impressive.

I found changing the resolution on the monitor would enable more rate options and the refresh rate could get to 75Hz but still this is below the 85Hz monitors should be set to to help prevent RSA.


I had also not only changed from xp64 vista64 but also from a high end CRT to a 5ms refresh LCD screen. LCD pixels can't refresh as fast as CRT , it has always been the major disadvantage of them. Great for an office, crap for gaming. Although before the start of this year, the LCD rate was averaging around 16ms (which is why some fast action games used to blur) they now are producing rates of 5-6ms so they they are improving. There is very little you can do about expect get a decent CRT monitor.

Using drivers made for the monitor would help slightly but there's not much to them which is why your screen can run perfectly fine with Windows Generic drivers (although atm device manager shows my monitors as "no driver are loaded or needed for this object")

ATI has a newer driver version 7.7 for your Radeon X1900 series. Perhaps they may help with better refreshing.

Drivers & Software

Shawn