Vista - Bad gaming graphics quality

Hi, I have a problem with gaming graphics on Vista x64 SP1 - every game looks very bad, with almost no details, though I set all settings to highest.
My config is: IC2D E6550, 2G RAM, NVIDIA 8800 GTS 512 with 169.25 (also tried 174.74 beta) driver.
Here's an example of how recent Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 looks with everything turned to highest:

Also Google Earth looks same crap in DirectX mode:

And it works perfectly fine in OpenGL mode.
I was thinking about a DirectX related problem - because ALL games look like that - old, new...
If you could point me to the solution, I would be very grateful

Thanks.

I have the same card as you and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 does look cr*p, it's just the way it is! As soon as I joined a server I asked the "is it just me" question about the graphics and it wasn't!!!

All other games on full settings look and play well though, have you changed any settings in the graphics control panel?

I tried various settings in the CP, but if you have those settings in the game and put them on Highest, why bother about the CP?
I even tried complete driver sweep and reinstall, no good. The only thing I can think of is broken native directx so I probably should try os repair and see if it helps...

I don't as a rule, I made the suggestion to see if it would help you. The only time I had to change anything in the CP was to play R6V, I just turned off AA.