750 Ti or Alternative for New Dual 1080 Monitors

R

Rabid Sloth

Limp Gawd
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Feb 2, 2012
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I just pulled the trigger on 2 new U2414H monitors to replace my aging/failing Samsungs on my sig rig. I've been tossing around the idea of replacing my trusty old 8800 GTS for years and kept waiting for the next big thing to come out. After placing my monitor order I realized that these don't have a DVI connection. My plan was to just use DVI to HDMI cables on a 750 Ti (I don't really do any PC gaming anymore), but caught this part of the TFT review has me doubting my decision now:

TFT Central said:
"IMPORTANT NOTE: Before we get into this section we need to make an important note about use of the HDMI port if you choose to use that for connectivity. The screen features a couple of options you can use, including DisplayPort and HDMI. If you have an NVIDIA graphics card and want to use the HDMI at all you need to make a change to your graphics card settings to display the optimum picture. This is because by default the output range over HDMI is limited by the graphics card, and it can greatly limit the picture quality and in particular the black range and contrast ratio. In fact when speaking to our friends over at PCmonitors.info they said they had experienced the same issue using DisplayPort on this screen. If the image looks washed out or odd, we would suggest checking the graphics card output first or trying a different connection if you can. We didn't experience any issues with the RGB output when using an AMD graphics card and DisplayPort incidentally.

When connected via HDMI on an NVIDIA graphics card the screen by default will not look right, and the black range in particular is poor. A change is needed via your graphics card to ensure a full 0 - 255 output when using HDMI, rather than it being limited to a smaller output range of 16 - 235. A similar change might be required when using an AMD graphics card but the setting is built into their graphics card drivers. For NVIDIA cards the simplest way to ensure a full output range over HDMI is to use the handy toggle utility available here. If you run the program you can select a full 0- 255 range quickly and easily."
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Basically I'm looking for a recommendation for a card under $300 for general enthusiast desktop use.
 
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In my opinion, the best sub $300 card on the market is the GTX 760. For $250 you get a card that overclocks to perform as well as, or better, than a GTX 770. If you do chose to use HDMI with an Nvidia card, just make sure you set the digital color format to YCbCr444 in the Nvidia control panel.
 
Zero Cool said:
In my opinion, the best sub $300 card on the market is the GTX 760. For $250 you get a card that overclocks to perform as well as, or better, than a GTX 770. If you do chose to use HDMI with an Nvidia card, just make sure you set the digital color format to YCbCr444 in the Nvidia control panel.
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whats that do exactly?
 
if you are not gaming why not keep your current card?
 
nuttcase21 said:
whats that do exactly?
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It changes the color space from RGB. YCbCr444 should give a better image quality with a proper grey scale due to defining color by luminance and intensity rather than a fixed number scale. If your display properly supports the color space the gamut will not be limited or crushed. In the case of the U2414H, it does support it. If the display didn't support YCbCr444, then the signal would be converted to RGB and still end up being crushed.
 
Zero Cool said:
In my opinion, the best sub $300 card on the market is the GTX 760. For $250 you get a card that overclocks to perform as well as, or better, than a GTX 770. If you do chose to use HDMI with an Nvidia card, just make sure you set the digital color format to YCbCr444 in the Nvidia control panel.
Click to expand...


he is not gaming, no reason to OC, and honestly 760 is overkill for not gaming, and I can't recommend anything under a 750ti because they are pretty much garbage at that point


so 750ti it is
 
Some other cards that would use low power and still offer enough performance is a AMD 7770 or a 7790.
With either of these 2 cards you could even use both of the other monitors to have 4 total, but, to do 4, you would need the Sapphire 7770 FLEX edition or most any 7790 that has 4 outputs. Both cards are around 85 watts max. Unless you are going to try to game on 2+ monitors (not recommended with these cards), the 1GB models will be fine.

If you don't care about being able to have 4 monitors, then the 750Ti (still does 3 monitors) is a good choice, however, it does costs a bit more $dollars per performance ($160) than the 7770/7790 ($100), but it is newer and uses less power=less heat.
 
Armenius said:
It changes the color space from RGB. YCbCr444 should give a better image quality with a proper grey scale due to defining color by luminance and intensity rather than a fixed number scale. If your display properly supports the color space the gamut will not be limited or crushed. In the case of the U2414H, it does support it. If the display didn't support YCbCr444, then the signal would be converted to RGB and still end up being crushed.
Click to expand...

Is there a guide for this? I'm seeing a lot of conflicting information on what things should be set to. IE

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1387832/htpc-tweaks-and-fixes#post_22484920
AVS Forum said:
Here is a good fix I just found. I recently upgraded my video card to a gtx 680 and had to put the new nvidia drivers on. Any nvidia driver above 290 has a bug handling improperly encoded content (rapidly switches from 29hz to 59hz, hit 411-info and scroll to the right in media center to see this).


This is a quote from a Microsoft employee in another forum and provides another fix for black level clipping using hdmi (http://experts.windows.com/frms/wind....aspx#551676):

Do this:

Do NOT use the nvidia control panel settings to set dynamic range. Set it to application default (or whatever it's called). Using the nvidia setting exposes the flickering.
Use the registry settings that instruct Media Center to implicitly set the nominal/dynamnic range:
16-235 uses this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Debug\\ehPresenter.dll]
"NominalRange"=dword:2

0-255 use this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Debug\\ehPresenter.dll]
"NominalRange"=dword:1

This should mask the change in brightness on the interlaced/progressive transition.

Bonus points for video fidelity nuts: configure your nvidia card to treat HDMI like DVI and avoid clipping blacks to get proper levels:

Search for the file nv_disp.inf where the driver was extracted by the nvidia installer and open it.
Search for the section [nv_miscBase_addreg__01]
Under this section add the registry value:
HKR,,SetDefaultFullRGBRangeOnHDMI,%REG_DWORD%,1
Repeat this step for [nv_miscBase_addreg__02] and [nv_miscBase_addreg__03] and so on until all [nv_miscBase_addreg__xx" have the above registry value.
Save this .inf with the changes.
Re-install the driver.*
After this your GPU will treat HDMI exactly like DVI and will no longer to weird stuff your video levels over HDMI.
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http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=371214
Guru 3D said:
If you're display supports Full RGB, which most do, you may notice you aren't getting the right colors and the blacks don't seem so black and the whites don't seem so white. This is because despite under Display->Adjust Desktop Color Settings your digital color format being set at RGB, its actually by default set at Limited RGB, not Full. And you will see there is no option for Full RGB. Don't use ycbcr444 as it will oversaturate reds and magentas.

Full RGB is available only under Video->Adjust Video Color Settings, but this doesn't affect your games, applications, etc. Only videos.

The trick to enable Full RGB for everything is a reg hack, and luckily you can use a tool to do instead. Find it here
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