The F18 BIOS update for the GA-Z77X-UDH3 did fix the problem. Internet was down last night (for the second time in a week), so with nothing better to do I went ahead and installed the new GTX 1050 Ti video card. It booted right up. So yay.

I've never used HDMI much before and to me it seems ridiculously bright with over saturated color. I lowered the color from 50 to 40 on the TV and that's better. I used the Windows color calibration to drop the gamma to the absolute minimum. Now the desktop and programs look about right, but had to increase it in some games and VLC to compensate.

I also noticed some strangeness in Quake where occasionally an entire surface would flash bright white or maybe just inverted color. Hard to say since it happens so quickly, not a major issue in any case. 

when you use hdmi with nvdia cards it defaults to a limited dynamic rang (16-235). To fix this, go to the nvidia control panel, select "adjust video color setting" at the very bottom, then check "with the nvidia settings" then set the dynamic range to full (0-255).

Not sure why nvida throttles the display range by default with hdmi... 

it will look dark/dim/desaturated because you calibrated your display to compensate for the limited range. after setting it to full range you'll have to recalibrate which, of course, will be well worth it. 

do what I said in #978 but do this in addition:

nvidia control panel > display > change resolution > output dynamic range. set this to full.

now everything should be groovy :D #978 was specifically for video playback. 

#980 screws up the Win7 Aero theme yes? 

nope. may have to reapply it worst case scenario.

modern nvida drivers actually require aero be enable. otherwise, video playback wont have vsync, for example. 

Hrmmm.... I tried reapplying it :(

I'll look more... 

make sure color is set to 32bit, not 16.

you wouldn't happen to be using 2 displays, would you? 

Fooking nVidia control panel, wth!

It changed 32 bit to 16 bit.. then get this, when I changed it to 32 bit and hit apply... screen was all jacked as it changed it to 8 bit!!!

But all is fine now, thanks. 

glad it's all good! 

I looked and everything in the Nvidia control panel is set to "other applications" control. The setting is there though. I'll have to fiddle with it later because...

I just got off the phone after spending over an hour with Comcast trying to resolve an intermittent internet connection problem. I have probably suffered permanent brain damage and cannot handle anything technical right now. 

well, this doesn't seem to be a very active thread, but I figure I'd share a sweet grab I made today from a local dude cleaning out his garage:

Hitachi CM801U for $30. This thing is MASSIVE (70lbs!) but in great condition and the picture quality is superb. La Croix can for scale.

I also picked up an old gaming rig for $15, it really had some great stuff inside: asus abn32-sli mobo and amd athlon 64 fx-60 complimented by a bfg 7950gt oc, ocz platinum edition memory and a soundblaster live 5.1. The case and psu were pretty meh, luckily I happened to have those two things laying around.

Anyway, I got it all cleaned up, assembled (even used AS5 on the cpu for old times sake) and up and runnning, then... pop. lost a capacitor on the mobo :( I found a local repair shop, maybe they'll do a quick recap for cheap tomorrow. If all goes well, that cpu should clock over 3ghz on air.

Anyway, it was a good score IMO! 

Before, with VGA I would set brightness in Fitzquake to 3 clicks above minimum and everything looked fine. Now, with HDMI the status bar and menus to appear too bright compared to VGA. I have to set brightness at minimum to fix this, but playing maps at this setting causes them to be too dark to see almost.

The actual picture quality is better, but trying to get all these brightness issues worked out is getting tedious. I'm beginning to think this HDMI is more balanced for impressive pictures on TV viewing and not so much for computers. Though it may well be just the way my particular TV was designed.

One good thing is that the Sharpness setting is available with HDMI, so now I can set it to minimum and get decently sharp onscreen text. On the VGA input it was at 50%, grayed out and not adjustable. 

I kept thinking something was wrong when the desktop seemed to need excessive gamma adjustment to look right and started changing other things.

I finally realized that any changes to the TV's HDMI brightness or contrast made Quake look really bad. I put them back to the 50% default (same as what the VGA input was set at), and just used the built-in Windows DCCW to set the gamma to whatever it took to look right.

The DCCW slider has no numbers, but if the default center position is considered 50%, then where it looked good on the GTX 550 was no lower than 40%. The new GTX 1050 needs more like 20-25%, which seems like a big difference to me.

I did leave the TV's color setting down at 30% because the default was way oversaturated. Whether that's due to the TV, the video card, or just the difference between VGA and HDMI, I don't know.

Those occasional flashing surfaces in Quake are somewhat annoying. I've even seen some completely disappear, but only for a instant. It's random and doesn't repeat no matter how much I move around near the same spot and viewing direction. It almost has to be some kind of driver issue. 

Rick, I haven't seen you mention which Quake engine you're using. Or is it really ol' Fitzquake 0.85?

With the latest NVidia drivers I had a flashing issue for some builds of Mark V, but not the latest build. I don't know if Baker did something explicitly to fix it.

I've never had that flashing problem with the latest couple of Quakespasm builds. I do see it occasionally with ezQuake 3.0.

So there's something about the Quake engine renderers that can trigger the issue. 

Correct. I've only looked at Fitzquake so far. I also test stuff on Quakespasm but haven't had a chance yet. My copy of Mark V is probably not the latest version. 

can i7 3770K CPU PC use better GPU than GTX970 or would the performance from any better GPU be bottlenecked by this old CPU? there is no better CPU form my MoBo socket than the i7 3770K, which MoBo/socket to get nowadays? (play mostly DX9 games) thanks 

3rd Gen Intel could probably be fine with a 980ti. I am not sure about Pascal as I haven't done my homework for that yet.

Although upgrading from 970 to 980ti may not be worth it if you are gaming at 1080p 

I think whether or not to upgrade, and what to upgrade to, depends on what you are using now. 

No, your 3770k will not be a bottleneck in a system with even current gen cards (gtx 1080/Titan). You may lose a negligible amount of frames in very CPU intensive games, but that's it.

If you're on a budget I'd recommend giving your CPU a little OC and consider the gtx1070, which is about 25% faster than your 970. 

Almost $400 for a 25% improvement does not sound like a good deal to me, but then I'd never spend more than $300 on a video card even if it was for a brand new computer.

I never thought I was a tightwad. I guess I was wrong. 

$400 isn't cheap (might be able to find one for $300 on ebay). Sadly, that's the most economical performance boost atm. He's already at the price/performance sweet spot so any increase in performance from that will be premium dollars. Even if he spent 4x that much on a new build he would still only be at about a ~50% performance increase (in gaming).

My advice if you don't want a small upgrade to tide you over is to just save $$ until the next generation of cpus/gpus release (not ryzen, think icelake/volta) then buy after the first price drop.

play mostly DX9 games

Then upgrading probably isn't critical atm. I'd just wait. 

1920x1440@85Hz of course 

http://imgur.com/a/1b9zd 

I agree with Killpixel wait - especially at that resolution and DX9.

One word of advice: you will never regret saving up and building a top end system. They last longer as you waste less time and money upgrading over the years. I think it's better to "suffer" for a while and save up for a very powerful system paying attention to CPU/MoBo/GPU trends. Watch out for GPU price drops when nvidia announces new tech. I've gone the cheapskate route where I've bought a decent MoBo and then every few years upgraded CPU and video card but that's actually proven pretty wasteful overall. Save up and go big when the timing is right, I've never regretted it.