T42, XGA, ATI 9000 video problem

[mtroxel]

I beat the crap outta my laptops so bought a ThinkPad, just for the hardware. Great hardware. New T42 with a 14.1 XGA screen and the ATI 9000 video card with 32 meg of VRAM.

Now the problem. On all other laptops I use and/or setup, I set the color down to 16 bits. I’m not a graphic artist and can barely tell the difference between 16 and 32 on most systems. But I am a geek and like the speed boost of 16 bit color. With this one, in 16 bit the colors are very splotchy. Worse yet, for some reason Windows dumbs the icons down so it looks like I’m on a Win 2000 machine.


This is set at 16 bits. The icons look crude, even the recycle bin on the right of this jpg (and other desktop icons not shown here) has changed.


This is 32 bit. It looks right, the recycle bin and other desktop icons are the familiar XP design. Even so, the colors are still sorta blotchy. I'm just not convinced this is 32 bit color.

Is this just the way this hardware is? I updated the video driver and the system BIOS. I would restore back to original condition if I had to. Even at 32 bit the color is not great. And I've never seen a laptop I couldn't set at 16 bit and get Win 2000 icons.

[aabram]

First picture is definitely not 16-bit. It looks more like 8-bit (256 colors). If you really have it set to 16-bit and get such a color degradation then something is wrong.

Btw, some images appear blotchy because of the JPEG compression and that may not be on every screen. Do test with original Windows photographic wallpapers since these are of decent quality, if the sky (or any other extensive color gradation) is banded and blotcy then you don't have 32-bit color depth applied.

About 32-bit vs 16-bit myth:
Do some tests and I believe you will find the speed difference marginal at best. Times when there was huge enough difference between 16-bit and 24-bit (notice I say 24-bit) are generally over. Any decent graphics chip can render 32-bit with ease. The problem existed with older chips that used 24-bit which indeed was noticeably slower to compute than 16-bit. 24-bit is the actual "true color", there is no applicable actual 32-bit color mode at all.

The confusion arises from the fact that there is written "32-bit color" nowadays instead of "24-bit color". It is 32-bit video mode, not 32-bit color mode. With 32-bit setting you still see only 24-bit color *but* the chip uses 32-bit video mode which is way easier/quicker to compute because using 4 bytes per pixel is architecurally faster than using 3 bytes. So basically 32-bit video mode computes in 32-bit and then discards one byte and gives you back 24-bit color. It results of 25% of memory overhead but since the video memory is so cheap and so abundant nowadays it pays off because of the raw speed of 32-bit calculations. Some cards don't even offer 24-bit mode anymore in mode selection.

By not using 32-bit you willfully degrade the visual quality of *any* photographic image or applications, which use smooth color changes or gradations (flash, for example).

[kyrotech]

do this: uninstall the current video driver you are using completely.

download latest catalyst 5.11 from www.ati.com (not the mobility ones, just regular)

go to www.driverheaven.net and download the mobility modder V3

use it to mod the catalyst 5.11, then install

feedback us

[mtroxel]

Thanks for the tips. Gotta go watch football, but I'm going to try your ATI idea. Worst it could do is screw it up. It's already there.

aabram, the blotchy colors I'm seeing aren't on .jpgs. It's on the grey area of IE 6 toolbars. If it can't get that right, it ain't going to get anything else right. I agree with the assessment that I have about 8 bit color in the first example. I see that kind of video when I'm on an old Win98 machine I'm trying to breath a little life into.

I'll get back to you guys. I'll take a screen shot.

[christopher_wolf]

On the Toolbars area of IE right? That is an issue I have seen on many Computers; laptops, desktops, etc. I don't really think it is a big problem and conly really appears from a narrow range of viewing angles. This happens in only a few applications I know of...IE being one of them. So that part of it is application dependent.

[GomJabbar]

I have a T42 14.1" XGA display, ATI Radeon 9000 with 64Mb VRAM. I do not get the changes in icons that your screenshot shows when I go between 32-bit color and 16-bit color. I thought maybe your were going to Windows Classic Style, but even changing that, I don't get the Recycle Bin to look like yours. Strange.

You might try downloading TweakUI from Microsoft. It is one of the Power Toys. One of it's options is to rebuild the explorer (desktop) icons.

[mtroxel]

Christopher, the toolbar is not really my problem. It’s just one of the places it shows most noticeably. In general, the video doesn’t look anything like 16 bit.

Gom, already have TweakUI so I tried the icon rebuild. No help there.

Kyrotech, I uninstalled the current ATI driver, then went to Device Manager and uninstalled the card itself. Did a reboot and installed the driver you mentioned….or tried to any way. I wouldn’t install. Same thing with the generic ATI mobility driver for IBM. Wouldn’t install. So I’m back to the latest driver from the IBM update for this computer.

I also tried Display Properties> Desktop> Customize Desktop> Restore Default under the icons area. No help. I just don’t think I’m getting 16 bit color and Windows knows it can’t make the little transparent icons that XP wants to make. It’s not the icons I care about, it’s the low quality video…and the thought that if it’s not running right it might also be sapping some resources that should be left to me.

[christopher_wolf]

Hmmm, this really seems to be a Boggling Problem...

[mtroxel]

Well, I got it, but only because I used the nuclear option. I didn't just restore. I didn't even use F.A.S.T., just to make sure some dumb setting that's been traveling around with me for a few years didn't leak through. I did use the little wizard to save the settings from Office, but the rest of the files I transferred straight to the hard drive. All Windows settings are new.

Made restore points at several places along the way, but as of now, in 16 bits I have XP icons and a good screen.

By the way, first time I've used this IBM restore function. Lots of DOS windows showing errors like ".bat file cannot be found". Thought it wasn't going to restore. Seems to be a pretty buggy little program.

[christopher_wolf]

How did you restore? That has *never* happened to me. I always used the IBM R&R Program and it works like a Charm, I didn't get any DOS Windows though.

[mtroxel]

Yea, I rebooted to the recovery partition, did a factory restore from there. First it formats the hard drive (more on that later), then it installs XP, then it starts to install IBM stuff along with SP2. After a while it reboots, then installs more IBM stuff. Finally it changes the reformatted FAT32 hard drive to NTFS if you can believe that.

The whole time there are DOS windows flying by and several times I got errors saying it couldn’t find a batch file.

I took these two screen shots:

[jdhurst]

The recycle bin in the top photo is from Window 2000; the recycle bin in the bottom photo is from Windows XP. I did that once on an XP machine by copying the icons from W2K. Maybe they are somewhere on an XP machine as well ... JD Hurst

[aabram]

The recycle bin in the top photo is from Window 2000; the recycle bin in the bottom photo is from Windows XP. I did that once on an XP machine by copying the icons from W2K. Maybe they are somewhere on an XP machine as well ... JD Hurst

XP uses old W2K style icons when you switch to 8-bit color depth. Try and see :)

I guess it made sense to them to re-use old icons which had 8-bit version available rather than try to re-create low-color versions for other new icons as well. Not a good idea if you ask me but hey, most people will never see them on XP.

[mtroxel]

I came from a Pentium M 1.6 to this Pentium M 1.8 and was very disappointed that this seemed slower. Since the rebuild there is noticably more speed. That is born out by the fact that the PCPitstop.com tests show much faster video speed now than before the drama, in both 16 bit and 32 bit color. Something was goofy with the software on this T42 right out of the factory.