T60p graphics problems - blockiness

[thatcrazycommie]

I've been having a problem for some time with my t60p's graphics. It doesn't render things correctly anymore. The first thing I noticed was jagged edges on some icons, but I decided that didn't really matter, but then lately I've noticed it's worse than that. Everything that resembles a gradient renders all blocky.

Here's what the top of my Firefox taskbar (and the top of pretty much every window, in fact) looks like:



edited to show contrast:



That's just a minor example, however: videos are affected, too, and that's what's really killing me. Everything in a video that's not in sharp camera focus (ie backgrounds) becomes gross and blocky. What's weird, though, is that I can't prove that with a screenshot, because when I take a snapshot in VLC, the blockiness disappears and it looks nice and smooth in the shot. So, my system is capable of rendering stuff correctly in certain circumstances but usually chooses not to.

Anyway, can anyone suggest anything short of backing up my data and restoring to factory configuration? I've tried both updating and rolling back the graphics driver to no avail. I can't remember when specifically this started so I don't know what sparked it. It's really frustrating and I'd appreciate any feedback.

[Paul Pavlik]

Make sure that your Bit Depth (Display Properties/Settings/Color Quality) is set to 32 bit. Lower color depth will cause the effect that you are seeing.

[thatcrazycommie]

Well I'll be danged, that was it. I have no idea how that got set to 16-bit. Thank you very much!

[Pascal_TTH]

When you install Lenovo drivers for FireGL/Radeon, they allways set the display to 16bit. It's the same with Quadro...

Also, Radeon/FireGL driver have a feature to turn display in 16bit to save power when running on battery.