Now, assuming this is a possible HDTV overscan/underscan scaling issue (which can also occur on DisplayPort or DVI or VGA too, but ideally should really not happen to DisplayPort).
(1) Search your whole registry for "EnOverscanComp". If one exist, zero-out this value.
(2) Also have you tried this in NVIDIA Control Panel:
Source:
reddit
You may have to do this with a different graphics card, since something (damage, defect) in the 980 might be making this setting stuck permanent. For HDTV compatibility, there is a hardware override built into many GeForce cards that does the same thing as the software, so it's possible for a hardware defect (e.g. short) to cause permanent scaling problems. Also, try disabling HDMI audio. Damage to HDMI audio can wreak havoc with this trigger for HDTV overscan compensation (~5% scaling!) -- since many graphics card assume HDTV requires overscan compensation, and any use of HDMI audio creates an outdated assumption that you're connecting to an HDTV. Years ago, HDTVs did not have pixel perfect mapping, especially tube-based HDTVs such as the popular Toshiba TN40X81 from the late 1999/early 2000 -- and when connecting computers (originally via Component Video), you had to apply a 5% underscan for the PC to allow the HDTV to do a 5% overscan. This underscan output for HDTV overscan mode still persists to the digital era sometimes, and needless to say, creates scaling artifacts even though the resolution is correct. If a graphics card is stuck in HDTV overscan compensation mode via a short, no amount of drivers fiddling will override this, and you need to test out a different/newer GPU.
*** Catch22 And remember.... testing a 2nd tower WILL NOT (right away) FIX the problem until you reset everything (reset the software) in order to correctly clear the computer-side overscan bit. AND you go through the display menus again to go to 1:1 pixel mapping rather than incorrectly overscan-compensating an underscanned image. So once you've test a different GPU than the 980, make sure you reset the graphics drivers settings (e.g. via the above technique, or via reinstalling graphics driver). Because there's a display-side overscan compensator and a computer-side overscan compensator. Basically, it's possible for a GPU to send an underscanned signal and the display to overscan the underscanned signal, so you end up with a scaled (twice) image with the display reaching corners.
What happens is a hair-pulling session of seeing black borders around the image unless you fiddle the monitor. And with a different computer, the display may be zoomed beyond the borders (cropping off part of the taskbar) unless you fiddle. And the most maddening situation: A perfectly sized image that has scaling artifacts! (That's cuz it's scaled twice).
Four situations can happen:
(A) Normal output that is displayed normally yay 1:1 pixel mapping
(B) Underscanned output that is displayed normally black borders (1 problem to fix)
(C) Normal output that is displayed overscanned cropped taskbar (1 problem to fix)
(D) Underscanned output that is displayed overscanned perfectly sized image with scaling artifact (2 problems to fix)
(B)/(C)/(D) always have softening & scaling artifacts. Bands in
lagom test.
If your problem is (D).... You got 2 simultaneous problems (one of which might be caused by hardware, the other being cause-and effect from earlier tweaking). The trap is you're perpetually trying to fix 2 problems into 1 problem then back to 2 problems, never quite going all the way down to 0 problem because (D) often looks better than (B) and (C) but the catch 22 is that being at (D) makes it harder to go to (A) !!! .... You have a very fiddly interact-with-each-other troubleshoot (see my warning "
*** Catch22" above) that may require adjusting both computer and the display. You ideally (preferably) want to go to (B) and (C) because that means you've fixed 1 of 2 problems, and then the remainder side becomes a simpler troubleshoot. If you accidentally go to (D) again, REVERSE the steps ("ITS A TRAP") and then try a different troubleshoot path.
<Grumble>Legacy Overscan Standards</Grumble>
Many HDTVs still automatically scale a HDTV broadcast by ~2.5% around the edges (5% total overscan), and that can soften the text edges around onscreen menus. This legacy crap also extends to monitors which still have a built-in overscan mode which should stay dormant for computers connected via most cables. Even your garden-variety DELL monitor has this overscan mode hidden in it -- sometimes not even visible in menus -- never used by PC users -- and only activates with an HDMI cable with an audio channel, or some other signal that looks like it comes from a television tuner. Slowly all being deprecated, but it still ails us to this date, especially if one device gets stuck.
NOTE:
If you are not getting (B) or (C) or (D) in what seems to be the image-softening behaviour of an approximately 5% scaling factor (either as one-pass or two-pass scaling), then your problem is unrelated to this. But this is the strongest theory I have at the moment...
