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VG248QE, how to tune

Posted: 15 Jan 2014, 08:28
by Prico
got the monitor yesterday
i have a hd5770 gpu..
how do i tune the colors/gamma/brightness?
the colors seem offbalanced, since i see some ugly colors all around and ingame, mostly.

help pl0x

Re: VG248QE, how to tune

Posted: 15 Jan 2014, 09:19
by Chief Blur Buster
Prico wrote:got the monitor yesterday
i have a hd5770 gpu..
how do i tune the colors/gamma/brightness?
the colors seem offbalanced, since i see some ugly colors all around and ingame, mostly.

help pl0x
non-LightBoost colors or LightBoost colors?
For LightBoost colors, some recommended colors are found in the LightBoost FAQ.

For the best colors in non-LightBoost, I recommend the color profile that came with the ASUS monitor, or using NCX's profile (ICC install instructions).

Re: VG248QE, how to tune

Posted: 15 Jan 2014, 15:13
by spacediver
I may be wrong, but installing a profile will only have an effect when running color aware applications (e.g. adobe lightroom).

Re: VG248QE, how to tune

Posted: 15 Jan 2014, 17:11
by nimbulan
spacediver wrote:I may be wrong, but installing a profile will only have an effect when running color aware applications (e.g. adobe lightroom).
The color profile affects all desktop applications and games run in windowed or borderless windowed/fake fullscreen mode. Games running in fullscreen mode almost always override the color profile and this behavior can no longer be stopped with nVidia's drivers since nVidia actually went so far as to block the method people used to use to accomplish this. People with AMD cards can still do it though.

My suggestion is to use the monitor's OSD to get the most accurate color you can (I use the numbers from Toms Hardware's review with the monitor at 120 Hz) and then either use a color profile or the nVidia control panel for gamma adjustment. You'll have to manually adjust the gamma in all your games no matter what you do though and unfortunately some don't allow adjustment.

How good is the color profile that comes with the monitor? I actually haven't been able to try it since I don't currently have an optical drive and it doesn't seem to be available for download from Asus.

Re: VG248QE, how to tune

Posted: 15 Jan 2014, 21:58
by spacediver
nimbulan wrote:
spacediver wrote:I may be wrong, but installing a profile will only have an effect when running color aware applications (e.g. adobe lightroom).
The color profile affects all desktop applications and games run in windowed or borderless windowed/fake fullscreen mode. Games running in fullscreen mode almost always override the color profile and this behavior can no longer be stopped with nVidia's drivers since nVidia actually went so far as to block the method people used to use to accomplish this. People with AMD cards can still do it though.
My understanding is that ICC or ICM files contain a characterization of the display (e.g. the chromaticity of the primaries), and then color aware applications can use that information to transform the output into a desired colorspace.

The stuff you're talking about is 1D LUTs, which can be used to change the gamma, and the white point balance of the output (which is still incredibly valuable). Unlike ICC profiles, 1D LUTs can be implemented system wide, and using windowed or borderless gaming can prevent the game from overwriting the LUT. I don't think there's a single game, however, that is color aware.

Nowadays, there is sometimes a VCGT tag in the profiles (video card graphics table) which, from what I understand, is a 1D LUT. It's not really supposed to be there, since a profile is meant to characterize a display, not instruct it how to interpret RGB values.

You can use utilities to implement these 1D LUTs from an icm file (e.g. Adobe Gamma Loader). I'm not sure if windows by itself does this, but it may well do. Best way to test it is to load in the ICM profile using windows, and seeing if anything changes.

But either way, this is not color management.

There's some discussion on this here:

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1497712/is-th ... hing-games

and here:

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1508743/could ... ng-monitor

pay attention to Sotti's posts.

Re: VG248QE, how to tune

Posted: 20 Jan 2014, 14:08
by SS4
I tried so many things but it still looks too bad for my taste with lightboost on . . . I'm not picky with colors and i like the image quality on the vg248qe but lightboost makes a huge difference . . .

Re: VG248QE, how to tune

Posted: 20 Jan 2014, 14:18
by nimbulan
SS4 wrote:I tried so many things but it still looks too bad for my taste with lightboost on . . . I'm not picky with colors and i like the image quality on the vg248qe but lightboost makes a huge difference . . .
I know what you mean. Even at 120 Hz without lightboost, I have to use such a large gamma adjustment to fix the colors that some games don't let me adjust far enough (though most of them I can get away with the darkest setting,) and both 144 Hz and Lightboost make the problem worse.

Re: VG248QE, how to tune

Posted: 22 Jan 2014, 10:48
by Dustmuffins
The best look I've been able to get so far in game is by using Powerstrip to set the gamma to 0.76. Powerstrip and Google Chrome don't get along though, so I wrote a batch file to launch powerstrip each time my pc starts, then closes it again after a few seconds.

Unfortunately this is the only third party solution I've found for controlling in-game colors.

If you want the BAT, let me know (although it's pretty easy to make one yourself).

Re: VG248QE, how to tune

Posted: 22 Jan 2014, 14:26
by nimbulan
Dustmuffins wrote:The best look I've been able to get so far in game is by using Powerstrip to set the gamma to 0.76. Powerstrip and Google Chrome don't get along though, so I wrote a batch file to launch powerstrip each time my pc starts, then closes it again after a few seconds.

Unfortunately this is the only third party solution I've found for controlling in-game colors.

If you want the BAT, let me know (although it's pretty easy to make one yourself).
The majority of games override any desktop gamma settings on startup and sometimes this change even persists after you quit. Unless you're running in windowed / fake fullscreen mode which is incompatible with G-sync. What does Powerstrip do that an ICC profile doesn't?

Re: VG248QE, how to tune

Posted: 22 Jan 2014, 14:34
by spacediver
Dustmuffins wrote:The best look I've been able to get so far in game is by using Powerstrip to set the gamma to 0.76.
Why bother with powerstrip when you can achieve the same modification to the LUT by using the gamma slider in nvidia control panel/ati catalyst control center?