I think Yourself and Your friends computers are doing something with the display that is screwing it up.

I looked at my monitor with a magnifying glass and every pixel was dead perfectly lined up, no scaling was
evident.
I don't see how You can have scaling issues when 1600x1200 lines up pixel perfect. The main complaint with these
monitors was the anti-glare coating and a minor sparkly effect, doesn't bother me though.

Yea it's time we see some photos please 😀

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Yea it's time we see some photos please 😀

I uploaded one here http://imgur.com/spi12OC never mind the camera interference pattern - the horizontal blurring of the black lines is what bothers me. The total width in pixels of the entire image is correct when using 1600*1200 in forced 4:3, but there is some interpolation or something going on anyway, as you can see most of the white stripes are not actually white. Instead of b/w/b/w/b/w... it goes light grey/medium grey/light grey/black/white/dark grey and so on. On the mouse pointer i can also see that there is a tiny amount of blurring around the edges, but i didnt take a photo of it.

Im not accusing you guys of being blind or something btw 😀 There must be a technical reason for the differences we are seeing, i just dont know what it is. When were your monitors produced? It could be that a recent-ish firmware has a different interpolation algorithm or changed the forced scale functionality somehow. I tried with newer nvidia and intel GPUs using both VGA and DVI in Windows 8 and 10 by the way. You all use the forced aspect ratio mode selected via the monitor OSD right?

Yea I can't see any details.

You really need to create a proper 1600 x 1200 image with 1px wide lines for this to test properly.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Yea I can't see any details.

You really need to create a proper 1600 x 1200 image with 1px wide lines for this to test properly.

I've done that an the pattern is like the one on the photo. Only every 5th white stripe is actually white - the others are grey.

The image linked is 274x230, not 1600x1200.

I feel like we're being trolled here 😊

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

The image linked is 274x230, not 1600x1200.

I feel like we're being trolled here 😊

By Dell, not me 😉 The test image doesnt have to be full screen, the interpolation issue is obviously not only occurring on the 274x230 square i by chance placed the mspaint window in on that photo.

One thing to consider here is that white is not white. White is made up of equal Red,Green, Blue pixels and usually at maximum intensity.
It was the same on old tv's. It is our eyes and brain sees it as white.

Even so, I still cannot see a problem on my Dell U2412M
I took some photos, came out better than expected. The first 2 are 1600x1200, the final one is 1920x1200. The only way I could screw up
the image was to turn GPU scaling on and forced 4:3 aspect ratio at 1600x1200, which made the display look like 1400x1200, but even there
it still never looked as bad as what you are seeing.

That does indeed look exactly as it should!

Uploaded more photos to show that not all U2412M are the same 😀

Just ordered a NEC MultiSync 2170NX - 21.3", 1600x1200 with a S-PVA panel and a Dell Optiplex GX400 (socket 423 / rimm) from a local romanian shop selling old / refurbished computers. The monitor was 50$ - I'll post pics of it tomorrow when I get it.

s0ren wrote:

Uploaded more photos to show that not all U2412M are the same 😀

At the bottom of Your 2nd image it says 1920x1200, which is the current resolution the monitor is set to. When You run a lower resolution on these
monitors than the maximum it shows the current resolution on the left, and the maximum on the right.

For whatever reason Your monitor is 1920x1200 instead of 1600x1200 and that is most likely the problem here.

Nvidia control panel:
"Adjust desktop size and position" -> Perform scaling on: Display
You can also select "No Scaling" to leave everything up to the Display.
If not, the GPU will do the scaling and always send native resolution.

Imperious wrote:

At the bottom of Your 2nd image it says 1920x1200, which is the current resolution the monitor is set to. When You run a lower r […]
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s0ren wrote:

Uploaded more photos to show that not all U2412M are the same 😀

At the bottom of Your 2nd image it says 1920x1200, which is the current resolution the monitor is set to. When You run a lower resolution on these
monitors than the maximum it shows the current resolution on the left, and the maximum on the right.

For whatever reason Your monitor is 1920x1200 instead of 1600x1200 and that is most likely the problem here.

Thanks!! That solved the mystery. The problem was that the NVidia settings changed the output to 1600*1200 with no scaling as it should, but in the Intel GPU settings it was apparently configured to stretch the output to 1920*1200. The image was thus first stretched on the computer and then squeezed on the monitor, causing the quality to degrade.

I will go ahead and purchase one of these monitors for myself now 😀