Altium 14.3 Screen Resolution and display quality problem?

[gani]

Hi,

Altium 14.3 is installed on PC,
Monitor : samsung 22" : 1920*1080 ( this is native resolution and is set in windows )
Graphic: GEForce 8400GS
windows: 8.1

all softwares on this PC are working good and
the font display and line drawings are clean and sharp ( eg: ms word and the texts inside it )...

but for Altium: the fonts of menus and submenus  are not sharp enough but they are faded
the graphics of schematics ( lines , rectangles , pin_names , ports , ... ) all have the same problem ( faded and not sharp )

it seems like : changing LCD monitor resolution from normal manufactured resolution to lower , eg : from 1920*1080 -> 1024*768 => the fonts will be faded and unsharp

pls,
how do I fix this problem?

regards

[DerekG]

Monitor : samsung 22" : 1920*1080 (this is native resolution and is set in windows )
changing LCD monitor resolution from normal manufactured resolution to lower , eg : from 1920*1080 -> 1024*768 => the fonts will be faded and unsharp

Yes. You should only work with the monitor's native resolution.

Graphic: GEForce 8400GS
but for Altium: the fonts of menus and submenus  are not sharp enough but they are faded

I suggest you update the GeForce drivers to the latest available as the first step. Then, plough your way through the GeForce Menus to try the different video settings.

Be aware that 1GB of video memory is the absolute minimum recommended by Altium. 2GB is better.

[T3sl4co1l]

Perhaps you need to disable antialiasing?  (Tools / Schematic Preferences)

Fonts should be determined by OS settings.  Years ago, I noticed a fresh install of Windows 7 has a screen scaling option, which was set for 125%, but none of Altium's dialogs are made for variable layouts, so this made buttons inaccessible by sight and mouse.  And generally looked weird, because AD09 was made more for XP I think.

No idea if that particular problem is still relevant on AD14 and >Win7.

Tim

[Wilksey]

FWIW, I am running AD 14 on a LG IPS224 22", at 1920 x 1080 on Windows 7 Pro (x32), the machine is a old Dell Optiplex 380 with a Intel Core2 Duo E8400 @ 3GHz, 4GB Ram, Intel G41 Express graphics, Direct X reports the video memory at around 1.5GB, but not sure if that is shared with the system or dedicated, as x32 cannot address 4GB memory, says usable as 3.20GB.

AD runs absolutely fine, the 3D is a bit slow as expected but everything else renders well and displays crisp.

I know we also have machines (i7, 16GB Ram) for running SolidWorks with AD on under a Quadro graphics card, and that works well also, but those machines were about £1,500.

My little optiplex runs most things like AD quite well.

Not sure if this helps or not but I have the stock chipset and graphics drivers that came with the machine installed, which is now quite old.

[gani]

Hi,

Thx ,

after reading the replies,

I did change/test some settings,

this setting worked (partially) for me:


Tools/SchematicPreferences/General

this option: Render Texts with GDI+

I did remove the tik of checkbox => the fonts on schematic are looking good


the looking of menu and submenu text fonts are faded/dithered/aliased



regards

[marshallh]

Change graphics driver texture settings to Quality/Slow/High quality

[Rigby]

Can you send a screenshot?

Altium does this when you have Windows set to enlarge things on your screen beyond 100%.  Windows knows how to draw things sharply at 125% but Altium Designer does not.  As a result, Altium looks terrible when scaled in this way.