ClearType Option Greyed Out

[schmosef]

Hi Guys,

Ok, so those of you following my posts lately will know that I did a recent Video card upgrade.

I used to have a P650 AGP card and a PowerColor 9200SE PCI card.

Now I've got a PowerColor 9800Pro AGP card and a P650 PCI card.

I just noticed that I cannot enable ClearType anymore.

Does anyone know why this might be or how I might be able to restore the functionality?

[schmosef]

Come on guys! No one has even a suggestion?

I was at least expecting someone to pipe in with a "you wouldn't have that problem under linux" comment...

Don't let me down.

[Rob(QG)]

Looks worse than that, you can't even enable regular font smoothing.
No idea why.
I take it that Smartgart is showing it as using AGP? Dunno if that would grey out those options, but it can happen that after installing ATi drivers that your graphics card defaults to PCI mode.

Oh yeah, under Linux you wouldn't have that problem.
Fonts would generally look like shit no matter how you smoothed them, though

[schmosef]

This is what my SMARTGART screen says.

I remeber reading something about uninstalling SMARTGART once. Do you think that it might help?

[Wombat]

Looks worse than that, you can't even enable regular font smoothing.
No idea why.
I take it that Smartgart is showing it as using AGP? Dunno if that would grey out those options, but it can happen that after installing ATi drivers that your graphics card defaults to PCI mode.

Oh yeah, under Linux you wouldn't have that problem.
Fonts would generally look like shit no matter how you smoothed them, though

Not true. The current X server supports "cleartype" pixel blending, and can use Windows's fonts.

[Technoid]

Have you tried reinstalling the drivers for booth cards?

[schmosef]

Have you tried reinstalling the drivers for booth cards?

no, you think it might help?

[rylan]

Also, try removing the 650PCI from the system and see if it works with just the 9800pro.

[Marshmallowman]

Another thing, does the monitor have its proper driver configuration installed and recognised. That might help with LCD spefic font stuff.

[az]

Cleartype can be enabled regardless of screen type, it just will look bad on shadow mask CRTs.

AZ

[Jon P. Inghram]

I tried ClearType on my CRT for a while, while it does a much better job of AA'ing text than the "standard" mode, it somehow made me nauseous, I think the faint color fringing is what did it.

[Rob(QG)]

Not true. The current X server supports "cleartype" pixel blending, and can use Windows's fonts.

I know it does - but somehow Cleartype looks better on Windows. The letter shapes look worse on Linux, too, with the default fonts.
I know you can install Windows fonts, but I haven't tried, tbh. Does that make them look as good as Windows with Cleartype?

It wasn't a totally serious comment

[schmosef]

Quick update, I haven't had time to mess with drivers and/or pulling cards yet.

For now, I've manually enabled cleartype in the registry. It's funny that the option is still greyed out in the options screen but it's showing that cleartype is now selected. I can definitely see the difference.

[Topha]

maybe you have something disabled under system properties (dont know the english name, right click on my computer, there are some options there) which makes windows grey out the clear type options?

[schmosef]

I'm not sure which settings you are referring to.

Could you try to describe it better?