Monitor Banding - asus ml239h

Marcus_Aseth

Hi guys,I'm having a huge problem with my monitor,so I was hoping that someone of you could help me out.

The problem is,when I have a Gradient going on,let's say for example - the black to grey gradient of the background of 3ds max 2014 Perspective View - I have this nasty banding going on,where you pretty much can tell apart each shade of gray,& you can clearly see where the shade change each 5mm .

And by the way,my Nvidia Control Panel is set to 32 bit.
Just for experiment purspose,I lowered it to 16 bit,if I do that,the same gradient of 3ds max perspective viewport now has a banding visible each 1,5 cm, & the worst thing is that they are not all shades of grey, the go like - grey-green-gray-green-gray-green-gray-green - & so on, slowly increasing the Value parameter,but stil with this fucked up added green, 1 band yes & one band not.

To better clear what am I getting here,I used the picker you have inside 3ds max to pick up the colors of this bands, in 16bit mode,this is what I got,starting from top band to bottom band:
RED :---1/3/4/4/7/7/9/9 /13/13/17/17
GREEN :2/3/4/5/6/8/9/10/12/14/16/18
BLUE :--1/3/4/4/7/7/9/9 /13/13/17/17

And here a the most fucked up thing I have discovered while I was doing this picker experiment: the picker showed me as 3/3/3 two different bands,one beign clearly more toward the green,so I am actually not seeing the numbers of red/blue/green that the picker is picking up,the screen is showing me a different image for some arcane reason,the green I am seeing on those other bands is not even 1 point of green up or down as showed by the picker,cause I can tell the bands very clearly apart from one another...

Also,let's say the green problem happen only on 16 bit mode - still,on 32 bit color I have a visible banding each 5mm,even if the picke give proper numbers for RGB,like 111/222/333/444/555 & so on...

So what my monitor is showing me,is not the real image or what the numbers says...help me to figure this out guys,I beg you

Count Vertsalot

Try a different monitor, or even a TV, if the banding is still there then your video card is the problem.

almighty_gir

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/asus_ml239h.htm

according to this, your monitor is only 6-bit, which would explain the banding. being an IPS monitor should help, but it won't get rid of it. even the dell 23xx series of IPS monitors suffer from mild banding.

edit, just re-read. what i said holds true for the gradient areas of your monitor, i'm not 100% on whether it would affect large coloured areas, but i'd guess not. email Asus and see what they say?

Marcus_Aseth

@Count Vertsalot: my vga is a 480GTX with latest driver,never heard of someone complaining about banding with that card: \ Also,I had this card from before the monitor,I used it with another monitor from HP 1-2 years ago,& never experienced any banding,so or is the monitor itself,or nvidia have compatibility problem with my specific monitor I think

@almighty_gir,ok,I'll copy paste my first message of the topic & forward it to asus.
In the meantime if someone knows more about this please let me know

thanks guys

EarthQuake

Yep, 6 bit panel sounds like the reason. You want a 8 or 10 bit panel if color accuracy is a big concern.

Marcus_Aseth

Damn...they speaked so good of my monitor
now I don't have the money to buy a new one,damn...

almighty_gir

it's the biggest downfall of the low end e-IPS panels to be honest. and it got me as well!

don't get me wrong, it's miles better than a TN panel, and the price vs performance is fantastic, but you will see a difference between the 6 and 8 bit panels.

Marcus_Aseth

I've been a fool to purchase it without asking you guys,I had the money & then the hurry to spend them...damn

almighty_gir

from what i've seen, about $100 more than the 23" versions.

edit: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/

that is an excellent website to do research and check reviews of any monitor you're going to purchase.

Marcus_Aseth

Thanks almighty_gir,that will be useful in the future

Marcus_Aseth

Very funny guys,the tech support replied to me telling me to compile the papers for ask for a substitution of the monitor, the guy probably have only read the first 2 line of my email,because he doesn't even considered that the monitor worked like this since day 1,or that could be because is a 6 bit panel...who knows,maybe he is right & my monitor came out broken from the Asus factory but the mere fact that he didn't said nothing about the other possible causes,that he didn't asked nothing to try to troubleshooting the problem beforehand insted of copy-pasting the procedure for replacement,make me feel like he is simply washing is hand of my problem & total doesn't care to help to fix it,just moving to someone else,mostly on me because I would stay months without being able to use the pc,getting back a monitor with the same identical shitty problem.

Funnier thing is that if I hit the button "click here to reply",after I write & send my reply I get a funny message on the asus site wich says "Sorry! The server is busy now. Please try again later!"...really?! my mail weight so much that can cause serious harm to asus servers,or maybe they are receiving milions of mails that says to fuc* themselves for the laughable customer support

Well,this is pretty much the hystorical moment when I swear not to purchase Asus hardware anymore,sorry for the outburst

Marcus_Aseth

this probably is that guy keyboard

almighty_gir

oh wow man...

i hope it all goes well and you get it sorted. maybe it is just a faulty monitor, but in all probability it's a 6bit thing.