Running an Apple Cinema Display on PC

May 11, 2005 6:23 AM

I recently hooked up a 23" (older model) to a PC and some of the graphics don't appear to be displaying properly. The problem exists with subtle gradients and color transitions. It looks almost like a .gif would display. Do Macs run a higher bit rate or color set? Is there a base video card that should be used with a PC.

The current video card is an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (128). All the latest drivers have been installed. This issue is happening directly in programs like photoshop, not just in browser display.

posted by Yukon to computers & internet (6 comments total)

This is a 23" Apple Cinema Display monitor in question.
posted by Yukon at 6:46 AM on May 11, 2005

What color depth is the video card set to? If it's 8bit, or even 15/16bit, it could look like that if you're used to 24bit color.
posted by skynxnex at 7:12 AM on May 11, 2005

Highest/32-bit. That's why I'm confused.
posted by Yukon at 7:21 AM on May 11, 2005

It's possible your gamma settings are out of whack -- macs and pc's typically use different gamma settings. Depending on your video card you may be able to adjust this within your video card settings (typically the advanced ones). Photoshop has a gammas adjuster, it's in the options section I think. It's been a long time since I've had a video adaptor that can't change it's gammas so I don't remember if you can apply the photoshop gamma changes to the system as a whole or not but you might be able to. At the very least you can load up some sample pictures and check it out.
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:39 AM on May 11, 2005

Have you used this particular monitor with a mac before, and not seen the problem then? I ask because ISTR that earlier lcd screens weren't quite capable of full-on 24/32-bit goodness. But I could be R'ing incorrectly.

Are you sending to the monitor in a different way -- with a dvi cable from the mac, but a vga cable with adapter from the wintel box?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:02 AM on May 11, 2005

Using DVI. The monitor was originally connected to a Dual G4 without any problems. I'm gonna swap out with a different graphics card (that should be newer/better) to see if that has any results.

Apple's website says so long as the card is up to par there shouldn't be any problems.
posted by Yukon at 12:45 PM on May 11, 2005