Can I change hardware and improve Win8 Font Rendering?

Can I change hardware and improve font rendering in Windows 8?

Text on Windows 8 looks pretty awful on my hardware. I'm using an Nvidia 550ti card and a Dell U2410 monitor. Text, in browsers and in the Windows GUI, is spindly, pixellated, and headache-inducing. Evidence? Look at msn.com in IE10 and then look at it on a Mac, or boot a live Ubuntu DVD and take a look.

I've spent many hours on this, and tried every trick and workaround I can find, to no avail.

So... I see frequent assertions that my 24-inch 1920x1200 monitor lacks the DPI to render fonts correctly in Windows (it's 96 DPI). I also see frequent assertions that I need to use a different video card.

I'd buy new hardware in a flash if I knew it would solve this problem.

Would a new monitor and/or a new video card improve the looks of text in Win8?

Should I maybe look for a 15-inch FHD laptop that crams a lot of pixels into a small space?

It is not a DPI issue. The blurry font is a fault in Windows 8 and a fix is supposed to be coming in 8.1. The people suffering it appear to be fairly random and I have not heard of a successful fix.

A hardware change may fix it and if you have spare hardware it could be worth a try. But I wouldn't spend any money unless you wanted to upgrade anyway and wait for 8.1

Here is a link

Poor font rendering in Windows 8 (blurry text) - Microsoft Community


Sorry the fix is just a rumor. Heard it here.

http://www.eightforums.com/windows-...fix-blurry-text-bug-windows-8-1-rtm-rumo.html

Wouldn't higher DPI, assuming constant resolution, improve rendering quality? Would not text on a 1900x1200 15-inch screen be more readble than on a 24-inch with identical resolution?

Windows 7 here does not render fonts appreciably better than Windows 8.

Win 7/8 font quality is really awful on my hardware, but it is really good on Ubuntu and used as an external monitor for a Macbook. I'd like to run the Windows I paid $200 for.

(Today, I did a clean Win7 install and then immediately upgraded to Win 8. Fonts looked good initially. But, after a few hours use, they'd gone down the tubes. What's with that? Does any use of the Metro interface propagate its greyscale rendering to the desktop apps?)

On my system the fonts on 7 and 8 look as good or better than Linux.

Have you got ClearType turned on and are you using scaling on your video driver?

McRuff said:

On my system the fonts on 7 and 8 look as good or better than Linux.

Have you got ClearType turned on and are you using scaling on your video driver?

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The difference here between Win7/8 and both OS X and Ubuntu is dramatic. For example, headlines at msn.com in Windows are mottled, in varying degrees of black within a single character., with grey shadows. On the others, they are distinct and precise.

I don't scale; the monitor runs at 1920x1200. I use Cleartype but, frankly, it does not produce much of a change. I see 5 screens of 6 samples each. While each screen has some samples that are lighter or darker, the rendering remains basically jaggy and spindly in every sample. There is no sample where the pixels aren't obvious.

Just run your Clear Type tool, it will clear it up.

XweAponX said:

Just run your Clear Type tool, it will clear it up.

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Did you read my post immediately before yours: "I use Cleartype but, frankly, it does not produce much of a change."

I have tried all the commonly suggested approaches and none of them work. If msn.com looks better on my Macbook and on Ubuntu via a LiveDVD than it does on Windows 8 (it's really abysmal on Win8's IE) I have to assume something is amiss. So, I'm wondering if changing the video card and/or changing the monitor to one with a higher DPI might make a difference.

That's odd, usually you can affect how it looks quite a bit.

Try running your Colour Calibration tool, maybe that will clear it up a bit. As far as MSN, it looks like crap on both my PC and my MAC. But all I know is that my graphics and text on my PC, and you can see my configs down there in my specs, look great. If the text is spindly and pixelated, Cleartype is not being applied to the system. I just ran it, it made a significant change. And I know there is a setting somewhere to apply cleartype to IE, Just don't remember where it is- I've seen it, I can't seem to find it in any of the IE settings for IE 10.

Also, if you are using an nVidia card, have you downloaded any Beta drivers? Those have been proved to have issues, I never do their betas, I always wait for the real ones.

Check this article:

IE Cleartype Fix – The Solution for Blurry or Pixelated Text

No... Scratch that, it's a developer blog... here is a place where some people were discussing it, and a few solutions maybe.

Disable ClearType (blurry fonts) in Internet Explorer 10 on windows 7 - Super User


Using Internet Explorer filters and ClearType - Stack Overflow

Ah - This is what I was thinking of -

internet explorer - IE 8/9 ClearType problem - Stack Overflow - But I think they removed it in IE 10.

Yes, you can turn off IE's cleartype - Or turn it on from here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\UseCleartype

I've done two or three clean Win8 installs recently, which involves doing a clean Win7 install, getting the updates, installing 8, and getting the updates. It's tedious and takes considerable time. Each install, adjusting Cleartype was one of the first things I did. It was always on by default. It does make a visible change, but the change is marginal, and every font sample displayed by the Cleartype tuner is, itself, pixellated. The samples vary from really bad to mediocre; there is no "good". Most are very thin, a few are acceptably dark, but those samples typically exhibit the most pixellation.

Msn.com here on IE displays very poorly: thin, washed out body text, "two-toned" headline text. It looks much better on OS X or Ubuntu, in Chrome and Firefox: Text is black, not gray; headlines are solid black, without the mottled-ness I see in IE. (Headline text in IE is sometimes accompanied by streaks of gray or black running alongside the edge of a character, separated by a gap of a few pixels.)

It's an Nvidia 550ti card, No betas, just the driver Windows installed.

What is intriguing to me is that the last install was done on a Win7 installation that I had made no changes to. It was purely a default setup. Immediately after installing Win8, the font quality was much better than I'd seen before. It looked, frankly, like I see in screenshots at Microsoft's sites. But, after a few hours use of IE and the other browsers, font rendering quality became very poor, again.

Check that registry setting, try turning it on or off, I believe you have to reboot each time. MSN always looks like garbage on IE, but even so the text is not how you describe - It's usually spindly and pixellated before I turn ClearType on. But try turning it on and off, or off if it is on. Also check for any viruses. I just got infected by SNAPDO, trying to install a driver for my old MusicPad Pro- The drivers are archived on their site and they have snapdo in the archive! You never know when you are gonna get infected or from where, that was the last place I expected to get it, so it would not hurt to check.

XweAponX said:

Check that registry setting, try turning it on or off....Also check for any viruses.

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Thanks, I will, next time. It's off the machine at the moment, so when I get a spare 4-5 hours I'll go at it again.

A virus as the culprit seems unlikely given that these have been brand new installations with no third-party downloads. And, it's been consistent over multiple fresh installation on the same hardware.

XweAponX said:

Just run your Clear Type tool, it will clear it up.

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Sorry, but wrong. If it was that easy there would be no problems or complaints.
Do some reading and research > color subpixel antialiasing.

I did, that's how I found that Clear Type Reg reference. They just renamed Cleartype for IE10, they did not take it out, it's still there. You can only enable or disable it from the Registry now:

XweAponX said:

I did, that's how I found that Clear Type Reg reference. They just renamed Cleartype for IE10, they did not take it out, it's still there. You can only enable or disable it from the Registry now:

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Sorry for writing you've done no research, as you have indeed done some, but I've tested the UseClearType reg setting on several laptops here (HP, Compaq, Toshiba), still muddy & lacking sharpness (but in a slightly different way) so it's not a solution. And does anyway not help for the blurry fonts that appears here and there in W8 (outside of IE10), so am still waiting for MS to address the problem.

Written in FF 23, 100% sharp at time of posting :O)

You could also go into the Internet Options "Advanced" Property Sheet and check if it is using Software rendering or GPU rendering.

XweAponX said:

You could also go into the Internet Options "Advanced" Property Sheet and check if it is using Software rendering or GPU rendering.

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Thanks for trying to sort it out. Already tried, rendering settings does nothing to the IE10 fonts here (only affects how video\youtube etc behaves). And will in any case not do anything for how fonts look outside of IE10, remember many are affected by blurry fonts many places in w8 in general (it's just particularly concentrated and visible in IE10). Regarding browsers, stock Firefox & Chrome content looks perfect here.

Damn! I was hoping that would do something - Rememebr you have to reboot to see the effect. Apparently, this is a really common problem:

http://www.eightforums.com/windows-...fix-blurry-text-bug-windows-8-1-rtm-rumo.html

I havent seen it, IE looks fine to me in both my machines, but I have a 40" HDTV. But it looked good on a P4 machine I installed Windows 8 into, using a small 15" Dell Monitor. Maybe it has to do with certain video cards. Well, that's all I could find to do, I'll keep looking and see if I can find other settings that can me changed.

Several long threads about this issue exist on different Windows forums. So, it seems to be something that affects a good many people, while, apparently, not affecting -- or not bothering -- many others.

I mentioned that I saw rather good font rendering immediately after a clean Win8 install, and that the quality deteriorated significantly in a few hours. I've seen other reports about that. That makes me wonder if something, perhaps using the Modern apps, or some specific Modern app -- which are deliberately designed in a way that will deliver poorer font rendering on a standard 96 DPI monitor -- results in the use of the wrong font rendering engine (Windows now has 6 of them, I believe) for the desktop. Perhaps that is the bug rumored to be fixed in 8.1. (The Modern interface uses grayscale rendering, which will look good in a high-DPI environment like a phone or tablet.)

The differences in font rendering quality people see between different Windows applications might be down to developers coding for the less-optimum engines, not testing on all versions of Windows, etc. And, of course, things like lighting, eyesight, seating position, etc., are strong influences on a user's perception.

I don't know enough about Windows' font rendering engines to know how or if the video card has an impact. I know that, in my experience, it does not in both Linux and OS X, which do not need to drag around multiple rendering engines for the sake of compatibility, and you won't see buying a new card suggested as a way to improve rendering quality.

On my own hardware (Dell U2410 24-inch IPS and Nvidia 550ti) the best font rendering is delivered by the latest Ubuntu release and its derivatives. Second best is OS X, when I use the Dell as an external monitor for a Macbook. Frankly, Windows rendering is not even in the game here.

My bottom line on assessing the rendering quality of Windows on *my* hardware is comparing it to the screenshots I see on Microsoft and other vendor sites hyping their products. I'd be happy with what I see there. But, what I see *here* looks more like what I saw in Win95.

In any case, I've got a new ThinkPad coming, so that will be my Windows machine. For the next week or so, it's off my hardware.

joncr said:

...the best font rendering is delivered by the latest Ubuntu release and its derivatives

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Agree. Am mighty impressed (on different laptops where I've been testing "Ubuntu and its derivatives").
Windows seems to lag behind in the font dept., generally, not only the w8 specific problem.