Are My Fonts Ugly Because I Use 1920x1080 Displays?

joncr

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I keep banging my head against Windows font rendering. Tried every trick I can find to no avail. I see screenshots that look much better than my screens here, including shots posted by people complaining about bad font rendering. I assume I'm doing something wrong.

So... is it because using 1920x1080 displays triggers scaling and DPI issues? Would I get acceptable results with, say, a 1600px display?

(Tried Cleartype, turning hardware acceleration on/off, playing with scaling, turning it off for individual apps, etc. The hardware is not shoddy and drivers are current.)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Linux
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
You specs say you are running Linux? Is that correct? What exactly and is it in a VM or natively?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 Pro Prieview x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    MacBook Pro Core2Duo
    CPU
    T7600
    Memory
    3
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI Radeon X1600
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Internal
    Screen Resolution
    1440 x 800
    Hard Drives
    40GB
    Keyboard
    Apple
    Mouse
    Apple
    Internet Speed
    Varies
    Browser
    Various
    Antivirus
    Defender
You specs say you are running Linux? Is that correct? What exactly and is it in a VM or natively?

Linux at the moment.

No VM's. I have a Lenovo desktop with an AMD HD8570, and a ThinkPad W530 with an Nvidia Quadro K1000 and 15.6" 1920x1080, a BenQ 1920x1080 21.5" display and a Dell 2410U 24" 1900x1200 display.

Symptoms are the same across all that hardware in Win8. Bold fonts, e.g., the links in a Google search results page or larger headline text at news.bbc.co.uk (which are Arial): smeared, with artifacting (by which I mean dark pixels inside loops in characters and dark pixels producing uneven edges that should be straight.) Headlines at msn.com seem almost two-toned: parts of a character are grey, parts are black. Normal text -- 10pt-16pt -- is often pixellated with individual pixels obvious from three feet.

Adjusting ClearType, DPI and scaling settings, etc., does affect the appearance, but does not improve the display.

I've been doing repeated fresh installs of Win8 Pro and then running all available updates from Microsoft and driver updates from Lenovo.

I need to run Windows on this hardware. I'm trying to account for the differences in what I see and what other users apparently are seeing.

If the root of the problem is that a 1920x1080 displays triggers scaling in Windows, then I'd be willing to buy a 1600x1050 display if I had some assurance it would make a difference.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Linux
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
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