Samsung XL30 and signal noise

[sedluk]

I bought a Samsung XL30 a few weeks ago, I found that the Natural Color Expert Software did not work with Vista 64. I worked around this by using a calibrator that I had.

One of the issues that other people have reported with this monitor was something that looked like signal noise. Basically you would see little pixels flicker like you would with signal noise. I use my monitor in Custom mode and did not see this in Custom mode. I did see this problem in other modes.

That was the case up until a few nights ago. I was on the TV Guide web site and I clicked on a show, I think it was the Mentalist. While displaying this page I could clearly see the signal noise. The page had a top to bottom color gradient, maybe that was it, what causes it we will never know. I have a Nvidia card and went to the control panel, Manage Custom Resolutions. Added a new resolution that lower the refresh rate to 59.5 from 60 by adjusting the settings manually. The problem went away. I wanted to share it with others.

 

[pawstar]

Its sad to know that they STILL haven't fixed the issue

 

[visualguy]

sedluk,

Yes - this is a serious problem with the XL30. What is the manufacturing date of your monitor? You can find it on the sticker with the serial number on the back of the monitor.

I tried multiple refresh rates. For me, the problem appeared the least at 50Hz, but it still appeared occasionally. I couldn't find a refresh rate where the problem disappeared completely.

 

[sedluk]

The manufacture date for mine is April 2008.

I tried 50Hz and it did not solve the problem. Try going into the "Custom Resolutions" dialog. The GDI Refresh rate should say 60. Then change the "Timing standard:" popup from Auto to Manual. Then down in the "Advanced Refresh Rate Parameter" you can lower the "Desired refresh rate:" to 59.5.

 

[Afterhourpower]

I just got the XL30 (as sedluk knows from another post)...Did this start happening right away or after you had the screen for some time. I have had the screen for 3 days and had a blurp of garbage show up in the form of a horizontal line and it was mainly colored green if I remember correct as it was a split second and then it was gone. I use an ATI X1300 card with the standard dvi to dvi connection. Its a dual head card.

I want to add another 24 or 27 inch screen next to it..I think I have to buy another card as I tried to use it with Dual head and I could not get hte 2 screens display native tandum.

my screen is March 08

 

[sedluk]

It looks like the XL30 signal noise problem is fixed with the Nvidia 182.06 driver release. It looks like Nvidia changed the default timings from "Auto" to "DMT".

I think Nvidia still has some problems with custom resolutions. This problem is not specific to any monitor and it is listed in the release notes as a known problem.

Fortunately is looks like the change to "DMT" timings just fixes the problem, at least it did for me. It was always a very subtle problem and some days I could see the problem and some days I never noticed.

Other people have noticed that the problem was reduced or eliminated by reducing the refresh rate. It looks like the XL30 is very sensitive to the timings. The "DMT" timings increase the front porch and horizontal sync width timings and reverses the sync polarity. Why this was a problem we may never know, but it is nice to have it fixed. Now the only thing left is for Samsung to release some Natural Color Expert software for Vista 64.