Win7 32 to 64 reinstall - text glitches, graphics scaling? It's ugly!!

makattack · Feb 7, 2012

Hi everyone,
this is my first post on the civfanatics forum. I've enjoyed the discussion for a long time, and now I'm in need to some help. I realized recently that my win32 install only recognized 3 of my 4gb of ram - I thought win 4 could recognize up to 4, but I was mistaken. Anyway, it was the last straw and I finally installed windows 7 on my SSD via a format and fresh install. Once up and running, I installed Steam, Catalyst drivers (newest version, though I am 95% sure I had this same version released January 25 or so prior to reformat), and then Civ 5.

I also copied over the Civ 5 preferences / save games folder that was in My Documents > My Games before the reinstall.

I'm running the DX 10/11 version of Civ, of course.

Once I got into the first screen, I noticed something strange. The text looks very pixelated, like the game is running in a different resolution and being scaled to fit my screen. I went to Video options, and it is set to the correct 1920 x 1080 @ 60 hz that my desktop is running at. Bringing up the Steam overlay confirms that something is wrong - it looks jagged and pixelated. Still legible, but very ugly.

Finally, I load up a solo game. The graphics are not terrible, but noticably lower quality - specifically, the text on the bar at the top (gold, culture, science output etc) looks pixelated, and the whole game screen looks rather ugly. My graphics settings are the same prior to the reinstall, because I copied over my preferences.

When I check the Civ5 local files, steam says either one or two files are corrupted, and these are downloaded and installed, but nothing changes. Each time I check the local files, one or two are deemed corrupted. How can I find out which these are?

To try to fix, I reinstalled Civ5 two times. I also removed my backed up settings/saved games folder and started completely from scratch. Same problem. I tried uninstalling the newest catalyst drivers and reinstalling the previous version, still not fixed.

Can someone help me? Here is my dxdiag and two screenshots of my 1920x1080 game screen.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/64794/Civ Screens/2012-02-06_00005.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/64794/Civ Screens/2012-02-06_00004.jpg

EDIT: Okay, now you might think I am an idiot because the pictures look perfectly fine. I just opened them to make sure they work, and when shown in full resolution, they look perfect! argh, why doesn't my monitor show the game like that??

I guess you'll just have to take it on faith that while the game might be correctly outputting 1920x1080, it's not showing up crisp on my monitor. Sooo strange...

Thanks to anyone who can suggest a fix! I have tried a lot, and I think it's some sort of scaling issue. Although in game it says it is running in 1920x1080x60hz, alt tabbing is not exactly like it used to be, suggesting that it's not running at exactly the same resolution and thus the screen flashes between alt tabs. My desktop res is 1920x1080x60hz.

Steam download log from when I check local cache:

Spoiler :

DxDiag:

Spoiler :

The_J · Feb 7, 2012

mmhh...yes, you can see the fonts are a bit pixelated at the top...mmhh.

did you try to play in windowed mode?
Because in the past there had been some (okay, only a few) problems with the full screen mode.

makattack · Feb 8, 2012

Hopefully reinstalling and starting from scratch again might work..

Edit : Yes, a full reinstall worked! Ahhh, it looks so much better now. I actually have the sneaky suspicion that I might have had Teamviewer running, but I'm not sure. I know that messes up BF3.

Win7 32 to 64 reinstall - text glitches, graphics scaling? It's ugly!!

makattack

Chieftain

The_J

Say No 2 Net Validations

makattack

Chieftain

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