nvidia and low brightness?

[suicidal_monkey]

I have currently have a gf2 ultra 64M
b but before that I had a tnt/tnt2 16Mb and a generic-SiS 8Mb card. Both
nvidia cards tend to be very dark when running games for some reason.
My monitor is an Iiyama VM Pro 454 which is set to 90%brightness and
80%contrast, so its definitely the gfx card being dark.

In windows everything looks fine, if perhaps a little bright at times.

In CS I cant even see in some areas (I mean large areas, not just
corners) like the tunnels on dust2 are almost pitch black. Thats with all
internal CS settings set to maximum.

If I load up quake (the original) I can barely see anything at all. It's
playable with brightness and contrast and stuff set to max, but is dark
even then.

I've taken to using powerstrip to up the gamma using keyboard
combinations between games and windows, but I never had this kind of
trouble with the ancient SiS gfx card. Is it some quirk of nvidia and
openGL/D3d or something? Also the gamma setting on the monitor seems
to make little or no impact, and in fact sometimes seems to darken the image...

[TeaLeaf]

My last couple of cards have been Nvidia and I have always had to up the gamma very slightly to see Counterstrike properly.  Without the adjustment, de_aztec looks like it is in a severe storm cloud shadow otherwise     It looks much nicer when it is in sunshine....     Given my similar experience, it may as you suggested, be an nvidia thang.

Interesting, Unreal2 resets the increased nvidia gamma back to the default values, but U2 is fine in game, as was HalfLife, Unreal, System Shock2, RTCW, MOHAA, SOF2 etc etc etc.  Maybe it is just a problem restricted to the combination of CS and Nvidia?

TL.  

[smilodon]

I've run bothe  TNT2 and a GeForce 3 card with Counter-Strike and have never had any brightness issues. So I don't think it's a universal problem with CS and Nvidia.

[JB]

'cough'  Lambert  :wink:

[Sn00ks]

I got a GF2 and it was quite dark too. But a software package called 3deep came with it. It's a display tweaking thing so it's looks all normal.