terrible banding issues

[silkeno]

I just got the w500 4062 4mg with the radeon fire gl graphics. The quality of this display is ridiculous, the hard thick banding on any gradient (for example even the blue to white gradient on this page background) is intolerable.

How could this display possibly be used by  any graphics professional? I've seen better displays on £350 laptops.

Is it just a low quality monitor or is it the graphics card?

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

The banding issue is a concern on some display, i have a machine that have it, and the depot said that the problem is within the normal range. Luckily i have onsite warranty till 2011, so i will get a tech to come over when i have a bit of time and get them to have a look. 

[silkeno]

Within an acceptable range? For a notebook that cost £1600. That's a joke. If this is supposed to be normal and what it's designed to look like, I'll be sending it straight back. There's no way I could do any graphics work with this rubbish. 

[IMaPC]

could you possibly take a photo so we could see what you're talking about?

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

send us a picture first, and lets have a look, there is different degrees of banding. This is will also help other users whom later come on and trying to resolve the same issue. So a reference is needed, if that is not too much troubles. 

[ajkula66 Guru]

Having used W500 as much as I could for six months, I'm going to say that it's NOT the card but the display itself. I was extremely displeased with mine, and found it to be unacceptable on an otherwise very well-made high-end notebook.

Hook the machine to an external monitor that you're familiar with, and compare your findings. My guess would be that everything will test OK, but you never know.

Good luck and keep us posted.

[silkeno]

I can't take a decent photo of it, the screen shows up too dark on a picture so you can't really see what you see in reality.

 All I can say is, my sister has an old gateway laptop that's about 3 years old and cost £350 and the gradient display on that is perfectly smooth.  The gradient display on this page background for example looks like a series of multicoloured horizontal lines a few pixels thick. How the hell can it be acceptable to sell a laptop marketed at professional graphic artists costing this much money with such a shiity display on it.

It's  not just the hard banding but also the lack of decent colour and the generally washed out look of it. It's literally the lowest quality display I've ever seen.

[IMaPC]

have you tried going into the bios and setting the display graphics card to 'discrete only'?

that's my current setting and i don't see banding issues on this page.

[IMaPC]

http://home.freeuk.com/jackdodds/banding/granger_MBP_C2D_test.jpg

enlarge

this picture on looks fine on my screen. if i look at it from an angle i could see a lot of bands, but from the viewing angle i don't really see anything too bad. but i'm not a graphic artist.

i'm going to have to say it's the display itself. this graphics card should be decent enough not to have this problem.

anyone with WSXGA+ screens have banding issues?

Note from Moderator:  Image(s) >50k converted to link(s).

[jbayless]

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but...

Is your display in 16 bit colour mode? When I first got my W500, it defaulted to 16 bit colour and there was really ugly banding. Set it to 32 bit colour (either in Windows Display Properties or the Catalyst Control Center) and it becomes smooth.