some of my games look awful. Aero, perhaps?

The specs on my graphics are a standard Intel onboard GMA X4500. It's decent, if not gamer-perfect. I can run Postal 2, Half-Life 2 and Portal all at max settings and Doom 3 at medium.

My problem seems to be with a few games.... in general, on-screen fonts look bad in many games. I think ClearType is messing with this.

MapleStory has the font issues. It's possible Nexon will eventually patch this. I have yet to try windowed mode.

Neighbors From Hell 1 & 2 have the font issues and the color depth drops. Playable but fairly bad.

Plantasia looks like grainy JPEG screenshots. Playable but ugly.

Westward is basically unplayable in full screen mode due to the fonts. They're unreadable. I can play just fine in windowed mode.


I've ruled out the monitor as the cause. Leftover causes could be resolution(I run at 1600 x 900), Aero themes getting in the way(Neighbors From Hell has already shown me a popup concerning Aero incompatibility) or some other settings I have yet to fully play around with. I have updated drivers to their current ones and saw no changes.

And for what it's worth, Plants Vs Zombies plays just fine. Part of the issue may be native game resolution. Some of them run at 800 x 600 or less with no adjustments possible.