Bought a video card (and upgraded the PSU)

[Wrenches]

When I built my system a few months ago I had a Celeron G540 and I thought the Intel HD Graphics 1000 was pretty decent. When the i3-2105 was $25 off at Newegg I bought it because it has Intel HD Graphics 3000 and I thought it'd be better. The CPU is much better but the graphics seems to be the same.

My sis saw me leaning forward to read the text and mentioned it. I didn't realize I was doing that but I thought my 17" monitor was too small. It turned out that the text is somewhat blurry so I ordered a Sapphire HD 6670 video card and a Seasonic 550w Bronze because I wasn't sure if my Corsair CX430 will handle more wattage. I'm playing it safe.

Got the stuff today and installed them. Blew me away, good lord! The text is lot easier to see and the video's much better as I can see more detail.

So the Intel HD Graphics is that bad? Jeez.

EDIT: by the way, the resolution is 1280 x 1024.

 

[TwoCables]

For 2D stuff like what you're talking about, onboard video like that should be more than good enough and clear enough. Blurry text is usually a sign that the monitor is not in its Native Resolution.

Also, the CX430 would have been major overkill for this video card.

 

[Wrenches]

The monitor is at native resolution.

 

[TwoCables]

But, was it before?

 

[Wrenches]

Yes.

 

[TwoCables]

I guess it could have been settings that needed to be set in the control panel for the Intel graphics, but I don't really know for sure.

 

[Thorsen]

Might have been that cleartype was not being used. I don't know if this was due to the integrated graphics, but I am glad your new card fixed it for ya.

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/274-windows-7-cleartype-text.html

 

[Wrenches]

Trust me, everything possible was done, clear type, graphics control panel and a look in the tutorials for a clue. What I could've done was to increase the text size and it'll probably read better but does nothing for videos.

The video card fixed all.