NVIDIA Drivers HDMI PC Issue: Why do you hate us so ?

So my NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX video card died on me after serving me well for over 2 years. Thankfully my card was from Evga who offers a Limited Lifetime Warranty as long as you register within 30 days of purchase. I went ahead and setup an RMA for my card and luckily got myself a more powerful card but that's just the thing, they have to send you a video card replacement that is equal in power or better.

Well in my opinion the 9000 series NVIDIA cards plain sucked and I'm glad that wasn't my replacement because they were not much better than the 8000 series. I'm referring mainly to the comparison between the top dogs of each generation, the 8800GTX/Ultra and 9800GTX and the 384-bit vs 256-bit memory interfaces and memory sizes.

I bet you're wondering what card I got in return, well it was a GeForce GTX 260 but for some reason the 200 series cards have an issue with monitors which use an HDMI interface to connect to the video card. In my case I was using a HDMI to DVI cable with a ViewSonic VX2835wm display and after installing ANY drivers after 190.38 I would get a very grainy picture, it was pretty bad because after a couple minutes of viewing my eyes would hurt. I called up Evga support which is fantastic by the way, but they hadn't heard of this issue but my good friend Google showed that many others have come across this issue as well.

It would seem that the latest NVIDIA drivers/combined with the 200 series cards have difficulty trying to register an HDMI to DVI connection to my type of monitor (other brands have this issue as well) and set my input mode as "HDMI PC" this is the result of the NVIDIA drivers trying to find a display mode for my setup which it does not support (or doesn't want to for only god knows why) so it gives me a crappy picture or else it would damage my card/monitor.

This issue has been around since the 170.xx NVIDIA drivers from what I've read and users actually found a solution to this issue, you would need to edit the windows registry and add a data value which would allow the drivers to register the display however, somewhere along the line NVIDIA implemented code in their drivers which removes this "HACK" and so their customers were once again forced to find another way. Good one NVIDIA, I'm going to pretend you “accidentally” added something to your drivers which made your customers lives more difficult.

Luckily the community came together and once more we were forced to "HACK" drivers which would allow for our video cards and displays to be friends once again.

If you are having this issue, don't fret! Follow these steps in order to "FIX" your NVIDIA drivers:

The drivers used in my case were the ones for Windows 7 64-bit

1. Download Phoenix EDID Designer. Click here to download

2. Extract "Phoenix_1_3.zip" to your Desktop

3. Create a New Folder on your Desktop called "NVIDIA Drivers".

4. Download the latest video drivers from NVIDIA to your Desktop. Click here for the latest drivers.

5. Run the downloaded NVIDIA driver package and when prompted to extract the files, change the extract directory to the "NVIDIA Drivers" folder on your desktop.

6. After extraction is complete, it will request that you continue & install. Press "Cancel" here so the installer exits.

7. Locate and run the "Phoenix EDID Designer" executable you extracted to your desktop.

You should see this: Click to View

8. Click "Extract Registry EDID"

9. You should see this: Click to View

Click "Extract EDID"

10. You should see this: Click to View

Click "Byte Viewer"

11. You should see this: Click to View

The important bytes are 8,9,10 & 11 which I are highlighted in red. These will be unique to each monitor type\brand. Make a note of these.

12. Close and Exit "Phoenix EDID Designer"

13. Go to the "NVIDIA Drivers" folder where you extracted the drivers. Locate the file "NV_DISP.INF" and open it.

14. Locate the section labeled: [nv_clearRegistrySwitches_delreg]

15. Remove the following lines:

HKR,,OverrideEdidFlags0

HKR,,OverrideEdidFlags1

HKR,,OverrideEdidFlags2

HKR,,OverrideEdidFlags3

HKR,,OverrideEdidFlags4

16. Locate the section labeled: [nv_commonDisplayModes_addreg]

17. Add the customized line:

HKR,, OverrideEdidFlags0, %REG_BINARY%, 5A,63,1F,0F,00,00,FF,FF,04,00,00,00,7E,01,00

Make sure you replace the first four sets of hex with the ones you copied from your monitor's/TV's EDID.

18. Locate the "setup.exe" file in the "NVIDIA Drivers" folder on your desktop and run it which will now install your video card drivers.

The images and information regarding the steps to take to fix this issue were found on the NVIDIA forums, I have combined the original steps and modified steps for new drivers to give you the latest steps to use. The steps above have been tested to work with the latest drivers as of this posting which are the 195.62 WHQL drivers.