2 x Dell U2412M + 2 x identical GPU - Colour temp problems - HELP!

Marcus Geezer

Marcus Geezer

Messages
3,480
Name
Marcus
Edit My Images
Yes
I need some help with the calibration of my two Dell U2412M monitors, one being about a year old, the other days old. Both seem to work well, no dead pixels, etc. and I thought I had calibrated them ok, however under scrutiny not seemingly so. Before I had this 2nd Dell, I had some rubbish old TFT screen as my 2nd monitor being driven by the original graphic card through the VGA socket. I never even calibrated this screen, doing all my editing on the Dell.

Now that I have two identical Dells I plan to use both screen for editing, however having calibrated them using my datacolour spider, I can’t get a satisfactory matched result from the calibration. I updated both GPU's so have identical graphic cards driving them through DVI leads. I’ve swapped the cards and the screens over, so no problem with that, but the screen designated as left will calibrate properly, however the right won’t, looking a touch cool. I’ve checked my GPU and DELL drivers and all seems up to date.

Interestingly when I try to use the AMD Vision software, for some of the basic functions it allows me to choose between the two screens for default screens, identify, etc. settings, however for some of the advanced settings such as colour temp adjustment it just says U2412M monitor (with no option to select 1 or 2) and will only adjust the left monitor.

Can someone offer some help as to how I tell my system to change the colour temp on the right monitor when calibrating? Relevant system spec details are here. If you need any more information please post up.

Asus M5A99X EVO 990X Socket AM3+ 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
2 x XFX HD 5450 Heatsink 1GB DDR3 VGA DVI HDMI PCI-E Graphics Card (one plugged in to PCI-E 16-1 slot, the other PCI-E 16-2 slot)
AMD Bulldozer FX-8 8150 8 Core 3.6Ghz Socket AM3+ 8MB L3 Cache 125W overclocked to 4.2GHz
Running Windows 7

Thanks
 
PistolPeteUK said:
Have you got the settings on the monitors themselves (via the OSD) set to the same?
Click to expand...
Hiya and thanks for responding.

Yes. Both set as per the datacolour software recommendations which was factory defaults on both to start with, then to adjust colour temp to 6500k with the brightness adjusted as per the calibration process.
 
How many hours has the older monitor been on?
LED colour can change over time and use. I would guess you backlight is not as white as on the old one as it is on the new one.

I guess you could check this by swapping over the leads to see if the colours stay the same?
 
Random thought?

Setting aside the possible degradation of the older monitor. I note you have two GPU's but what happens with the profiles that you achieve calibrating the right & left (1 & 2) screens??? The reason I pose the question is how does the Spyder software allocate the profiles......................both are presumably in the Windows folder but is the Spyder software doing its job or is Windows loading the same profile into both GPU's?

As I said random thought as I do not know how in the case of more than 1 screen how one calibrates the no2 screen.................................I seem to recall that not all calibrators and their software can do more than 1 screen???

Edit ~ according to the Datacolor site it is only the Pro, Elite and HD versions software that can be used for multi monitor setups. The Express will not do this.
 
Last edited:
Hi

What version of the spyder do you have? I had the spyder 3 pro and had issue calibrating 2 Dell 2209wa's.

No matter what I did one was always a bit darker than the other. I bought a i1 display pro and now both look near identical.

With the i1 the brightness levels are different on both as requested during the calibration process, on the spyder they were set at 50% on both, but it still said both had been calibrated. :rolleyes:
 
I've got a spyder 3 pro and have no issue with my two 2209wa.

As above though what spyder do you have? Depending on your version it may not support multiple displays.

Also why the dual gpu? Sell them both and get a dual Dvi card. Shouldn't be expensive.
 
I have the Spider 4 Pro and my software version is 4.5.4. The spider software allows me to calibrate each monitor, swapping between the two, etc, so presuming it is ok. I believe it is something within the system inhibiting proper calibration of the colour temp on the right monitor.

Just to add, after calibrating I can then use the profile chooser to allocate the left profile to the right monitor. It makes it look a bit like the left monitor, but as it is using another screens calibration data I of course am not confident it is calibrated properly.

Dual DVI cards? Didn't even know they existed till I read this! Will it make any difference to performance? Will it solve this problem?

I've included a screenshot which shows AMD-1 image, allows me to swtich between the monitors, AMD-2 just seems to have a global setting and the colour balance only allows the left monitor to change. It says 'current display' and seems locked to left only.

View attachment 21723 View attachment 21724
 
Last edited:
Do the profiles through the windows colour profile manager....
 
Hi Andy, I'm going to need a little bit more info please. I've had a good look round the colour management settings to ensure that the 'use windows display calibration' box is ticked, but other than that was hoping to find a setting which allows full control to the Spider software to allow it to calibrate automatically. Doing it manually, well I'm not confident I'll achieve a suitable profile? Is that what you mean?
 
Dear Marcus, I could get it with my Spyder4Pro on both identical screens.

Alternatively, you could ask the Datacolor support, they can also help on this type of problems, because the Spyder4Pro should be able with the Spyder software, so maybe there is still something you missed and thay might find out. ;-)
 
Last edited:
Marcus Geezer said:
Thanks Ruben. I'll havea look. I'm almost waiting from someone to tell my motherboard doesn't support calibration on both monitors, something like that.
Click to expand...

Maybe more likely the AMD Vision Engine Controller might be the root of the problem. A bit like not letting the printer driver "take over the control" of making that LR printed print???

A quick tech support request to Datacolor all being well (as suggested above) will throw some light on the issue and get you back on track :)
 
The data colour site is saying that with the pro it will only be able to manage one LUT (?), so you need to designate one monitor as your 'main' for editing and the other just for menu's etc. Even if you have multiple GPU's. Need to upgrade to elite to calibrate two monitors and have them look the same, at about £60.
 
Marcus Geezer said:
The data colour site is saying that with the pro it will only be able to manage one LUT (?), so you need to designate one monitor as your 'main' for editing and the other just for menu's etc. Even if you have multiple GPU's. Need to upgrade to elite to calibrate two monitors and have them look the same, at about £60.
Click to expand...

AFAIK ~ LUT means Look Up Table and the software loads that into the GPU upon PC bootup

But as for the multi monitor capability - at the end of this page http://spyder.datacolor.com/display-calibration/ it says the Pro & Elite are multi monitor models. What page did you fid the info on that appears to contradict that "tick" in their own comparison table???

Edit ~ found this page in the KB support section http://support.datacolor.com/index.php?/Troubleshooter/Step/View/4 where it talks about LUTs and that Elite version of the software has a couple of added bonuses for fine tuning two monitors where you definitely have 2 LUTs which surely you do because toy have two separate cards :)

Edit 2 ~ found on the Colour Confidence site re the added software features:-

StudioMatch - enables visual fine-tuning of multiple studio displays to match the way you see colour.

SpyderTune - lets you fine-tune multiple displays for matching brightness, gamma and white point in a side-by-side viewer. The slider controls provide precision control and you see the adjustments in real time to make it easy to get the closest match possible with your multiple displays - See more at: http://shop.colourconfidence.com/pr...er4elite-upgrade-package#sthash.DcSOF6z6.dpuf
 
Last edited:
Marcus do you know you can manually adjust one of your monitors to match the other? You can do it via Spyder Tune

SCGpzb8.jpg


I'm not sure about Spyder Pro, but I have this option in my Elite version.

As you can see I have it shifted a lot to Purple. I have a problem with my Spyder calibrating my both monitors (the main one is Dell) with a green tint. Before you contact Datacolor costumer service I can tell you that it is a bit of waste of time and because of that I won't be buying any more of their products.

Also their software is quite confusing.

BTW I don't bother with Studio Match, I find the results are hit and miss and I can get more similar result calibrating both monitors separately.
 
Last edited:
If there really is a limitation in the software (that's all there will be) use an open source calibrator such as Argyll. http://dispcalgui.hoech.net/

Unfortunately, I have neither ATI graphics nor Spyder calibrator so cannot point you in the right direction.
 
Hi guys, thanks everyone for responding.

Here is the text from the data colour site troubleshooter area, however on a re-read I think it says you can have two LUT's but only if your graphics card allows? Will my GPU's allow that? I think it is also saying that to calibrate both monitors properly using the sypder you need the elite version, as you guys say.


I have two (or more) monitors attached to my Windows computer and both are calibrated, but they still don't look the same, why?
Here is some technical information about using two (or more) seperate displays on one single graphics card on a Windows computer system:

Each ICC profile has got two parts. One part will be used by the color management of Windows and it's applications, the other second part will be loaded into the Lookup-Table (LUT) of your graphics card. This is what the SpyderUtility does on boot-time. See the LUT as a kind of translation table for creating the right colors.

To calibrate and use two displays on one and the same Windows computer, you need a graphics card with two separate Lookup Tables (LUT).
But this exists only on newer and high quality graphics cards or if you have two separate graphic adapters in your system.

Several graphics cards offer two or more display connectors, but they only have one LUT on the corresponding Chip-Set. Therefore it's impossible to use two separate correction curves for these two connected screens. But you can still calibrate your primary display and use the second one (uncalibrated) for tools and pallets.

From the outside, you can't see if your graphics card has got one or multiple LUTs. To be sure about your graphics cards techical LUT speicifications, please directly get in touch with the tech support of your graphics cards manufacturer directly.

Most Windows laptops use standard video cards with one single LUT!



If you use multiple displays connected to the same computer and have got seperate LUTs for each display, use StudioMatch and SpyderTUNE (both available in Spyder4ELITE) in order to match the different luminance levels of these displays and to visually match the different light spectrum in case these displays use different backlight technologies (e.g. CCFL, LED...).
 
I don't really understand what you're doing wrong, I have a spyder 3 pro running 2 calibrated screens with windows 7 and ati software on defaults with no extra faffing required.

Maybe it's the twin gpu that is confusing matters?

Maybe it's worth listing the steps you went through to get to this point? Did you change anything in the ati or windows settings? Can you see the two profiles you created with the spyder software in windows profile management?
 
neil_g said:
I don't really understand what you're doing wrong, I have a spyder 3 pro running 2 calibrated screens with windows 7 and ati software on defaults with no extra faffing required.

Maybe it's the twin gpu that is confusing matters?

Maybe it's worth listing the steps you went through to get to this point? Did you change anything in the ati or windows settings? Can you see the two profiles you created with the spyder software in windows profile management?
Click to expand...

Hi Neil,

See if this sheds any light.

Built the PC myself about two years ago, installed and updated all software drivers etc, all is running latest versions (as far as I know). Used to use a standard HP square flatscreen monitor, but quickly changed to a U2412M connected through DVI which I calibrated with no problem. I used the TFT as a 2nd monitor connected through VGA, and tried to calibrate it once without success, I put this down to the limitations of the monitor, however maybe not considering current situation? Both monitors then were connected to the single HD 5450 GPU.

Recently bought the 2nd U12412M along with a 2nd HD 5450 to connect via DVI. Noted that even though same box, the GPU circuit boards looked different and my PC seemed to use different drivers so after having calibration problems bought another GPU to match, to ensure it wasn't a hardware mismatch.

I've tried to install the latest version of the AMD Catalyst Driver package supplied with the cards on a cd-rom (and also the download from the site) however it gets to about 75% and just hangs and even though I've checked I have the correct service pack and Net4 stuff installed cannot get it to install. Running a 64 bit system I've presumed that I need to download the 64 bit version, should I try the 32 bit version?

I am currently running the AMD VISION Engine Control Center software which I believe was initially installed when I built the machine. Last update was 25 March 2013 and when I force it to check for updates it says latest version.

Before I started this thread, having investigated through a few forums I found that I needed to enable the Windows Colour Management, advanced tab to 'use windows display calibration' for both monitors.

If you need screen shots on anything, let me know.

Neil (and others) - I really appreciate the help however if it isn't as simple as adjusting a setting or updating a bit of software then I'm going to close it here and call in a local reputable IT guy to give the system a health check and a targeted fault find on this particular issue. For day to day work it isn't a major problem, however long term when I work on some specialist projects I need two calibrated screens to ensure good workflow. Any help in the meantime is very much appreciated.
 
Last edited:
Marcus

Why not send Datacolor a support request to get their insight on the matter ;) ? Though were I your shoes and they recommended the Pro to Elite upgrade I would say to them is that not only for fine tuning but I am seeing a marked difference in the effect of the profile(s).

As for the way the AMD driver installer hangs, I recall having such issues years ago when 'they' were still ATI even installing in safe mode did not work :( I switched to NVidia based GPU's since then :) You might have a damaged driver installation and that could be a contributing factor?

In regard to "Windows display calibration", not sure but if that is the modern version of the 'Gamma Tool' that is more likely to make trouble than help because the older wisdom was if using a calibrator you had to disable Windows Gamma Tool because of a conflict.

Best of luck getting it sorted.
 
5450s are fairly old and low power GPUs which might be the root of the problem, even with two of them. I ran my monitors on a single 7970 and even that is not the fastest and most modern card out there.
 
Last edited:
I am sure you did it as part of resetting the monitors to default, but are they both in the same colour space? Not one Adobe and the other sRGB? That kind of difference might be more than the pro can handle.

I don't use spider, but with my calibrator I sometimes find different results if I come back from hibernate (2x dell u2410 + 1x Illyama)
 
No. Work got in the way and it all fell by the way side. Seemed to come to the conclusion that the kit and software as it is will not allow it to calibrate as I want it to. I basically applied the left monitor calibration to the right, applied a few manual tweaks to the monitor settings and use that. I use the left monitor for calibrated processing work and the right for menus, netflix, etc. If/when work calms down a bit I'll have another look.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top