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About half the time, when my system starts, the BIOS screen (actually UEFI) is blurry. The image is fine once Windows or Linux starts.

I think that I know enough to believe the problem is the video BIOS, but is there a way to check or solve this?

Yan wrote:

About half the time, when my system starts, the BIOS screen (actually UEFI) is blurry. The image is fine once Windows or Linux starts.

I think that I know enough to believe the problem is the video BIOS, but is there a way to check or solve this?

Sounds like the EFI BIOS is mis-reading the EDID from your monitor and probably defaulting to a very low resolution. Your monitor is scaling it to its native resolution and making it look blurry. If, by chance, you are using a VGA connector, instead of a digital one, it is also possible that the monitor isn't auto-calibrating well. I'll assume you are using a digital video connector (DVI, HDMI, DP). If you can pause boot when the screen is blurry (go into setup or get a boot device prompt) then you should be able to find the info menu on your monitor, somewhere it will tell you what the resolution and refresh rate are. My Dell U2412Ms show it on the main menu. Some monitors have it buried in an info screen. Once you find it, make a note of the resolution and then when it boots with a clear screen, compare what it says.

--SS

How are you connected? Analog VGA, DVI-D, HDMI, DP? Is it a direct connection from PC to monitor, or is it passed through a conversion dongle?

do some EDID hacking

but it could be a number of things from reading different site. bad cable, bad port sending bad data, corrupt EDID.

I wouldn't worry about it. The initiation time of your monitor varies slightly because it polls periodically for signal in low-power/sleep.

The low resolution is totally harmless, it's just evidence that your motherboard firmware prioritizes startup speed over waiting for connected peripherals to respond because it didn't detect the monitor and its capabilities in time before continuing with it's boot sequence.

I'm assuming it's blurry only when you cold-boot and that a soft-reset where the monitor is already awake results in a higher-resolution BIOS mode?

What kind of blurry?

meerkt wrote:

What kind of blurry?

This kind of blurry.

I have a DVI-D single link connection; no dongle. And it also happens with a soft reset.

SecretSquirrel wrote:

Once you find it, make a note of the resolution and then when it boots with a clear screen, compare what it says.

Thanks for the suggestion!

With a clear screen, it says the resolution is 1280 x 1024, but when it's blurry, it's 1288 x 1024. And once I'm in Windows, it just says 1080p.

If you can adjust the mode set for the display to shave off that extra 8 pixels it might just fix its self. Otherwise, you'll have to figure out what is adding those extra 8 pixels to begin with, or why it's blurring like that at odd resolutions.

Yan wrote:

meerkt wrote:

What kind of blurry?

This kind of blurry.

I have a DVI-D single link connection; no dongle. And it also happens with a soft reset.

That doesn't look like a resolution scaling issue, it looks like the monitor isn't able to properly sync to the signal the card is putting out.

When it happens, what happens if you power cycle the monitor? That might tell us whether the problem is with the monitor or the GPU.

just brew it! wrote:

When it happens, what happens if you power cycle the monitor? That might tell us whether the problem is with the monitor or the GPU.

I've just tried it. Power cycling the monitor didn't help.

I don't usually do this, but bump.

Did you try a 2nd monitor or graphics card to see if the problem persists?

Yan wrote:

I don't usually do this, but bump.

I've been away for a week and your image link has expired - care to upload again?

Chrispy_ wrote:

I've been away for a week and your image link has expired - care to upload again?

Please try now. Thanks.

Oh, I've seen that before - Progressive scan over DVI-X with EDID horizontal resolution mismatch; It commonly used to happen on 1366x768 panels that were reporting by the EDID as 1360x768 instead.

1) Bad cable - have you tested with another one yet?
2) Faulty EDID entries in monitor firmware - either old or corrupt firmware - and this is rarely user-upgradeable
3) Really, *really* bad BIOS on your GPU. Can you test with the onboard IGP if the cable doesn't fix the issue?

1) I didn't have another DVI cable, but I did have an HDMI cable. It didn't help.

2) The monitor is an Asus VE228. I can't find any information on updating the firmware.

3) I have a Ryzen 5 1600, so no IGP. Oh well.

What's the GPU? You could try flashing the BIOS but they're not the sort of thing that vendors tend to offer.

Nonetheless, and at your own risk, there are plenty of sites that have GPU BIOS repositories and flashing tools.

I'd still be tempted to swap monitors with another system if you can, just to see if the problem moves with the monitor or stays with the GPU.

I'm lazy... I'd just shrug my shoulders and go wow "that's weird!" and move on with my life.

Sometimes it is AMAZING that everything works as well as it does even though the pc world is not a vertical as the mac one is.

Aranarth wrote:

I'm lazy... I'd just shrug my shoulders and go wow "that's weird!" and move on with my life.

I have a Sapphire Radeon RX 460 2 GB (OC).

I agree with you. Usually I'd be willing to take a chance and flash the GPU, but with the cost of buying a replacement GPU these days if something goes wrong, it's not worth it.

Edit: And if the problem is the monitor, it's also not worth buying another monitor.

My 3008wfp does this sometimes. Other times it gets confused during the boot process and goes to sleep.

I personally blamed the fact that this monitor is DP 1.1 and one of the first DP monitors to reach the market.

Based on your post I'm guessing the Displayport negotiation process must not be bulletproof.