Again, one for the future forum searchers (and the justified ATI bashers)...

I have a good CRT monitor and an ATI Radeon X800 GTO card, and I had +set vid_displayfrequency 120 on my command line and vid_vsync 0 in my config so I thought everything was fine and dandy and smooth... but a few days ago I tried vid_vsync 1 (+ vid_restart) and was shocked to see it was at 56fps, meaning my monitor was going at 56hz!

vid_show[something] told me that available refresh rates went up to 85hz so I changed to +set vid_displayfrequency 85 and was happy with the improvement. I fiddled around in windows with the Catalyst thingy to try to find something like 120hz but had no luck.

Then to fix it and get 120hz, I searched for ATI refresh rate fix on Google (found http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Video-Tweak/ATI-Radeon-RefreshRate-Fix.shtml ) and installed the prog & ran it... after unticking the 'restrict to monitor limitations' or something, setting my QW 800x600 res to be 120hz, and a couple of reboots, I put +set vid_displayfrequency 120 on the command line and did some cl_maxfps 600 business and ba-boom, smoothest QW I've ever played with! gg

Perhaps my monitor has the wrong drivers or generic drivers installed or something, but this is a nice workaround if not, or if you can't locate the drivers / model of your monitor. I tried 150/154/160hz but monitor said it was out of range, so 120 it is!

Usually in recent graphics drivers, you can add custom resolutions and refresh rates for CRT monitors. Atleast with vista and nvidia, there is no need for 3rd party apps to do this.

You really need to install manufacturer's provided monitor .inf when you are using analog devices like CRT in order to get high refreshrate support for your monitor. The .inf will tell your operating system what are the limits for horizontal/vertical scanrate for your monitor. If the OS (in this case Windows) doesn't know the limits, it will not go beyond some "safe default values" that seem to limit the refreshrate to 85Hz when using default pnp monitor "drivers".

DVI is quite a different beast though, as it can tell your OS exactly what it supports. For example 120Hz TFTs don't need the monitor .inf installed to make them work at 120Hz, but that's just some extra info not related to this "problem".

What's DVI?

OK I found my monitor's drivers online (after looking at many pics to figure out what model it probably is), will install them later to make sure I'm not overclocking the monitor & tempting an electrical fire of some sort. Did read about someone with the same monitor not being able to get it over 85hz after they installed the drivers though... plus if it breaks then I don't mind as it just gives me a kick up the arse to buy one of those fancy LCD Samsung jobbies.

Digital Video Interface, a video interface used with digital displays like TFTs to connect with the computer/graphics card.

Installing monitor .inf and running the supported high refreshrates is not overclocking, it's using your monitor within the manufacturer's specifications. Also note that you can't exceed the limits set by the manufacturer since the monitor will just turn off the electron gun when this happens as a safety measure. Read: there's no way you can break anything doing this, if you can, you are a real pro that goes beyond the impossible.

Yea I figured that with the INF installed I wouldn't be able to go outside the recommended limits of scanrate, but I was a bit worried that I might be going outside the limits by NOT using the INF and using the third party tool instead. A quick google search found forums where people had said they pushed their monitor's refresh rates above the manufacturer's recommendations or limits in the INF files, and their monitor had broken / mini-exploded after a minute/day/week (as well as plenty of others who had said it was fine for ages).