second monitor looks awful (aliased, and the colors are wrong).

Question

I have a computer I built. Two identical monitors are plugged into the motherboard on-board graphics. The two displays are Dell S2340M. The motherboard is GA-Z87X-UD3H and the processor is i7-4770k. I used to have a graphics card, but the HDMI out on it broke, so now I have my two displays plugged into the motherboard. One is plugged in through HDMI. The other through DVI.

The display plugged in through HDMI is working perfectly. The second one, plugged in through DVI is not. It is blurry, aliased, and everything looks on it as if it's not 32bit color.

I also run mac on the computer, and I found the following article which sounds like the problem I'm having:

http://www.mathewinkson.com/2013/03/force-rgb-mode-in-mac-os-x-to-fix-the-picture-quality-of-an-external-monitor

How do I force RGB mode on the display or trouble shoot it? The resolution is correct, but I think windows 7 is treating it as a TV versus an LCD display.

Good display:

Bad display:

Answer 1

Turns out the problematic display was set to movie mode in its preset modes (display configuration button on display). Once I set it to standard, the problem was fixed.

Answer 2

Going to System Preferences → Monitor you can:

• Change the resolution. Sometimes the density of the 1080p resolution can mess up with the pixel density and the color binding. I went from 1080p to 1600 x 1900 and the visuals changed drastically.

• Use the Calibration Assistant. By clicking on Color → Calibrate.... By carefully following the instructions, this will automatically set the correct color scheme rendered by the Mac on your screen.

This worked for me.