It's in the cards

Like televisions, monitors offer several adjustments for controlling picture quality. But it's your graphics card that collects all the screen-bound data and then sends it to the monitor. The two key settings are easily changed in Windows 95: go to Control Panel, double-click the Display icon, and click the Settings tab.
Screen resolution is the number of individual dots, or pixels, that make up the screen image. The most common settings are 640 horizontally by 480 vertically and 800 by 600, and some people use 1024 by 768 comfortably on a 17in monitor. The more pixels displayed, the sharper the image. Most applications automatically adjust to the set resolution, but some, including certain multimedia titles and games, may work at only one setting.
Colour depth is the total number of colours available for each pixel. It's often denoted by the bits allotted to each pixel: 8-bit colour is 256 (28) colours, 16-bit colour (or high colour) is 65,536 (216) colours, and 24-bit colour (or true colour) is 16,777,216 (16.8 million or 224) colours.
Selecting 8-bit colour can noticeably increase your graphics performance. Most business applications and many multimedia titles work fine at this colour depth.
You usually must reboot the computer for the change to take effect.

Get refreshed

Vertical refresh rate is the number of times per second that the graphics card draws (refreshes) the image on the screen. Rates lower than 75 screens per second (75Hz) produce a flicker on the screen that can cause eyestrain after long periods of viewing.
To reset the refresh rate, run the utility software that comes with your graphics card. Some cards can be set as high as 120Hz. But unless you're constantly working with very detailed graphics, rates higher than 80Hz just add an unnecessary processing burden.
If both your monitor and graphics card support Plug and Play Data Display Channel specifications, then you may not need to reset the refresh rate. The DDC spec allows the card and monitor to talk with each other, and automatically adjusts the refresh rate to the highest possible setting. But beware: if Windows 95 can't find the monitor's .inf file, it will set the refresh rate to a lowly 60Hz. To check, look in your monitor's setup utility for an announcement of the current refresh rate.

In the driver's seat

Make sure you're running the best software driver available. If you upgraded to Windows 95 you may still be stuck with a clunky real-mode driver instead of a more efficient protected-mode driver. Open Control Panel, double-click the System Properties icon, and click the Performance tab for a list of current real-mode drivers and other suboptimal conditions.
Even if you're using a protected-mode driver, there's no guarantee you have the best that's available. Your best bet is to download the latest drivers from your card vendor's Web site and install them yourself. Even if you've got a new graphics board with drivers on a floppy disk or CD-ROM, check the Website; video drivers tend to be updated very frequently.

Keeping it in memory

One of the biggest bottlenecks in getting high-resolution data to the screen is video memory. To gauge how much memory you need for a particular resolution and colour depth, just multiply the resolution (in pixels) by the colour depth (in bytes), then add 30 per cent for overhead.

Screen resolution and colour depth dictate the amount of video memory you need

If you're not sure how much memory is on your video card, open Control Panel and double-click the Display icon to see if the card's driver supports an information tab (names vary) that shows the amount of video memory currently installed.
If you need more memory, consult the manual or check with your vendor to see if your video card is expandable; some cards have sockets for memory upgrades. If yours doesn't, you'll need a new card. When ordering memory for an upgrade, make sure you know what type your card uses -- DRAM, VRAM, or one of the other new types of video memory.
- Kirk Steers