[pz3shwks]

I'm having this very strange problem where in-game text has black characters. Parts of the letters and words will be the normal white color while other parts are black, making the text illegible. Currently this is affecting Deus Ex Human Revolution, Serious Sam HD, and Civilization 4. I thought it was originally a bug with one of the games, but now that it has the same problem throughout three games, I suspect something is wrong with my system. Any ideas?

[starjax]

what video card do you have? Have you tried updating your video drivers?

[pz3shwks]

EVGA Nvidia GTX 580, with the latest WHQL drivers

[starjax]

have you checked resolution of your monitor? Same thing can happen if your running games at 1080x724 on a LCD instead of the native resolution.

[pz3shwks]

I'm using the my TV's default 1080p resolution in-game.

[starjax]

you said tv. A monitor is designed to display text easily and at close distance versus a tv. I run a pc as a media center. I see issues with text unless I lower the resolution.

some suggestions:
1: lower resolution 1366x768 works for me.
2: try going into Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Display and change text to 125%
3: while in the control panel, click on "adjust clear type text" on the left pane. Verify that cleartype is enabled.

[pz3shwks]

I tried lowering the resolution, but that only makes the bugged text bigger. I also tried removing the high DPI I had (it was at 150%), but the problem persisted. The Clear Type is also enabled.

[starjax]

weird. Wonder if you can take a screen shot if it would show the issue? It could be possible a corrupted font.

The Windows operating system has a font cache file that is located here: C:\Windows\System32\FNTCACHE.DAT

Delete this file, and restart your system.

[pz3shwks]

i deleted the file and restarted, but it didn't help.

[pz3shwks]

here's the best I can do for pictures, sorry for the quality, they were taken with my phone.

As you can see, parts of the letters are black. It doesn't look that bad up close, but I'm about 6 feet away from my monitor/tv, so the glitch makes it illegible.

[pz3shwks]

It appears that this problem only happens when the game is in fullscreen mode. When I put it in windowed mode, the letters are fixed, although as I play around with different resolutions, the letters will begin to become corrupted the higher up i go.

[starjax]

how are you connected to the tv? through vga, dvi, hdmi, display port? It may make a difference if you switch and see if that helps.

I would also recommend that you check the firmware on your tv for any updates. You may also be able to go into your graphics (under display / adjust desktop size and position). You can change the scaling options there. By changing from display to gpu may help. Unfortunately its going to be trial and more trial till you see some differences.