Evga geforce730 with nvidia 352.30 driver in mint cinnamon 17.1

[Thomas Lübking]

Are you sure "1000x800" is a native resolution of that screen??
If not, and it's LCD, image will look horrible (the driver simply scales 1000x800 to some native resolution of that screen, eventually even 640x480)

640x480 is VGA - an industrie standard and the ultimate failsafe (since something that doesn't support VGA is simply unsopported)

What's the output of "xrandr -q" and -to be sure- the model description of the HP monitor?

Cheers,
Thomas