# forcing screen resolution?!



## d1nky (Mar 12, 2013)

okay, the reason I haven't bought a new monitor is because a long time ago I heard about forcing screen resolutions through vga.

I have a 1440x900 @60hz max display and today was able to force 1920x1200 '60hz, I may try more later. done though ccc/windows and not regedit.

however the font isn't as clear as it can be? anyone got any tips on how to neaten this up?

thanks


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## Law-II (Mar 12, 2013)

Hi

Try this:

[Catalyst Control Center][preferences advanced view] select-My Digital Flat-Panels / select - Pixel Format [Select a pixel format for this display] select - RGB 4:4:4 Pixel Format PC Standard (Full RGB) and Apply

*If windows 8 Pro uses clear type give it a go
[Windows] Open Control Panel/Display/select - Adjust ClearType text / select Turn on ClearType and go Next select Keep current resolution 1920x1076 go Next and follow the guide; then apply

atb (all the best)

Law-II


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## d1nky (Mar 12, 2013)

thanks, although I don't have 'my digital flat panels' . ive set font size to medium and messed about with clear type, sharpness and fine settings. Nearly there.


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## qubit (Mar 12, 2013)

It's a physical impossibility to show a resolution higher than the panel can display. This is why the picture isn't clear and will never be perfectly clear.

All the driver software is doing is mapping more than one pixel to the display's pixel and smoothing out the resulting scrunchiness with antialiasing.


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## d1nky (Mar 12, 2013)

so in laymans terms its just compressing pixels, graphics card putting out more and screen showing the same with more?. however, in game and benchmarks does look a lot better. and performs the same to as when I hooked up a 50inch screen.

so like a 50inch display makes 1080p fit screen, this works the other way round?


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## qubit (Mar 12, 2013)

d1nky said:


> so in laymans terms its just compressing pixels, graphics card putting out more and screen showing the same with more?. however, in game and benchmarks does look a lot better. and performs the same to as when I hooked up a 50inch screen.
> 
> so like a 50inch display makes 1080p fit screen, this works the other way round?



Sorta. You're still seeing a 1440x900 picture, that's the crucial point. So yes, you could call it compressing pixels in a way, but you're not seeing any more detail than before. If anything, one could argue that you're actually seeing _less_ detail due to the antialiasing. You should also be losing fps performance in your games, because the graphics card is outputting more pixels, only to then perform a transformation to show them with less pixels.

Finally, the physical size of the display makes no difference, only resolution does. A 1080p 2" screen will present just the same rendering load on your graphics card as a 200" one.

EDIT: Just wanna add that in certain games you may actually like the effect from an artistic perspective. I certainly liked modern games on a standard def television - really gave it that "arcade" feel!


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## lemonadesoda (Mar 12, 2013)

Getting the GPU to produce a 1920x1200 output and then "forcing" the monitor to take that input and display it on 1440x900 does this:

1./ The GPU "works harder" to create the 1920x1200 output than at 1440x900. It will have a significantly lower FPS and will consume more graphics and possibly more system memory (depends on game and rendering/texturing engine).
2./ The monitor "works harder" to take the 1920x1200 and downsample it to 1440x900. It will increase the lag on the monitor and it will still display the native 1440x900 pixels, not more.

If it "looks better" downsampled to 1440x900 rather than native 1440x900 then that is only because in the downsampling transformation from 1920x1200 to 1440x900 it is doing some very rough and ready pixel averaging.  This is sort of an equivalent concept to anti-aliasing only done in a rather suboptimal, naiive way.

A properly AntiAliased rendered picture at 1440x900 will always look better (sharpness and quality) than a 1920x1200 downsampled to 1440x900 with onboard monitor trickery.

If you PREFER the downsampled look, then it is because you like the out-of-focus blurryness. However, you pay by loss of detail that would be retained in properly AA scene, and you pay by additional monitor lag. In terms of FPS? It might be your GPU can render non AA 1920x1200 at the same speed as 1440x900 with AA.  Hard to tell without benchmarking and will differ for each game.

Net net? Don't do it.The better options is to turn AA on and turn on other post-rendering-effects at the native 1440x900.


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## SaltyFish (Mar 12, 2013)

d1nky said:


> okay, the reason I haven't bought a new monitor is because a long time ago I heard about forcing screen resolutions through vga.
> 
> I have a 1440x900 @60hz max display and today was able to force 1920x1200 '60hz, I may try more later. done though ccc/windows and not regedit.
> 
> ...



I think your "long time ago" was back in the CRT days. You could force a higher resolution on a CRT and actually have it display as such (though at a lower refresh rate) up to a certain limit (depends on the quality of the monitor). LCDs are nowhere as versatile as CRTs when it comes to different resolutions. This is due to the way the two technologies work (analogue vs. digital). LCDs have a "native resolution", the one resolution where it will display 1:1. Anything lower than that native resolution will be stretched and look very blurry (newer screens may have an option to center it and not stretch it). Anything higher will either not display, get downsampled, or have lines dropped.


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## Krnt (Mar 12, 2013)

lemonadesoda said:


> If it "looks better" downsampled to 1440x900 rather than native 1440x900 then that is only because in the downsampling transformation from 1920x1200 to 1440x900 it is doing some very rough and ready pixel averaging. This is sort of an equivalent concept to anti-aliasing only done in a rather suboptimal, naiive way.



Hhmm, pretty interesting explanation here, but I'm not sure about it.

I've been using an old Panasonic 32" LCD TV TC-32LX70 with a resolution 1366x768 5ms, wich I normally use it with a resolution of 1824x1028@60Hz downsampled using the HDMI in 1080p, and its obviously far better than native with antialiasing, and recently I raised it even more to 2020x1136@60Hz achieving far better colors and contrast for some reason. 

Even though I'm not sure, but I think that increasing the rendering resolution helps some resolution dependent shaders, I've seen that help in a lot of games, achieving a more crisper image, (feels just like rising the internal resolution over your native in a console emulator)

Still that doesn't replace a good AA at all, I still use 8xAA in most games or 16x CSAA when I can.

About the increased lag, I haven't noticed it, much more noticeable is the fact the screen is 5ms and not 2ms, and obviously its never going to replace a good 1080p screen but in my case is better that using an LG 32LH30 1080p lcd that for some reason has worst screen quality.

For me if you have a good enough GFX card its worth it.


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## d1nky (Mar 12, 2013)

im going to test properly on both resolutions, and tbh I dong give a shit about this monitors health lol. I was thinking maybe I had some placebo effect with the quality?! 

although fps matches what it would be with 1080. I ran heaven and valley and didn't see any glitches but my memory usage was up, kind of expected. 

makes me wonder why do people force resolutions in the first place, like saltyfish said maybe from crt days.


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## SaltyFish (Mar 12, 2013)

The reason why people wanted to force a different resolution back then is probably the same as now: more desktop space and improved display quality in games. 2D graphics rendering has been more or less perfected. Hardware from 10 to 15 years ago is capable of 2D at 1080p and 1200p with little to no problems. 3D graphics were more primitive and less demanding back then, so it took less to maintain the same level of performance at higher resolutions. If a game slowed down too much at higher resolutions, you can turn it down. The lack of a native resolution in CRTs meant you didn't have to worry about blurring/scaling. It was more practical back then.

Raising the resolution was limited both by hardware and practicality. CRT resolutions were usually rated at the resolution which it displayed 60Hz or 72Hz, e.g. 1680x1260@60Hz. Going over this was sort of like overclocking a monitor, though usually less drastic. All but the most low-end monitors were able to go a "resolution step" or two higher than that. Higher-end monitors with better hardware were more likely to be able to get much higher resolutions than it was rated before it wouldn't display. Getting higher resolutions would lower the refresh rate (LCDs operate at fixed "refresh rates"; the term being similar but different when used in CRTs) such as 2048x1536@45Hz or under really good circumstances, 2560x1920@24Hz. And if you could get something as high as 2560x1920, the low refresh rates lead to flicker. So it was also about finding a resolution/refresh rate that your monitor could do and you were comfortable with.

Pushing the resolution lower would increase refresh rates: 1280x960@96Hz, 1024x768@121Hz, 800x600@144Hz, etc. So yeah... 120+Hz has been around for a while and was easily doable on a good CRT even if it was at a lower resolution.


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## d1nky (Mar 12, 2013)

I see. seems crazy that just about anything can be 'tweaked'. I may take some screenshots in game and weigh up the costs/benefits. or stop being a cheap bastard and actually buy a new monitor lol


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## ghandi1 (Feb 5, 2014)

SaltyFish said:


> The reason why people wanted to force a different resolution back then is probably the same as now: more desktop space and improved display quality in games. 2D graphics rendering has been more or less perfected. Hardware from 10 to 15 years ago is capable of 2D at 1080p and 1200p with little to no problems. 3D graphics were more primitive and less demanding back then, so it took less to maintain the same level of performance at higher resolutions. If a game slowed down too much at higher resolutions, you can turn it down. The lack of a native resolution in CRTs meant you didn't have to worry about blurring/scaling. It was more practical back then.
> 
> Raising the resolution was limited both by hardware and practicality. CRT resolutions were usually rated at the resolution which it displayed 60Hz or 72Hz, e.g. 1680x1260@60Hz. Going over this was sort of like overclocking a monitor, though usually less drastic. All but the most low-end monitors were able to go a "resolution step" or two higher than that. Higher-end monitors with better hardware were more likely to be able to get much higher resolutions than it was rated before it wouldn't display. Getting higher resolutions would lower the refresh rate (LCDs operate at fixed "refresh rates"; the term being similar but different when used in CRTs) such as 2048x1536@45Hz or under really good circumstances, 2560x1920@24Hz. And if you could get something as high as 2560x1920, the low refresh rates lead to flicker. So it was also about finding a resolution/refresh rate that your monitor could do and you were comfortable with.
> 
> Pushing the resolution lower would increase refresh rates: 1280x960@96Hz, 1024x768@121Hz, 800x600@144Hz, etc. So yeah... 120+Hz has been around for a while and was easily doable on a good CRT even if it was at a lower resolution.



HiSaltyFish
Please could you assist me with a resolution challenge.
I have recently loaded a modification for S.T.A.L.K.E.R SoC  and when I attempt to open the game , I get a black screen with the following message:
"Input signal out of range. Change settings to 1440 x 900 60 hz." I
I do not have that option on my PC the closest resolution is: 1366 x 768 then 1600 x 900. 
I am running Win 8 with the following hardware:

Win8 Pro 64 bit (6-2,Build 9200)

Processor: Intel (R) Core (TM) 2 Cpu 6600@2.40 GHz(2 Cpu’s) ~ 2.4GHz

RAM: 4096 Mb

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650

Monitor: HP L1908w
Please bear in mind that I am a complete novice at this and if anyone is kind enough to assist me , then it should be in very basic language.
Many Thanks
ghandi1


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## Bugler (Feb 5, 2014)

Your monitor has a number of pixels so you have your "native" resolution. For example, on a 1280 by 1024 "native" resolution it's (1280 times 1024) 1,310,720 pixels.

When I was working on my other computer I was using my old 17" LCD monitor with a native res of 1024 x 768 I had it displaying 1280 x 1024 because my video card was capable of it but while it looked sharper not everything is.


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## qubit (Feb 6, 2014)

ghandi1 said:


> HiSaltyFish
> Please could you assist me with a resolution challenge.
> I have recently loaded a modification for S.T.A.L.K.E.R SoC  and when I attempt to open the game , I get a black screen with the following message:
> "Input signal out of range. Change settings to 1440 x 900 60 hz." I
> ...


It looks like you're trying to display a resolution that's higher than the native resolution of the monitor. Most monitors will not display anything higher than what they are capable of. Those that do will either downsample it or use pan and scan. Basically, just display it at its native resolution of 1440x900 at 60Hz.


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## ghandi1 (Feb 6, 2014)

Bugler said:


> Your monitor has a number of pixels so you have your "native" resolution. For example, on a 1280 by 1024 "native" resolution it's (1280 times 1024) 1,310,720 pixels.
> 
> When I was working on my other computer I was using my old 17" LCD monitor with a native res of 1024 x 768 I had it displaying 1280 x 1024 because my video card was capable of it but while it looked sharper not everything is.


Hi Bugler
Thanks for the info, I however still need to force the resolution . How do I go about doing this?
Thaks again
Ghandi


qubit said:


> It looks like you're trying to display a resolution that's higher than the native resolution of the monitor. Most monitors will not display anything higher than what they are capable of. Those that do will either downsample it or use pan and scan. Basically, just display it at its native resolution of 1440x900 at 60Hz.



Hi qubit 
Thank you for your response. Is there nothing however that I can do to resolve this issue, I would desperately like to play this  game in the modification status.
Many Thanks
ghandi1


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## ghandi1 (Feb 6, 2014)

Hi qubit
It was remiss of to not tell you that I am able to display at 1600x1024 it therefore appears that the monitor can accomodate a higher pixell saturation, it yet does not have a setting for 1440x900?


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## qubit (Feb 6, 2014)

@ghandi1 It's possible that this resolution isn't supported at all on this monitor so there will be no picture. Regardless, you're better off just running it at it's native resolution for the best picture quality.

Try having a look at the manual and see what it says about supported resolutions. I'll do the same, but I'm not able to do that right now.


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