# Fixed ratio scaling on Nvidia cards



## Warrgarbl (Jan 22, 2014)

Hello everyone,

I have recently bought an Asus PB248Q monitor with a resolution of 1.920x1.200. I thought that I would be able to play many of my older favorite games which run a resolution of 800x600 in exact 2x scaling without any blurring. This is, however, not the case.

Do you guys know any way to make games scale to a fixed aspect or how to remove the blurring? I have googled a lot and I'm none the wiser.


----------



## pigulici (Jan 22, 2014)

If you will play on LCD monitor(not CRT), any resolution beside native resolution of the monitor(the recommended resolution from manufacturer), will give you blur images, that is a technology limitation,hardware, not software; for each pixel from your monitor you must have 1 pixel from image, if you have 2 pixel or 1/2 pixel from image(or any proprotion beside 1 to 1) for each pixel of monitor,hardware speaking, you will have interpolation, so blur...So in short if you wan see the image "crisp", go with monitor with resolution supported by game or CRT monitor...


----------



## Ruyki (Jan 22, 2014)

open nvidia control panel, then:

display -> adjust desktop size and position

then open the scaling tab

pick "Aspect ratio" as your scaling mode
set "perform scaling on" to "GPU"

NOTE: setting "perform scaling on" to "Display" may also work

EDIT: if that doesn't work, you may also need to tick "override the scaling mode set by games and programs"


----------



## Blue-Knight (Jan 22, 2014)

Warrgarbl said:


> I thought that I would be able to play many of my older favorite games which run a resolution of 800x600 in exact 2x scaling without any blurring.


You have to disable scaling on your GPU. That's how I do it.

The images are displayed in its native size, no scaling at all (the rest of your monitor area is padded with black). That's the only way to not get blurred images.


----------



## Frick (Jan 22, 2014)

Blue-Knight said:


> You have to disable scaling on your GPU. That's how I do it.
> 
> The images are displayed in its native size, no scaling at all (the rest of your monitor area is padded with black). That's the only way to not get blurred images.



It's annoying when playing really old games at 480x320 or something though.


----------



## Blue-Knight (Jan 22, 2014)

Frick said:


> It's annoying when playing really old games at 480x320 or something though.


I agree. For those I would prefer a CRT monitor.


----------



## Warrgarbl (Jan 23, 2014)

I think I might not have made it sufficiently clear what I was asking for. I am aware that I can change the scaling in the Nvidia control panel. I usually leave it at aspect ratio scaling instead of stretching or 1:1.

The question though is if I can influence the behavior of the upscaling. If my monitor runs at 1.920x1.200 and the game has a resolution of 800x600 and I have aspect ratio scaling active it would precisely double every pixel which SHOULD give me a sharp, although pixelated image with 4 actual pixels for each original pixel and black borders left and right.

The default behavior however is that it will still apply blurring to the image. I was asking if there is a way to circumvent that so that I may see the game in 2x with each original pixel being represented by 4 actual pixels without blurring.


----------



## pigulici (Jan 23, 2014)

In short: No.


----------



## BiggieShady (Jan 23, 2014)

Warrgarbl said:


> The question though is if I can influence the behavior of the upscaling. If my monitor runs at 1.920x1.200 and the game has a resolution of 800x600 and I have aspect ratio scaling active it would precisely double every pixel which SHOULD give me a sharp, although pixelated image with 4 actual pixels for each original pixel and black borders left and right.



It's not 800 pixels horizontally, it's 1920 / 2 = 960 pixels ... you should use 960x600


----------



## buildzoid (Jan 23, 2014)

BiggieShady said:


> It's not 800 pixels horizontally, it's 1920 / 2 = 960 pixels ... you should use 960x600


could set it up to have black borders but I have no idea how one would do that


----------



## BiggieShady (Jan 23, 2014)

buildzoid said:


> could set it up to have black borders but I have no idea how one would do that



Have you tried making a custom 800x600 resolution but with gpu scaling set to "Aspect Ratio". Set it to override the defaults.
It should stretch only 600 to 1200 vertically and give you 1600 pixels horizontal range with black bars left and right.

Disregard that, aspect ratio setting is not tied to custom resolutions. Still worth a try as a global setting, it can be set in nvidia control panel to run on display or gpu.


----------



## qubit (Jan 23, 2014)

Warrgarbl said:


> I think I might not have made it sufficiently clear what I was asking for. I am aware that I can change the scaling in the Nvidia control panel. I usually leave it at aspect ratio scaling instead of stretching or 1:1.
> 
> The question though is if I can influence the behavior of the upscaling. If my monitor runs at 1.920x1.200 and the game has a resolution of 800x600 and I have aspect ratio scaling active it would precisely double every pixel which SHOULD give me a sharp, although pixelated image with 4 actual pixels for each original pixel and black borders left and right.
> 
> The default behavior however is that it will still apply blurring to the image. I was asking if there is a way to circumvent that so that I may see the game in 2x with each original pixel being represented by 4 actual pixels without blurring.


As others have said, you can't.

That's because all the monitor manufacturers in their infinite wisdom assume that a scaled picture should always be anti aliased with no option to turn it off and the result is that it looks crap.

I'll bet when the 4K displays become standard, a 1080 picture will look like crap on them due to this, even though simply using 4 monitor pixels for each pixel in the signal would look just fine.


----------



## Frick (Jan 23, 2014)

Or you could do what I do and just play the games without bothering. You get used to it. 

And check out this. Some games have mods as well.


----------

