How To: Game With Black Bars (non-widescreen)?

whammy · Post by **whammy** » 29 Jul 2007, 16:00

Shameless Bump.

I am having the same problem, i have an Asus MW221U(1680x1050) with an ATI 2900XT.

I want to play CS:S at 800x600 but obviously i get horrible stretching, i tried the Powerstrip method but my Monitor flickers and rescales the image to fit the screen automatically if i even touch the blue arrows in powerstrip.

Reason i want to play at that resolution is i LAN alot and the monitors are all 4:3, and in a competitve scene its not wise to be always changing your resolution.

WiKKiD · Post by **WiKKiD** » 31 Jul 2007, 11:29

Hello to all.

I'm new here and I just got a WS monitor (Samsung 22" 226BW).

I'm really satisfied with it, except the fact that I can't play games that don't support WS resolutions.

To sum the thread up, is it possible to set a Scaled Image (fixed aspect ratio) on a ATi Radeon gfx with a Samsung 226BW?

I've tried setting this:

(connected via DVI).

And then setting the resolution, but only a few of them actually work without stretching it all the way: 1280x720,1280x768, 1360x768,1360x1024 and 1440x900. Unfortunately none of these use fixed aspect ratio (so A LOT of the screen goes to waste - not only the sides but also the top).

Is there some setting I'm missing here?

bdfy · Post by **bdfy** » 09 Nov 2007, 18:54

I got LG 206WTQ recently. Though most of the games i have supports wide ratio i just can't play it with my X1600. I want to go smaller down to 800*600. +There're 4:3 old games or ones i can't update (expensive traffic)
It seems to be easy to scale image with nvidea card, but with ATi it seems to be a challenge...
After some search i came uo with this
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=28031

"Use Centered Timing" in Catalyst Control Center Does Not Work on Certain Resolutions

In other words it doesn't work for _all_ 4:3 resolutions.

I see this topic several years old... Was it ever working ? Is there any solution for ATI users besides changing video card to nvidea ?

Caleb · Post by **Caleb** » 30 Jan 2008, 07:11

I use a Viewsonic vx1932wm Widescreen on Windows XP Home and
when I try to set the fixed aspect ratio on 1024x768 in Nvidia drivers
it still stretches.

Im using the Nvidia 169.21 Whql drivers on a 7600 GT AGP 256 MB Videocard.

hapveg · Post by **hapveg** » 27 Apr 2008, 00:16

"Use Centered Timing" in Catalyst Control Center Does Not Work on Certain Resolutions

In other words it doesn't work for _all_ 4:3 resolutions.

I see this topic several years old... Was it ever working ? Is there any solution for ATI users besides changing video card to nvidea ?

It's taken me a couple of days, but I've got it working. I think it could be fixed by using the official Catalyst drivers of at least version 8.4, instead of using the Omega drivers, but to be sure it's not something minor I'll include all the steps I've taken.

I'm using a Samsung 205BW connected by DVI to an ATI X1900XTX.

3 weeks ago: A new install of WinXP Pro, install Omega 8.4, monitor is detected as plug and play (works fine).
2 weeks ago: Windows Update overwrites Omega with some generic basic drivers. Reinstall Omega 8.4
Yesterday, spend a few hours on this forum, fiddle with Display Properties - Settings - Advanced. Omega drivers include plenty of options, changing the display settings to 'not scale' does nothing, 'maintain aspect ratio' is ignored. There are similar options in the ATI tray tool installed with Omega, but again these do nothing.

At this point it is impossible to get a 4:3 ratio / black bars at the left and right of my screen.

Today: Install PowerStrip, it's a fairly complex program, but fiddling with many settings I manage to get a 4:3 ratio, but only at odd resolutions (1400*1050), any old games automatically shift to popular resolutions (1024*768) which streches the screen. I try for a couple of hours, but cannot get a 4:3 aspect ratio at popular resolutions.

Install monitor drivers, it's a 100kb file and seems to just change the name of my monitor from plug and play to SyncMaster 205BW. I retest the previous steps, but the monitor drivers seem to change nothing.

I uninstall PowerStrip and the Omega drivers, and download the official ATI drivers with the bloated Catalyst Control Center, afterwards install .NET 3.5.

Start Catalyst - Advanced, Digital Panel - Attributes - Image Scaling, and it all works perfectly.

I can get a 1024*768 with huge black bars on all 4 sides, or have it streched and get small black bars at the left / right.

fe7 · Post by **fe7** » 02 Jul 2008, 07:43

yo. regarding wc3: TFT...

recently heard this suggestion from a member of a different forum, can someone try it out for me as I am not using my widescreen right now?

-how to resize wc3 screen

Goto regedit: HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareBlizzard EntertainmentWarcraft IIIVideo

then resheight, click decimal tab and type in the number you want (768 for your monitor)

then reswidth, click decimal tab and type in number you want (1024) for your monitor.

divide both length and height of the decimal resolution by 2.56 and input that for hexadecimal values respectively

gg

P-Storm · Post by **P-Storm** » 02 Jul 2008, 08:05

You could tic that decimal button with the registry.

The registry work, but it stretches :(

fe7 · Post by **fe7** » 02 Jul 2008, 08:54

wait, set it to 1024x768

P-Storm · Post by **P-Storm** » 02 Jul 2008, 10:36

In the detailed report you'll see Ibrin comment about the radio buttons, my about the registry and in the report itself that is stretches.

BlueTemplar · Post by **BlueTemplar** » 05 Feb 2009, 19:24

Hi, I have a 1280x800 LCD laptop with a S3 VIA Chrome9 HC integrated graphic card.
I only have the choice between 1:1 or Full Scaling, but I would REALLY like to have Aspect Scaling too.

It's especially annnoying, since the games that would benefit from it the most like Starcraft, Diablo2... are also those my system is supposed to run the best - it has trouble with more recent games, as well as with the most recent DOS games running in DosBox.

Is there any program that could do that for me? PowerStrip's custom resolutions button is greyed out for me, and I can't seem to find a way to activate it.

Or maybe I could "trick" the PC into thinking it has a 1024x768 screen instead of a 1280x800?

Should I try installing Nvidia or Catalyst Control Center without the drivers (is that even possible) and setting this option from there?

Thanks in advance for your answer!

Kojiro_39 · Post by **Kojiro_39** » 02 Jun 2009, 15:07

Hi, i have a nvidia 9800 gtx+ how can i do a 4:3 ratio in my acer x193hq widescreen?

Widescreen Gaming Forum