Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hello boys, all of you are accordingly saying that having fullscreen while mantaining 4:3 aspect ratio is possible with NVidia.
Well, i have a widescreen laptop with nvidia geforce fx 5200 go, can you please tell me how to do it?
Because, the best i can have is the 4 black bands, not just 2.

I have a Compaq R3000z notebook w/ 15.4" widescreen LCD. It uses the Geforce4 440 chipset. I found a "Fixed Aspect Ratio Scaling" option which looks like it should add black bars to the sides of non-widescreen resolutions. When I enable it however, I get a scrambled picture when I run a game using 640 x 480, 800 x 600, etc.

I called HP Tech Support and inquired about this problem. They say that the notebook isn't at fault, it's the software I'm trying to run. They say that "Fixed Aspect Ratio" option is more for multimedia programs and movies rather than games. The scrambled picture I'm getting is normal they say. If I want to run at the smaller resolutions I'm going to have to either go w/ the small window or stretched picture. Doesn't sound right, but if this is happening to everybody else, I won't complain.

Could anybody else please try this option on their notebooks w/ the Geforce4 and try running a game at non-widescreen resolutions (I was running Doom 3 at 640 x 480)? I may take some pictures later w/ my digital camera to illustrate the problem.

Pictures would be interesting.

Since I don't have a GF440 chip, I can't be of help, sorry. Are there any options in the BIOS that have anything to do with graphics? (I know my HP has hardly any BIOS options... but an IBM T22 has so many it's incredible!

Other than that, driver version? What does it do 'stretch to fit screen'? And with other settings? What panel res/manufacturer is it?

I know, lots of questions. :)

Ok, I took a bunch of pics. My BIOS didn't have any graphics options. All it showed was how much memory my video has (64MB). I don't know the make of the LCD, how do I find that out? I took the screens from an angle to avoid the glare from the flash.

So the driver version is 47.12? (I'm not certain how nVidia counts it's dll versions...)

About all I can suggest is try the latest drivers.

Does it still mess the screen up if you set it to 800x600 and 'fixed aspect scale'?

I'm currently running the latest drivers available from HP/Compaq... nVidia's latest unified drivers don't support their mobile solutions... I found the latest unified drivers that were modified to support the mobile cards, but those gave me the same results. This happens at any resolution. I've tried 640 x 480, 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768. I've tried 3 games: Diablo II, FarCry and Doom 3.

Try the Omega Drivers. If they do the same, all I can really suggest is getting in contact with HP and asking them what they can/will do about it...

Sorry I can't be more help.

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried the Omega drivers, but I got the same results. I've actually already called HP, but they told me that Fixed Aspect Ratio Scaling option is more for multimedia programs, not games. Somehow I doubt this. I want to call them again, but I want to get confirmation from another mobile GeForce4 owner whether this option works or not for them. I guess I just need to hope somebody w/ one eventually reads this thread.

Well, if it's for 'multimedia' programs, try one - then call again. ;) Although I wonder what that HP techs definition of 'multimedia' is, 'cause I can't think of anything more 'multimedia' than a game. I mean, graphics, sound... what more is there on a PC without getting a force feedback mouse/joystick? :D

Well, I called them again. Told them this problem was happening in plain Windows as well. Didn't think of trying that before. They kept on saying that I shouldn't be running my notebook at lower than 1280 x 800 when I told them to try setting their notebook to a lower res w/ the Fixed Aspect Ratio Scaling on. Apparently it worked for them. They said the image was fuzzy, but readable. For me, it's not readable at all.

They told me to use the recovery CD that came w/ my notebook to restore the notebook to its original configuration and update the display driver from there. The woman on the phone said "I'm sure you won't have this problem afterwards." Somehow, I doubt that. They said if it continues to happen then I can have it sent to their service center. I was on the phone w/ them for over an hour.

Well, I called them again. Told them this problem was happening in plain Windows as well. Didn't think of trying that before. They kept on saying that I shouldn't be running my notebook at lower than 1280 x 800

What? Do they think that just because on the windows desktop is a particular res that the rest of it is too? The BIOS is the standard 320x240 of DOS, and the Windows XP boot screen is some stupid res like 640x400.

when I told them to try setting their notebook to a lower res w/ the Fixed Aspect Ratio Scaling on. Apparently it worked for them. They said the image was fuzzy, but readable. For me, it's not readable at all.

Well, no, it looks like the monitors out of sync. Which is only something I've ever experienced with a CRT. If you can find out the panel manufacturer, you might be able to find a driver for it specifically. That might help...

(I believe there is a program in the CD bootable linux distro 'Knoppix' that allows you to find that out, but you'd have to do some research on the subject.)

They told me to use the recovery CD that came w/ my notebook to restore the notebook to its original configuration and update the display driver from there. The woman on the phone said "I'm sure you won't have this problem afterwards." Somehow, I doubt that. They said if it continues to happen then I can have it sent to their service center. I was on the phone w/ them for over an hour.

My experience with phone techs is a poor one... but that... eesh. Try the restore, but somehow I doubt it'll work either. Of course, there doesn't seem to be any guarantee that sending it in will fix it, either...

Just an update for anyone keeping track of this thread -- I've posted over at the DNA drivers forum in the hope that somebody there will know how to enable this option, or can hack some drivers together for us that will let us access it.
The url of the thread can be found here: http://www.dna-drivers.nl/forums.php?m=posts&q=73

Peace.

Mal

Thanks Malgod

I've been waiting for a solution like this for a long time.


So I play Starcraft! I'm tired of the stretched out look, i wanted the largest 4:3 ratio possible!! hehe

Thanks for everyone who is currently working on a solution.

Well, good news -- KillerSneak, the developer of the DNAs, has agreed to take a look at it for us. It might be worthwhile if some other people chime in with support over in the thread I created, here: (http://www.dna-drivers.nl/forums.php?m=posts&q=73. The more people that express their desire to have it as a feature, the more likely KS will get around to implementing it, or at least telling us whether it's possible or not.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, after all!

Mal

I have exactly the same problem. I have a HP laptop with a Radeon 9200. I want stretch but with 4:3 aspect ratio. Stretch is good because I don't need perfect sharp display with games, but performance, and I'm sure using low res modes will grant me much more fps than using very high res modes. Moreover it's the only way to go if you want to play some games (such as those based on sprites) which run at 640x480 or less. Enabling stretch makes them full screen, but distorted! I hope there's a way to fix this with the drivers or editing the registry or something. The curious thing is that if you right click in the stretch option in the panel properties, and you click 'what's this', it says something about an option to keep aspect ratio, althugh it's nowhere! Check it out. I'll be reading this post, but if any of you find a solution, I would be very very grateful if you could e-mail me: [email protected] Thanx.

Marker: That's definately a problem. How does it look with the res set to your native 4:3 setting? On my 1680x1050 R3000T with an ATI chip, that would be 1400x1050, but if you have a different res screen it would be different.

My friend has an R3000Z and his fixed-aspect ratio scaling works fine, so it would probably be a hardware issue.

err...waitaminit...I just thought of something...the Doom 3 shots you showed were OpenGL....how does it look in lower resolutions at the desktop or in DirectX games? Maybe it's a glitch in the OpenGL code....

Back on topic, it would be nice if ATI would give us Radeon owners a 4:3 stretch mode, but I've found that most games that don't support widescreen will run in 1400x1050, so that's good enough for me.

Just an update for people who is still working on this problem:

I had the chance to work with a Vaio notebook which has a Radeon9200 video card and a widescreen monitor.

To my surprise, in that laptop the option "Stretch maintaining aspect ratio" WAS THERE, enabled... I tried installing starcraft and it works as expected: there are black stripes in the left and right but the game stretches to the top of the screen.

This means that it IS possible to do in the 9200, which makes me wonder that it might be VERY possible to it in other 9x00 video cards.

I checked everything I could and the biggest difference I noticed is that this vaio has a driver for its monitor and if you click on "driver details" for the monitor you will see that the driver is actually a .ICM file (a color profile file).

Just an update for people who is still working on this problem:

I had the chance to work with a Vaio notebook which has a Radeon9200 video card and a widescreen monitor.

To my surprise, in that laptop the option "Stretch maintaining aspect ratio" WAS THERE, enabled... I tried installing starcraft and it works as expected: there are black stripes in the left and right but the game stretches to the top of the screen.

This means that it IS possible to do in the 9200, which makes me wonder that it might be VERY possible to it in other 9x00 video cards.

I checked everything I could and the biggest difference I noticed is that this vaio has a driver for its monitor and if you click on "driver details" for the monitor you will see that the driver is actually a .ICM file (a color profile file).

I found a Sony Vaio with a Radeon 9000 IGP in it and a 1280x800 screen on display at Comp USA. This is just like my a75-s229 Toshiba sattelite, which also has a 9000 IGP and a 1280x800 screen. The sony has the aspect ratio option and my satellite does not. And just like you, the only difference is the sony has a monitor driver. I don't remember what kind it was but I would assume it was the same type.

*EDIT*
So I went to sony's support site and found some drivers for a model with a 1280x800 screen and a radeon 9200. http://esupport.sony.com/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=VGNA150&UpdateType=Everything I did not see any driver for the monitor so I think sony integrates their monitor driver installation into their graphics driver for the radeon. So I downloaded the graphics driver and tried installing it on my satellite. It was EXTREMELY customized. This nice looking vaio logo pops up and then a very sony like installation screen comes up. I have a feeling I was correct in my last guess that the monitor driver is integrated in this graphics driver. Of course, the full driver detected it wasn't the correct sony model and exits. So now I'm curious whether anyone can hack this up so we can install it for any model... or perhaps just extract the monitor driver from it.

i dont have a display option on my settings>advanced

i have a 1650x1050 screen with x600 radeon

how do i get a *normal* screen with blackbars?

edit: its a desktop computer HP

Are the ATi drivers installed correctly, or are you using the Catalyst Control Centre?

The Displays tab should be there in the advanced panel - that is where the option is to turn stretching on or off.