Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hey all. I can get a CMV 20" screen for pretty cheap but the thing is its native resolution is 1400x1050.
From what I know most games don't support 1400x1050 res, so if i'll get the monitor i'll probably have to use it with non-native resolutions.

Will running it with other 4:3 resolutions like 1280x960 (that'd be the biggest one below 1400x1050 right?) look not so good cause it's not the monitor's native res?

What about using widescreen 16:10 resolutions like 1280x800, or even 1440x900, with aspect scalling and black bars, would that affect the screen quality?

Thanks in advance

Well actually a lot of games i played support 1400x1050
I play Warcraft 3 in 1400x1050 on my 20"ws (1680x1050) with black bars on the sides

I would strongly oppose running a non-native res (streched) on your, or any LCD for that matter. The pixels interpolate at places, becomes very noticable when you have in-game text. But does'nt look good overall.

In your case if you cant find your native I would run a 1280x1024 (5:4) res w/o scaling (centered w/ black bars around). I think running any other 'common' res would give away too much of the monitors' real-estate to black bars.

And no, running any other [lower] res w/o scaling (streching) is not going to affect the quality of the screen (just the size). It's just gonna be centered w/ black bars all around.

Thanks for the reply, i've already bought the amp a few days ago actually, and now most games got the option to choose 1400x1050, I guess with my old monitor it just didn't let me choose that res. However, I do want to try it with 16:1016:9 wide resolutions but the games don't give me the option to choose them, is there a way around it?

My guess is that the game cross-refrences it's resolution options with those that are supported by your monitor/driver (say when you go to display properties all the resolutions available on the slider) and just lists the ones in common.

If that is the case, if you use an Ati card you can try using Omega Drivers here which are custom drivers pre-tweaked based on Ati's Catalyst (they also have Nvidia drivers but I can't really vouch for them). The neat thing about them is they give you a lot of options, one being something called multires which allows you to set virtualy any resolution imaginable between 320x200 and your native (and then some). Alternatley go to Display Settings>Advanced>"monitor" tab and uncheck the box that says "hide modes your monitor cannot display." Then you can see all the resolutions available though be carefull not to choose one that is out of your pixel range, it might damage your hardware.

Maybe seeing that your hardware is capable of displaying these will free up other resolutions in the game. Plus im sure omegas have more scaling options if needed.

The other thing you could do is force the in-game ws resolution through solutions found on this site, but i dont know if it will bode well for pillar-boxing.

Well those are my thoughts at least, btw what's your gfx and what games are you talking about?

Thanks again man.
I already used the nvidia resolutions menu to add custom ones. I added both 1440*900, and 1280*800.
1440*900 shifted the screen as I moved the cursor to the left and right edges (since it's wider than my monitor's native res).
Is it possible to set it to be smaller so it'll fit inside the screen? or is there a wide res between 1440*900 and 1280*800?
When I tried the games options menus again (HL2, Fear, Company of Heroes) the resolutions were avialable their too.
BTW my gfx is 7600gt.

idk, having the screen 'shrink to fit' so to say kinda goes against the nature of the pixels themselves. What you're askin for here is to cut out 40 pixels to to make the width an even 1400. I have never heard of anything that lets you do this but maybe you can find some custom res program that lets you set the res to the pixel, but then again that really would'nt look too good on the screen (if it was streched).

There are some custom pillarboxing programs around if you wanan try those. I dont really know how far you can go with em though.

But good luck anyways, glad you have your games working in ws.