New Graphics Card - screen res issue

After all the random system crashes and 'blue screens of death' I bit the bullet and got shot of my Radion 1900xt and bought a gforce 6800gt. After updating drivers and cleaning out all the old ati crap it's working fine ( touch wood!! ). It really pisses me off how shoddy the ATI drivers are .. my AVG / Adaware apps to name a few got corrupted every couple of days and had to be reinstalled.

Anywho, I have one minor issue in that any screen resolution other than my current desktop setting ( 1024x768x32 ) produces a black verticle band padding out the right hand side of the screen making the graphics appear squashed slightly. I can't show you this in a screenshot as it looks fine there for some reason. Has anyone ever come across this before and is there some settings ( monitor of gfx card ) I can change to correct this?

I have a syncmaster 913n.

Any help appreciated.

Cheers
Stevie

Isn't that a 19" TFT monitor? You should be running it at 1280 x 1024.

I don't know any specifics about your monitor, but it's probably just an adjustment required there to stretch the screen. Many modern monitors remember a set of settings for each resolution, so you may have to set it a few times to get them all done but it should remember them after that.

@ Floyd - yes it's a 19th TFT, changing the reso to 1280x1024 just makes that reso work - the rest still have this banding. I prefer 1024 x 768 as I value my eyes :)

@ John, I can't set up different offsets for each resolution - at least I see no option to do this other than the current reso.

Now that I think about it when I first got a flat panel monitor it did not include a cable for digital connection. And it did seem like the analog "picture geometry" was a little off. But with a new cable ( DVI ? ) everything is fine. I think those old CRT-style adjustments such as horizontal position are no longer needed.

Seriously though, nothing but the native resolution makes sense on a flat panel. The only way 1024 x 768 will look any good is by displaying it centered on 1280 x 1024 screen. Native resolution is the only one I would use and my eyes are plenty bad.

Stevie,

Floyd may be correct that this is a misnomer, but just try setting it. The monitor knows the current resolution and remembers the setting for it.

which begs the question "why bother going to a lower res?"

my mum's laptop was god awful on anything other than native (but it was from 2000 with winME) more modern monitors work like CRT's these days instead of trying to make a rez that isnt divisable by 2 from its native res by just having 4 pixels to one it might end up 2*2 and 1*2 alternating which just sucked

startopia did the boarder trick and looked beautiful
hogs of war got stuck with the odd even pixels and was unplayably ugly

im running at 800*600 due to distance of monitor and me and its fine i did try net at 1024*768 but i prefere this

on a side note sainsburys have an LG 42" tv with vga in ... so tempted but its £700 which is part of my dentist money

Nooo! I'm sitting in front of a 32" Samsung, and it's just about bearable if you don't mind swinging your head from side to side to look across the desktop. Dentist money?

John,

If I adjust the settings my desktop gets misaligned so it's not really an option for me.

@ Floyd, if I remember correctly I never needed DVI at the time I bought it so this version of the monitor doesn't support it.

Never had this issue with the ATI card which was probably the only good thing about it.

Well if it's an analog connection then maybe adjusting the monitor would be necessary.

I've never done this with the TFT. And looking at now it seemed impossible. I had to search to find the buttons, cleverly hidden on the side of the monitor.

aye my teeth or the lack there of are getting kicked in by the dentists assistant and they are going to charge me through the nose for the privalage

Sounds to me like you need to adjust the display with your monitor's on-screen settings, rather than the display settings on your PC.

My monitor (an HP 17" TFT) needs adjusting on a per-resolution basis.

on boot mine is stretched out (or shifted sideways) so i loose the first 2 letters per line ... but as ive never had to stay on this mode for long its never been an issue

If you value your eyes then you should be running a tft at its native resolution.

not when its 5 foot away im not
it looks like im reading a cross between tetris and braile at 1280*1024
not all websites work with the make font bigger options of IE and i didnt like the zooming function as id have to scroll left and right instead of just up and down
so i see native as bad for my eyes and i dont have anywhere else to put it where its closer

If you can't see your monitor at its native resolution, you're sitting too far away. A monitor isn't a TV. You're not supposed to look at it from the sofa.

You can tell windows to use bigger fonts etc.

i live in a one room gaff
i dont have a chair nor do i want my pc desk close to my bed to see teh interweb ... it would take up valuable space that i would like to stand in once in a while ... short of emptying my room into the hall and starting afresh its the status quo

when using word etc i can select a bigger font for now then downsize for printing or wotnot
dvd's native
photo browsing native (unless they are tiny then i might want low res if its just a slideshow)
games whatever they default to (if my card likes em)

years ago i used to have a 19" CRT and with it being 'normal' distance from me i could sometimes see the individual pixels ... you saying thats good for the eye's

edit:

i occasionally select largest font within IE ... hardly any website accepts that this site dont

and i dont quite feel i need to activate the 'accessibilities' option its only the interweb i downgrade for

hasnt your monitor got an auto adjust image function on my viewsonic its the first option when you bring up the display settings with the buttons on the front of the monitor. this resizes the current res to the screen. but like they say above on a monitor with a native of 1280x1024, 1024x768 will look blured and not at all good for your eyes.

- If possible, use DVI instead of VGA -- with DVI you have an exact 1-to-1 ratio between the signal and screen pixels, and there are no timing issues that can squash part of the image.
- With VGA, make sure to hit the Auto-adjust on the monitor. (It will try to detect the timing signals on your analog connection, and typically that will fix the issue you're seeing here

If auto-adjust didn't take care of it, try switching to a different refresh rate and auto-adjust again. It's not an exact science, and some display modes look better than others.