Alright, so I have a widescreen monitor (a Dell 17 inch @ 1440x900, if it helps) and I would like to force it to display a 4:3 aspect ratio. What I mean by this is, if I set it to 800x600 (which I would like to do for a specific game, Counter Strike 1.6), instead of letterboxing (black bars) I get a stretched out image. I have a friend with an ATI card who has the option in his driver, but I don't seem to have it. Any sort of settings I can change to make it show me this option? I cannot find any option in my monitor settings to do this, so I need a way to do it through the drivers. The only option I have is running windowed mode (in which case it's tiny) or finding some sort of 4rd part application to force letterboxing (which, if you know of one, I'm not against!).

 

Hopefully one of you knows how to help me! All I want is to be able to use 800x600 and have black bars on the sides. This is possible with nvidia, I'm told, but I can't find it in my AMD driver.

You need to supply more detail.  What driver version?  What monitor model?  How is the monitor connected?

 

Change GPU scaling options to Preserve Aspect Ratio in VECC

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Crosshair IV Formula, Phenom II x4 965 w/ Corsair H60, 8 GiB OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600, XFX HD 7970 Ghz, 512GB Vertex 4, 256GB Vector, 240GB Agility 3, Creative X-Fi Titanium w/ Creative Gigaworks S750, SeaSonic X750, HP ZR2440w, Win 7 Ultimate x64

Alright, let me know if I miss anything here, but the monitor model is SE178WF, the video card is the Sapphire HD 5670, and as for the way it's plugged in, that's sort of an odd story. So the monitor is plugged in using a VGA cable to a Trendnet KVM, that sends out another VGA cable and a USB to my computer, however that VGA plug is adapted to DVI for my video card.

 

Hope this helps!

And as for changing GPU Scaling options, any chance I could get a screenshot of what you're looking at? I do not see this anywhere in my driver.

I'm new to ATI and haven't used earlier drivers, but with the 12.10 driver you need to use the Advanced option in Preferences then go to My Digital Flat-Panels > Properties in the left column.

For me clicking on "Enable GPU Scaling" still leaves the other three options greyed out, and does not change the aspect ratio with older games, so I did as I have done with Nvidia, and change the screen resolution to 1280x1024 first.

This allows access to the  "Maintain aspect ratio" option. From then on, even though the settings grey out and go back to "Scale Image to full panel size" after returning to 1920x1080, all my old games will play with the aspect ratio that suits the games resolution.

 

I don't have that part of the menu...My Digital Flatpanels doesn't exist.

Because that monitor is antique unsupported VGA analogue based. Unless there is an option in your monitor's OSD, you're SOL.

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Crosshair IV Formula, Phenom II x4 965 w/ Corsair H60, 8 GiB OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600, XFX HD 7970 Ghz, 512GB Vertex 4, 256GB Vector, 240GB Agility 3, Creative X-Fi Titanium w/ Creative Gigaworks S750, SeaSonic X750, HP ZR2440w, Win 7 Ultimate x64

To add to what both black_zion, and Dinwiddie are stating:  The option for GPU Scaling is only available to displays connected with DVI cable.

;Marc

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Ah ha ! I'll remember that !    Anything not VGA then ? HDMI, Displayport OK ?

btw - not all VGA are antique. ACER at least still has some VGA only monitors as we speak (1920x1080 on a 21.5" model ) - at least here in the great dumping ground known as Oz....

 

Edited: 12/15/2012 at 12:55 AM by Dinwiddie

So does anybody know of a 3rd party software that will allow me to do it?

 

Maybe something that makes everything else black when i run window borderless?

I'm not aware of any software, but double check your monitor's menu, there could be an option for Aspect Ratio, but you still need to look at getting a digital monitor (preferably DisplayPort but DVI and HDMI work just as well), you'll be amazed at the difference.

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Crosshair IV Formula, Phenom II x4 965 w/ Corsair H60, 8 GiB OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600, XFX HD 7970 Ghz, 512GB Vertex 4, 256GB Vector, 240GB Agility 3, Creative X-Fi Titanium w/ Creative Gigaworks S750, SeaSonic X750, HP ZR2440w, Win 7 Ultimate x64