2048x1536-capable video card limits itself to 1600x1200?

March 16, 2008

Hi all,

I have a 24" Samsung 245BW monitor I bought maybe 2 months back--great

monitor, no problem and no complaints whatsoever. It's hooked up to an

Nvidia 8800GTS with 320MB, which can run at the monitor's native resolution

(1920x1200) just fine.

I also have an old ATI Radeon 7500 used as a secondary display, hooked up to

an old 17" LG 787LE. According to various posts, that card can do

2048x1536--even higher than what any of my monitors can do.

The Samsung 245BW monitor is currently on sale at a price I couldn't pass

up, and given that I've pretty happy with mine, I decided why not get

another one and retire my old 17-incher one's hooked up to the ATI...

So I just got another identical monitor, hooked it up, installed the driver

(the same as the other monitor, obviously)...switched to 1920x1200...and lo

and behold, it seems like the driver is running the monitor at

1600x1200--eg, it's filling the whole width of the monitor, but everything

looks slightly stretched horizontally, and when the mouse reaches a side (on

that monitor), the entire display scrolls horizontally to show the remaining

320-pixel area (1920-1600)...in other words, it's reverting to the old trick

of using a smaller resolution and scrolling to show the entire display

(yuck!)

If I switch the resolution to 1600x1200, once again, the display area is

filled, but there's no scrolling.

Obviously I'd much rather have both monitors run at the full 1920x1200,

since they're both capable of it.