reduced display area when playing games

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

I am running World of Warcraft on my dell laptop
with the "GeForce4 440 Go" card.

However when I play the game, the display area
reduces signifigantly, leaving the rest of the
screen black.

So, the game shows up in a small center area
surrounded by a large black border.

any ideas?

thx,

- Gordon

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

g9chan@uwaterloo.ca wrote:
> I am running World of Warcraft on my dell laptop
> with the "GeForce4 440 Go" card.
>
> However when I play the game, the display area
> reduces signifigantly, leaving the rest of the
> screen black.
>
> So, the game shows up in a small center area
> surrounded by a large black border.
>
> any ideas?

Sure. Either the BIOS or the drivers are doing this. You will find a
setting for the graph card telling it how to display lower resolution
graphics: either fill to screen or at it's native res. The first will
scale the picture to fit, and might not look all that good, but it will
use the entire display area, the latter seems to be active. Look in the
advanced display settings of the nVidia drivers, there's a setting for
the way lower res is to be displayed on a TFT screen. But it could also
be in the BIOS settings (seen that on an IBM notebook I've had a few
years ago).

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

RJT wrote:
> g9chan@uwaterloo.ca wrote:

>> I am running World of Warcraft on my dell laptop
>> with the "GeForce4 440 Go" card.
>>
>> However when I play the game, the display area
>> reduces signifigantly, leaving the rest of the
>> screen black.
>>
>> So, the game shows up in a small center area
>> surrounded by a large black border.
>>
>> any ideas?
>
> Sure. Either the BIOS or the drivers are doing this. You will find a
> setting for the graph card telling it how to display lower resolution
> graphics: either fill to screen or at it's native res. The first will
> scale the picture to fit, and might not look all that good, but it
> will use the entire display area, the latter seems to be active. Look
> in the advanced display settings of the nVidia drivers, there's a
> setting for the way lower res is to be displayed on a TFT screen. But
> it could also be in the BIOS settings (seen that on an IBM notebook
> I've had a few years ago).

Hell, anytime I set my monitor to a previously unused resolution I have to
resize the display for it. It usually isn't a huge adjustment, but it always
seems to be too small rather than too large before re-sizing.

dvus

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

I think that the native resolution might be set incorrectly as a lower
resolution. Is there anyway to check the current native resolution? and
change it?

- Gordon

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

"dvus" <dven1invalid@adelphia.net> wrote in message
news:32rptgF3o4k1aU1@individual.net...
> RJT wrote:
>> g9chan@uwaterloo.ca wrote:
>
>>> I am running World of Warcraft on my dell laptop
>>> with the "GeForce4 440 Go" card.
>>>
>>> However when I play the game, the display area
>>> reduces signifigantly, leaving the rest of the
>>> screen black.
>>>
>>> So, the game shows up in a small center area
>>> surrounded by a large black border.
>>>
>>> any ideas?
>>
>> Sure. Either the BIOS or the drivers are doing this. You will find a
>> setting for the graph card telling it how to display lower resolution
>> graphics: either fill to screen or at it's native res. The first will
>> scale the picture to fit, and might not look all that good, but it
>> will use the entire display area, the latter seems to be active. Look
>> in the advanced display settings of the nVidia drivers, there's a
>> setting for the way lower res is to be displayed on a TFT screen. But
>> it could also be in the BIOS settings (seen that on an IBM notebook
>> I've had a few years ago).
>
> Hell, anytime I set my monitor to a previously unused resolution I have to
> resize the display for it. It usually isn't a huge adjustment, but it
> always seems to be too small rather than too large before re-sizing.

The OP has a laptop - the laptop screen doesn't work in the same way as a
CRT monitor. Most laptops will show a lower resolution image than the LCD
screen is capable of with black surround, and as RJT pointed out some allow
the image to be scaled to fill the screen.

Dan

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

<g9chan@uwaterloo.ca> wrote in message
news:1103732574.670906.301480@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>I think that the native resolution might be set incorrectly as a lower
> resolution. Is there anyway to check the current native resolution? and
> change it?

There should be a setting in World of Warcraft to change the resolution.
However, higher res often means it runs slower, especially on a chipset such
as the one you have. Other than that, as RJT mentioned there might be a BIOS
setting or option in the Dell utilities to force it to scale the display.

Dan

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

It runs smaller because you haven't set the monitor controls for that
resolution. you can problably adjust height and width in the nvidia software.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

"YanquiDawg" <yanquidawg@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20041223175343.06404.00002063@mb-m18.aol.com...
> It runs smaller because you haven't set the monitor controls for that
> resolution. you can problably adjust height and width in the nvidia
> software.

CRT monitors sometimes show the image smaller/larger/offset because of
differences in the horizontal and vertical refresh rate used to generate the
image, and also most modern CRT monitors are able to store position and size
information independently for each resolution, and so your response would be
valid, if it was a CRT screen. A laptop LCD does not do this. Some will
automatically scale (so an 800x600 image displayed on a 1024x768 LCD will be
scaled by 1.28 to fill the screen, and as such will occassionally has some
visual glitches due to interpolation), but others won't auto scale and so an
800x600 image on a 1024x768 screen will show the 800x600 image with a black
border around it. This, AFAIK, is not something that can be overridden using
the nVidia driver settings, it has to be something in the laptop system
options and/or BIOS. Running World of Warcraft at the laptop's native screen
resolution would also be a solution, but would result in reduced performance
due to the additional work having to be done by the GPU, and as it's a low
end GPU the game may well appear to "lag" or stutter badly, possibly too
much to be able to play it satisfactorily.

Dan

 

[pgorrow]

For my dell inspiron laptop with the 440 go mobile:

Right click the desktop
Click properties
Click the Settings tab
Click the Advanced button
Click the GeForce4 440 go tab
Click nView Display Mode on the left hand tree view
Click the Device Settings >> button
Click the Screen Adjustment... menu item
Select the Use Display Adapter Scaling
Click Ok

Games will now scale when run at resolutions less than their native one.

 

[Mousemonkey]

For my dell inspiron laptop with the 440 go mobile:

Right click the desktop
Click properties
Click the Settings tab
Click the Advanced button
Click the GeForce4 440 go tab
Click nView Display Mode on the left hand tree view
Click the Device Settings >> button
Click the Screen Adjustment... menu item
Select the Use Display Adapter Scaling
Click Ok

Games will now scale when run at resolutions less than their native one.

And it's only taken you three and a half years to come up with that, good job. [:mousemonkey:1]