Widescreen Resolution Ratio Question

Ok Im not clear on the proper terminology or whatnot so I will provide as many details I can in laymans terms.

I had an old laptop a HP ZD8000 series with a 1440*990 screen at 17". I played many games on this laptop, BF2, CSS, DODS Fear, UT2k4 all using the full display area of the screen. If i selected a high resolution the image would look better more detail etc. A smaller resolution say 1024 or even 800 would also show the image using the whole display area of the screen. Sure the image would seem a little stretched out, or my windows icons would appear larger, but it would FILL the display area.

Now the issue...
I have an Acer 8204 here with a 15.4 inch widescreen with a resolution of 1680*1050. Any game or application I run at a resolution smaller then 1680*1050 runs in a smaller area of the screen. The image will display but is is small and surrounded by a black border. Either top and bottom black lines, left and right black lines, or a "frame" effect...

I have gone to widescreengaming and gotten the steps needed to play at widescreen resolutions by forcing the games to run at 1680*1050, but I should not have too, I want to run windows at 1200*? so i can see my icons more clearly, and I would also like to play at some a smaller resolutions for performance reasons... Is there a software solution or do I need to put a check mark somewhere in my display properties to use the whole screen?

Thanks in advance for your assistance
~pink

The bios huh. Well thanks for the suggestion Ill poke around and see what comes up...

Thx

i would first look in you gfx cards settings for scaling options.

what i think xenmaster was getting at was setting your monitors scaling options to maintain aspect ratio or 1:1 scaling if it has it. i think that is what he meant.

anyway it is normal in widescreens depending on default settings.

Thanks I got it it was in the panel properties tab in the display control. Scale to fill monitor. Everything works as expected now.