Blast! desperately need help sorting out my hdmi cord with gpu problem

yes i know this doesnt belong here but i really need an answer. I have a 9800gx2 and i finally forked out the money on an hdmi cable. So i attached it to the gpu and then my monitor (on my monitor it says hdmi/dvi for the port). Only after i completely removed the original regular cable did a picture show up. So i went to input on my monitor switched it to hdmi and it 'worked'.

I got picture however if anyone still has a crt monitor, or remembers how they work you had to play with the screen for the picture to fit. It has done the same thing here - when i go to 1920x1200 half of the screen moves to the left. now i cant help but thinking that that shouldnt be doing that.. is there something wrong or what>?

also imo everything looks worse and definitely less clear than when i had the other cables attached.. sigh  

*btw the only way i was able to post this was by going down to a lower resolution.