Playing older 4:3 games in a 1080p monitor (1920x1080 resolution and 16:9 ratio)

[bubra100]

Hi . I'd like to ask your opinion about something that worries me . I am about to buy a 24'' monitor with a native 1920x1080 resolution ; that is of 16:9 ratio . However I am worried what will happen if I'll want to play some old games which might not support such an aspect ratio . My simple thought is that normally there should be black bands at the left and at the right of the screen and the rest (the interior) should look just fine . Well , by looking at the internet I found that this is not the case and some times the old games do have problems . By the way , I found a site that offers some tweaks for many of those games (http://www.wsgf.org/) . However I'd like to hear your opinion because always there might be something else which is interesting .
And one more thing : I noticed that some of the monitors offer a 4:3 option on their own , however I don't know how will that work . For example the ASUS VG248 . In such cases what is to be done ? I suppose I'll have to select a 4:3 resolution in the Windows display settings and then activate the "4:3" option on the monitor ?
By the way , if it matters , I am using a GTX 1060 video card on Win7 and a GTX 580 on WinXP .

 

[cryoburner]

You should be able to choose an option in your graphics card's control panel for that. I believe it's called "use centered timings" on Radeon cards, and "no scaling" on GeForce cards, and should result in the image getting displayed at 1:1 pixels without stretching or scaling. So, you could set the resolution in-game to something like 1280x1024 (5:4) or 1280x960 (4:3), giving you black bars to the left and right, along with a pair of narrow (28 or 60 pixel) borders at the top and bottom.

If the game is quite a bit older, and only supports lower resolutions than that, it would appear rather small though, and you might want to use a different setting for it, which should be called something like "maintain aspect ratio" on both. This should stretch the image to fit the screen vertically, while maintaining the same aspect ratio. So, a 640x480 game might get scaled to something like 1440x1080, for example, which will be a bit blurry due to the pixels not having 1:1 scaling, but shouldn't be stretched horizontally, and will fill more than just a tiny area in the center of the screen.

With either of these options, your monitor will remain at its native resolution (1920x1080), and the video card will handle displaying the lower resolution, either scaling it or adding borders. You should be able to test these video card options with your existing 4:3 or 5:4 screen as well, to see how they handle lower resolutions and different aspect ratios from what your desktop is set to.

 

[bubra100]

Alright , then ; when I'll get back I try to look for those options , thanks ! I have a 19'' monitor (1280x1024 on 5:4 ratio) .
You mentioned an "1:1" option on the nVidia settings . I noticed in the ASUS VG248 (which I might buy) there is also an option of "1:1" in "Aspect control" . This option seems to be able to be set on either : Full , 4:3 , 1:1 or Overscan . Maybe this option on the monitor itself will help further to achieve a desired 4:3 ratio . However I wonder if this will be helpful for a 1280x1024 resolution . The ASUS VG248 supports this resolution as well , however I only now noticed that this resolution (1280x1024) is actually on 5:4 ratio and not on 4:3 which I initially mentioned in the topic's name . So will this create any trouble , or there is still hope for 5:4 games ?

 

[cryoburner]

Again, I think it should be fine if the video card is left to handle the scaling, in which case the monitor remains at its native resolution. Otherwise, support for scaling can vary from screen to screen. You can read about how to configure the option for AMD cards here...
https://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/UnableToSetGPUScaling.aspx

One thing I didn't mention before is that this only works on digital connections, so if your older 5:4 monitor uses an analog VGA D-SUB connection, you won't be able to test it there. If it's connected with a DVI-D cable it should work though. And the new monitor should work with it, since I believe it only supports digital connections.

 

[bubra100]

Will this still be possible with a DP (dual port) cable ? Because I have in mind these two monitors :
- ASUS VG248
- ASUS PG248
and especially the 2nd one works only with DP cable . That is it hasn't got a DVI-D connection you mentioned above .

 

[cryoburner]

Yeah, HDMI, DP, and DVI-D are all digital connections. Only older monitors are likely to be limited to analog connections, so I only mentioned it in case you were to test the setting with your existing 5:4 screen.

 

[bubra100]

Yes , I'll switch to DVI-D (dual) , since my current monitor allows it , and I'll give it a try .
But let me ask you something so that I know exactly what to do . How exactly will this be possible ? I mean I'll keep the 1280x1024 resolution on the desktop and only set the smaller 4:3 resolution (1024x768) through the game , or I should I set the 1024x768 to the monitor too ?

 

[cryoburner]

You should be able to just set what you want in the game and leave the monitor at its native resolution. The video card driver intercepts the request to change resolution, and any scaling is performed by the video card, not the monitor. The same thing should happen if you go into the Windows display settings and change your desktop resolution there. The video card will handle the scaling, while your monitor will continue to receive a signal at its native resolution, with the image pre-scaled (or left unscaled, with black borders).

 

[bubra100]

Hi again .
I tried using the "No scaling" setting but it didn't work . Probably I am doing something wrong . I set on the "No scaling" setting , I left the Windows on 1280x1024 as they were , and then I started the game "Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon" . While in the game , I specified the 1024x768 resolution ,, but the game still was running in full screen .
I thought it might help if I post , below , the available options in the nVidia Panel . Here they are :

 

[bubra100]

Well , I think I found it . I had to change one more setting : to switch from "Display" to "GPU" . Then the game acted as you said . I set it on a 1024x768 resolution and it indeed ran in a smaller part of the screen with black bands all around . I also checked the desktop while the game was running , and I noted that it remained as it was (on the 1280x1024 resolution) .
However I even noticed something interesting . The above options were also available when I switched back to D-SUB . And I even tried again to change the settings and again run the game . Well the game ran again in the smaller part of the screen (with black bands around it) despite now being on D-SUB ! So it seems that all this can also be done in D-SUB .
Now I wonder what else those available options on the nVidia control panel the might do . However probably these two options are to be enough .

 

[cryoburner]

Well the game ran again in the smaller part of the screen (with black bands around it) despite now being on D-SUB ! So it seems that all this can also be done in D-SUB.

Perhaps that limitation only applies to AMD cards, or certain cards, or older drivers. I seem to recall it not working on D-SUB when I tested it with that some years back, and a note on that AMD article I linked to mentioned it as well. A digital connection will technically provide slightly better image quality, in any case, though the differences should be relatively minor at 1280x1024.