Widescreen Gaming Forum

I feel incredibly stupid and frustrated. Originally I was happy with this Hanns G HW191A 19'' widescreen monitor. I ended up buying this absolutely assured I can play my games at the proper aspect ratio because I heard of methods to enforce fixed aspect ratios via video card drivers.

Unfortunately, no one ever told me that you need a DVI connection to get the flat panel settings to work in the nVidia control panel. As a result, I'm stuck with an analog only monitor that I can't return to Newegg because of their return policy.

Well, have I exhausted all options? I'm trying to see ways that I can force non 16:9 resolutions to have the proper ratio and so I tried using custom timings in the nVidia Control Panel and by using Powerstrip. No luck at all. The screen just comes out in the 4:3 resolution but rendered at 16:9 aspect.

Can someone give me a short primer on timings? Maybe my knowledge of custom timings is deficient that I'm not setting these custom resolutions proper, but I kinda doubt it.

If the inherent problem is in my owning a monitor that only accepts analog inputs, I'd like to get straight to figuring out a solution that goes beyond monitor timings.

You do realise if you use nvidia drivers 96+ you won't be able to use correct aspect ratio for scaling, right? The drivers are broken.

No, I did not. I'm currently using ForceWare 162.18.

So, even if I used Powerstrip to enforce fixed aspect ratio scaling, I would still have this problem since I'm using drivers above version 96?

BTW, where I can get drivers not of the 96+ vintage?

Better try 95 series. After a complete clean up of the current drivers installed.

Try google forcware 95.xx or something. Though I think Nvidia has an archive of old forceware drives as well.

Myself, use a 24" widescreen and for some reason I am now used to the stretching of some games.

I don't know about Powerstrip. Never heard of it. Link?


BTW, I am not saying that using old drivers will work in your case. I don't use an analog connection so I can't try it.

I use the latest Forceware drivers, and scaling works just fine for me. You do need DVI, though.

Hermit, you are one of the few lucky ones then if NVidia correct aspect scaling works for you under XP.

I've looked into this in the past. There is, unfortunately no known hack or workaround to enable scaling when using VGA output. You MUST use DVI in order for scaling to work. Custom timings will not work either. No driver version you get will work, you need to be using DVI.

In short, you're stuck with stretched images. Not to be harsh, but that's kind of what you get for buying a bottom of the barrel screen.

Funny thing is that they have another Hanns G monitor up for sale, same display size and specs and price, but this one has a DVI input.

This was more of a case of not being educated about display inputs more than anything.