Resolution issue..

  • Thread starter Thread starter ~misfit~
  • Start date Start date
M

~misfit~

Hi Folks,

I play Path of Exile, have a QX9650 CPU with 6GB RAM (that I finished
building in 2009) running W7 64-bit and was using an HD5670 / 1GBDDR5.
However I was having to turn details down to keep a decent frame rate so
recently bought a lightly-used second-hand Sapphire HD7770.

I've been using CCC 13.12 for a while now with no problems. My monitor is an
oldie but a goodie - A Dell 4:3 20" UXGA (1600x1200) IPS. I don't like
short-screens for desktop use. However, when I play games I use 1600x900
resolution as games seem to be designed to work better in short-screen mode.
(They seem to set the size of the toon as a function of the vertical
resolution so to get a reasonable amount on-screen at any one time the wider
the better - within reason. This applies to the two games I play - Path of
Exile mainly but also a bit of Diablo III.) This was never a problem with
the HD5670, I'd just select 1600x900 / fullscreen in-game and away I went.
Nice crystal clear picture with small black bars above and below. (I like
playing full-screen mode and with the picture mapped pixel-to-pixel.)

However, with the same driver and the HD7770 I don't get an option of
1600x900 in Path of Exile (which is odd as wasn't that a fairly common
resolution for 19" short-screens?). I get the full 1600x1200 offered,
followed by 1280x720, 1280x768, 1280x800, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1360x768,
1360x1024, 1366x758 ad nauseam right down to 800x600. I can select any of
the lower res modes and have them blurry - or have it windowed and have it
clear but small.

When it's windowed I can drag the window out to the edges of the screen (or
duoble-click the titlebar) - but the biggest it goes is 1600x1178 (and has
(custom) after it) - it reserves the other 22 pixels for the window's
titlebar. However when I try to drop the vertical resolution down to 900 the
horizontal reduces to 1594!!!! (And it's still windowed which I'd rather not
have...)

Can anyone help please? At the moment it seems I have a choice of the old
HD5670 full-screen 1600x900 but with low details and frame-rate or the
HD7770 running much faster but either windowed or running an ugly
resolution.

Thanks in advance.
--
</Shaun>

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).
 
Somewhere said:
Have you tried tech support for Path of Exile, and their forums?

Hi Ed,

Yes, I've asked in their tech support forums and as yet have no answers. :-/

I don't get why one card offers diiferent resolutions to another using the
same driver with the same maximum size panel - when they both *do* the
maximum size. It's not like 1600x900 is unheard-of - I saw it many, many
times while Googling for a fix. (No fix - nobody with my specific problem
that I could find but a *lot* of [19"] 1600x900 short-screen monitors out
there....)

Thanks for the reply,
--
</Shaun>

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).
 
Somewhere said:
Somewhere said:
Have you tried tech support for Path of Exile, and their forums?

Hi Ed,

Yes, I've asked in their tech support forums and as yet have no
answers. :-/
I don't get why one card offers diiferent resolutions to another
using the same driver with the same maximum size panel - when they
both *do* the maximum size. It's not like 1600x900 is unheard-of - I
saw it many, many times while Googling for a fix. (No fix - nobody
with my specific problem that I could find but a *lot* of [19"]
1600x900 short-screen monitors out there....)

Thanks for the reply,

Hmmm, I've had several suggestions from Grinding Gear Games (who make Path
of Exile) about this but nothing takes - so I installed Diablo 3 and find I
have exactly the same issue!

So I ask the original question again - and hope that someone can help me.
The HD7770 *was* second-hand but I'm assured that it was in excellent
condition and had no faults. The ~16 y/o who sold it just wanted a more
powerful gaming card as this one was 12 months old.

Help please?
--
</Shaun>

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).
 
AMD Tech Support may be able to help you. They've helped me.

Are you running the latest driver? Maybe uninstalling the current one,
rebooting, and putting in the newest might help. It could be a thing
that was fixed.

Also, maybe be sure you've installed the driver from the monitor
company, and reinstall it each time after changing video drivers.

Also, maybe in the control center under My VGA Displays (or Panels),
Properties, Monitor Attributes, try toggling the Use EDID and see what's
available each way.

--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Iraq Veterans Against the War and Related:
http://ivaw.org
http://couragetoresist.org
http://antiwar.com

Send spam to the FTC at
(e-mail address removed)
Thanks, robots.
 
Somewhere said:
AMD Tech Support may be able to help you. They've helped me.

Ok, thanks. I might try them - however I bought the card second-hand...
Are you running the latest driver? Maybe uninstalling the current one,
rebooting, and putting in the newest might help. It could be a thing
that was fixed.

Yes current. I've also tried an older one, then back again.
Also, maybe be sure you've installed the driver from the monitor
company, and reinstall it each time after changing video drivers.

It's a Dell and, although I can't seem to find a driver from Dell Windows 7
(64-bit) always finds the driver and knows the model of monitor.
Also, maybe in the control center under My VGA Displays (or Panels),
Properties, Monitor Attributes, try toggling the Use EDID and see
what's available each way.

That only applies to colour profiles, at least in the latest CCC.

Thanks for your help - I'm at a loss.
--
</Shaun>

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).
 
Ok, thanks. I might try them - however I bought the card second-hand...

Last time they didn't ask for registration or serial number.
That only applies to colour profiles, at least in the latest CCC.

Try it and see if you get a different listing of resolutions in Desktop
Properties.
Thanks for your help - I'm at a loss.

Sure thing!
--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Iraq Veterans Against the War and Related:
http://ivaw.org
http://couragetoresist.org
http://antiwar.com

Send spam to the FTC at
(e-mail address removed)
Thanks, robots.
 
Somewhere said:
Last time they didn't ask for registration or serial number.

Handy to know, thanks. If I can't suss this out any other way then I'll try
that.
Try it and see if you get a different listing of resolutions in
Desktop Properties.


Thanks. However the issue doesn't raise it's head in Desktop Properties.
That always shows a slider with various 4:3 resolutions starting at native
resolution, 1600x1200 and descending to 800x600. It did with the HD 5670 and
it does with the HD 7770.

The problem is in games where the 7770 won't let me select 1600x900
fullscreen (or windowed, obviously as there's no spare pixels for a border
at 1600 wide...). When I was using the 5670 that is the resolution I used
for both the games I play. However with the 7770 it's not on the list of
available res' - in either game. However, when I swapped the 5670 back in
for a test it was there again and I could play how I like, fullscreen with
black bars above and below, mapped pixel-for-pixel.

The only way I can play fullscreen / widescreen with the 7770 fitted is to
select from one of the offered resolutions that all have less than 1600
pixels horizontally (i.e. 1440x900 or 1366x768) and the picture ends up
blurry. I tried toggling that 'use EDID' box BTW, no change. :(

It's really k'in annoying. :-/
--
</Shaun>

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).
 
Somewhere said:
Hi, Misfit.

Sure hope AMD can help you.

Let us know.

Hi Ed,

You can call me Shaun - I only continue to post under the ~misfit~ nym for
continuity's sake. I abhor nymshifters so much that, even though now I don't
mind using my real name on usenet (and sign my posts accordingly), I still
use the same nym that I made my very first usenet post with, way back in the
early 90s.

The problem is fixed, without recourse to AMD. A good friend in he group
nz.comp pointed me to this site:
http://www.wsgf.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=21972here thinking that it
would do what I wanted. However, while it wasn't the cure it *did* point me
in the right direction.

For the sake of my fingers (I'm a rubbish typist) I'll cut'n'paste my reply
to him, saying how I finally managed it, here:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On reading that page more carefully it didn't seem to be quite what I was
after but it was very close. They were setting non-standard desktop
resolutions (and bemoaning the fact that AMD had started restricting what
resolutions they could set) while I wanted a different resolution in-game.

I have already been trying to edit the game ini files, on the advice of
folks on the game forum, with no luck. Also I'm no stranger to editing the
registry (albeit in XP) so I decided that, as it seemed close, I'd try what
those guys were doing.

I backed up the registry first - something that wasn't mentioned in the
forum. ;) Then I proceeded to do as directed. However it made no
difference - either to the desktop resolution *or* the in-game settings
available. However, now I knew where in the registry the resolutions were
stored I decided to exlore a little...

In that walk-through the guy's changing the values in
"DALNonStandardModesBCD1" and he speculates that "DALNonStandardModesBCD2"
might apply to a second monitor, and "DALNonStandardModesBCD3" to a third. I
looked in "DALNonStandardModesBCD2" on my desktop and it was essentially the
same as "DALNonStandardModesBCD1". So I decided to add the resolution that I
wanted in-game to that value and see what happened. I re-booted, started the
game and... No luck. :(

However, after spending quite a bit of time browsing through
/REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0001
(on my machine) I was convinced that the answer must lie in there somewhere,
likely in one of the entries that was of type "REG_BINARY" but I didn't like
the idea of blindly changing stuff.

Then I remembered that, with the exact same driver but the HD 5670 card I
could get 1600x900 in-game and I had exactly that set-up in my second
machine! So I moved over to that side of the room and spent some time
browsing through the relevant registry entries on that machine and that was
the breakthrough. In the second set of stored resolutions in that machine,
"DALNonStandardModesBCD2" of the eight entries there seven of them were
1600x900, just with varying refresh rates.

So I edited *that* registry entry on my main machine to mirror the one in
the machine running the HD 5670, saved, re-booted, started the game and...
YES! 1600x900 (fullscreen) is now selectable in-game. :)

So, thanks heaps EMB for putting me on the right track. I still don't know
why swapping video cards (to a more powerful one) changes the registry
entries and restricts available in-game resolutions (and changes it back if
the cards are swapped again [?]) but at least now I know how to change it
back manually.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So all sorted Ed. A bit more work than I'd hope for these days (when
everything's supposed to 'just work') but I', happy it's done.

Thanks again for your input. :)
--
</Shaun>

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).
 
Back
Top