Dell help: How can I stop the text from stretching on my widescreen monitor? - Help.com

Widescreen monitors operate on non-standard resolutions. Typically, monitors work on a 4:3 ratio (1280:1024 is one such ratio) — but your monitor is a wider resolution.

With CRT’s this isn’t a big deal, but with LCD’s it is — this is why:

LCD monitors have a set number of pixel emitters in them. That means that it has *exactly* a certain number of pixels in width and height. If you don’t match these exact measuremeants with your resolution, then the monitor has to do something very bad — namely, resizing.

This resizing does bad things to your monitors clarity, as you are noticing. There’s really not much to be done about this except run your monitor at it’s Native Resolution. In your case, a 6800 should easily be able to handle whatever that is.

If it’s this same monitor[1], then it looks like you should be running at 1680 x 1050 — this *ought* to be an option in the settings. If it’s not an option, make sure you’ve install the drivers from the CD that came with the monitor, they usually include an (ugly but) useful control panel that will have that resolution.

[1] http://www.europc.co.uk/pages/Product…

There are options for increasing system-wide font sizes, just FYI.

This is an excellent thread. I have the same problem, but i have a GeForce FX5500. I have the Samsung driver for the monitor and Nvidia driver for the card, but the best resolution is still 1280 x 1024. Do I need to uninstall the card driver? Or, do I need to upgrade to the 6800?

What kind of Samsung LCD monitor is it? With a model number, I can help you find the right resolution to run it at.

It is the Samsung 215TW. I believe, though, that the issue is with the card. I have discovered that the maximum resolution via the digital DVI port is 1280×1024 (I believe that the monitor is 1680×1050), whereas the maximum through the analog VGA port is 2048×1536.

So, by running the monitor on the analog port, I can set the card resolution to 1680×1050 and everything looks OK. It is a pity, though, to go from a digital representation in the computer to a digital monitor via an analog connection. It loses some of the crispness.

Bo: it sure does. I have a DVI card and a DVI monitor and I ran it through a VGA connection for a bit — man, the difference is noticeable when using a complete digital circuit. I’d get a new video card ;)

Honestly though, I’m perplexed by the cards unwillingness to do the same resolutions in VGA vs. DVI mode — never seen a card do that before.