emulate 2560x1600 resolution for Nvidia GPUs (14 inch hp dv2000)

Hi to all,

warning: doing this can be risky, but i have been doing this for several months now and i have no problems so far, but i cant say that for sure with other systems so please do this with caution.

i just wanna share a discovery i made when i upgraded to a non oem display. (AUO brand)

About a year ago my hp dv2000 laptop started having display problems so i had to get a new lcd. i do a lot of CAD work and some occasional 3d and i have a problem doing that with a 1280x800 14 inch screen. i have a 21 inch crt monitor at home that i used as a secondary display and run it at 2048x1536 when i do cad work and got used to this setup so it was really difficult for me downgrading to a 1280x800 screen.


one day i experimented on the nvidia settings and realized i could emulate 2560x1600 on a 14 inch lcd screen. We tried doing this on optimus capable laptops but we were unsuccessful.

It's actually very simple, just right click on the desktop, click on nvidia control panel, go to the change resolution menu, click the customize button, and then create custom resolution. at first i tried multiplying my resolution(1280x800) by 1.5x where i got 1920x1200, then by 2x or 2560x1600. i haven't tried pushing beyond this resolution.

you can imagine, having this resolution with a 14 inch screen, but somehow i have trained my mind to read and distinguish symbols very effectively so it really works very well for me.

i have attached photos of the screen and a screenshot of the procedure. thanks.

in the cad photos, do take note of the number of icons and menus displayed, as well as the screen space left to show the actual drawing, it really is a huge difference. best of all i get to use just my laptop and save on electricity ( i haven't plugged in my Radius 21 inch CRT in a while), and i can do my work anywhere instead of just working in my room.

 

Would this work with external monitors?

 

Most external monitors will just say signal out of range.

 

i don't think so, i tried this before and gave me a black screen saying screen not supported.

 

This wouldn't make your system run hotter right?

 

Wow ! it possible with ATI video card ? If yes I dream to do that on my Alienware M18X for game .

 

Same goes for the refresh rate mine is pretty fluid to this date (also this doesn't work on all nVIDIA cards, especially not with Optimus enabled)

No. It might damage your screen, although it most cases will just crash and return to it's normal state.

It was possible once... sadly we haven't been able to make it possible again

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/660283-you-guys-know-you-can-overclock-lcd.html

 

I think you are risking over-driving your panel a bit. You could do stuff like that way back in the VGA/SVGA days too.

 

What is the advantage of doing something like this ?

 

The reason you can't do it is because it's a feature of the output on Nvidia GPUs, your panel is attached to the Intel GPU with optimus so might want to look into solutions to do this with an Intel integrated graphics solution.

 

Higher resolution = more desktop real estate. You can fit more stuff on one screen than you can with a lower resolution.

 

Yeah that's true with higher resolution. But this doesn't give any higher resolution and can't give any higher resolution due to how LCD screens work. What it can do (and what I guess is happening) is that the hardware scales n pixels into one which just gives a blurring effect. It still could be advantageous for some programs as Windows is lousy when it comes to scaling the UI but again the resolution doesn't change.

 

hi what driver are you using? Thanks

 

Hi Jedisurf,

I gave up my hp already, i was able to do this with the latest nvidia updates at the time of posting, it didn't really matter. I think what made it possible in my laptop was that when i replaced my LCD with a non-OEM one, it read as generic and didn't recognize the standard resolution of 1280x800. It was sort of unlocked because it wasn't recognized by the system. I tried this with my sager and i couldn't do it, despite having the same drivers.

 

Umm ... really?

 

I tried this again with my Sager np8662, it turns out the maximum resolution of the GTX 260m is only 2048x1536, it still works. No wonder i could not run 2560x1600. Now i'm willing to buy an older 9800m GTS just to emulate the same 2560x1600 digital resolution.