29-11-2012, 10:15 AM
Hi Nick,
Everything I read suggests that it can go higher with the latest firmware. Whether Colin wants to risk that is another matter. Of course, he might be OK in firmware terms, but might not have the correct .inf file for his monitor, which is the normal reason for the Windows display panel not offering the higher resolutions.
I have a stack of decent AGP video cards here - whether they'll support the latest version of Direct X is currently unknown, but I could investigate, and Colin would be welcome to one for the cost of postage.
I think you misunderstood my point.
The resolution of the graphics card is set to 1024 by 768. That's 4:3. Windows, and the applications running on it are therefore assuming that the monitor is therefore a 4:3 monitor.
However, Colin has a widescreen monitor. The native resolution of the panel is much higher than 1024 by 768, so to fill the screen, his monitor will be scaling the image. The default behaviour for every monitor I've seen is to stretch the image in both planes to fill the panel. Hence egg-shaped circles.
The computer or OS or indeed application is unable to correct for this because as far as it's concerned, it's connected to a 4:3 monitor, and isn't aware there is a problem to correct for.
Whatever the display, computer pixels are square. So actually, an application wouldn't expect to correct for such a thing. It just knows how many pixels it has to play with.
Of course, with the display stretching a 4:3 image to fill a 16:9 panel, the pixels are now rectangular. But, this stretching is being done by the display device, and again, the computer has no way of knowing about this.
If Colin's monitor is smart, it might be expanding the image by an equal amount in both planes, leaving black bars either side of the central 4:3 image. In which case, circles will be circles. But that doesn't detract from my initial point about matching the resolution of the graphics card to the panel.
I didn't say 1:1 in the context of aspect ratio because a 1:1 aspect ratio would be a square screen. I've not seen too many of those! But, 1:1 pixel mapping is what I was driving at when I said that the display card has to match the physical resolution of the panel.
As things stand, the scaling done by the panel will be resulting in a very poor image. I know that Colin has been very pleased with his display, but he's only seeing 10% of what it's capable of producing. On the other hand, I guess it shows how bad his previous monitor was
Seconded!
Making a box with many fans and no filtering whatsoever is simply asking for trouble! The thermal design of PCs is always pretty poor - it's unusual to see "joined up thinking" in this regard. It's one of the problems with "bit boxes" - self-built or bought - but people like HP are normally much better at doing this in such a way that the fans actually work together properly.
Cheers,
Mark
(29-11-2012, 06:01 AM)nickds1 Wrote: To answer Mark, the SiS chipset Col has is really only XGA-capable, i.e. 1024 x 768 x 32bits, and was only intended as a stopgap - almost everyone put in a graphics card and disabled the on-board video in the BIOS - the Award modular BIOS V6 rev 1005 should disable the on-board video automatically if an AGP video card is detected.
Everything I read suggests that it can go higher with the latest firmware. Whether Colin wants to risk that is another matter. Of course, he might be OK in firmware terms, but might not have the correct .inf file for his monitor, which is the normal reason for the Windows display panel not offering the higher resolutions.
I have a stack of decent AGP video cards here - whether they'll support the latest version of Direct X is currently unknown, but I could investigate, and Colin would be welcome to one for the cost of postage.
Quote:Also, the aspect ratio not being 1:1 is a red herring - all graphics packages take into account screen aspect ratios when rendering primitives such as curves & lines and adjust accordingly, so when you ask to draw a circle, its rendered as a circle, not an ellipse.
I think you misunderstood my point.
The resolution of the graphics card is set to 1024 by 768. That's 4:3. Windows, and the applications running on it are therefore assuming that the monitor is therefore a 4:3 monitor.
However, Colin has a widescreen monitor. The native resolution of the panel is much higher than 1024 by 768, so to fill the screen, his monitor will be scaling the image. The default behaviour for every monitor I've seen is to stretch the image in both planes to fill the panel. Hence egg-shaped circles.
The computer or OS or indeed application is unable to correct for this because as far as it's concerned, it's connected to a 4:3 monitor, and isn't aware there is a problem to correct for.
Whatever the display, computer pixels are square. So actually, an application wouldn't expect to correct for such a thing. It just knows how many pixels it has to play with.
Of course, with the display stretching a 4:3 image to fill a 16:9 panel, the pixels are now rectangular. But, this stretching is being done by the display device, and again, the computer has no way of knowing about this.
If Colin's monitor is smart, it might be expanding the image by an equal amount in both planes, leaving black bars either side of the central 4:3 image. In which case, circles will be circles. But that doesn't detract from my initial point about matching the resolution of the graphics card to the panel.
I didn't say 1:1 in the context of aspect ratio because a 1:1 aspect ratio would be a square screen. I've not seen too many of those! But, 1:1 pixel mapping is what I was driving at when I said that the display card has to match the physical resolution of the panel.
As things stand, the scaling done by the panel will be resulting in a very poor image. I know that Colin has been very pleased with his display, but he's only seeing 10% of what it's capable of producing. On the other hand, I guess it shows how bad his previous monitor was
Quote:As this is an older PC, I would STRONGLY recommend getting your hoover or compressed air gun (if you have one) with a soft 1 inch paint brush and cleaning out the PSU and CPU fans and heatsinks - gentle brushing to loosen dust whilst hoovering/blasting air
Seconded!
Making a box with many fans and no filtering whatsoever is simply asking for trouble! The thermal design of PCs is always pretty poor - it's unusual to see "joined up thinking" in this regard. It's one of the problems with "bit boxes" - self-built or bought - but people like HP are normally much better at doing this in such a way that the fans actually work together properly.
Cheers,
Mark
