LCD Without Scaling

[j7n]

What is needed to have LCD display without scaling? Is the display adapter doing the scaling (if DVI used), or the display?

LCDs have only one resolution and many applications such as DOS, or older games look unacceptable. I am configuring an old laptop now. It's LCD pixels are perfectly matched to the OEM textmode output resolution. Also 640*480 during Windows installation work properly. The smaller pictures are centered on the display. How come we cannot have this on modern screens? I would prefer res <=640*512 with doubled pixels, maybe with some scanline simulation thrown in.

[cluberti]

What is needed to have LCD display without scaling?

A video card running the display at a resolution the LCD was built for. Every other resolution results in scaling.

Is the display adapter doing the scaling (if DVI used), or the display?

It depends on the monitor - for instance, the Dell 3007WFP relies on the video card to do the scaling, whereas the 3008WFP has hardware inside the monitor to scale. If your monitor relies on the video card, expect poor results compared to a monitor with hardware scaling built-in.

LCDs have only one resolution and many applications such as DOS, or older games look unacceptable. I am configuring an old laptop now. It's LCD pixels are perfectly matched to the OEM textmode output resolution. Also 640*480 during Windows installation work properly. The smaller pictures are centered on the display. How come we cannot have this on modern screens? I would prefer res <=640*512 with doubled pixels, maybe with some scanline simulation thrown in.

Again, this is a function of the LCD panel, not the video card. If the LCD can't natively display the vesa resolutions (like 320x200, for instance) that a DOS window or old 16bit app will display, then it can't show these like the laptop you mention.

It's all a function of the display (one of the reasons that laptop used to cost more $$$ was the LCD panels used were usually quite good).

[j7n]

Has anybody seen a modern LCD display with advanced scaling options?

[nmX.Memnoch]

Dell's newer UltraSharp's have some pretty nice hardware scaling. My 2407WFP scales various resolutions pretty nicely...or I can set it to not scale at all. By that, I mean that I can set it to stay at the native 1920x1200 all the time regardless of the requested resolution. If, for instance, a game was set to 1280x1024 the monitor will display that resolution within the 1920x1200 (there will be black borders around the display). It's a nice feature to have if you game and the game doesn't support wide-screen resolutions. You can set the game to 1600x1200 and it won't be stretched.

[weEvil]

My Toshiba laptop (1 year old) has LCD hardware scaling on/off. It has the x1300 chipset integrated.

Its very possible on newer hardware & displays.

[jcarle]

Any nVidia based video card that is connected to a flat panel display through a DVI connection can turn off display and adapter scaling simply by setting the options to do so in the nVidia control panel. I can even do it using my 8600GT and my two Samsung 226BWs.