First post, by Kerr Avon
A while back, I bought a laptop (Hewlett Packard G6 1331) which has a Radeon GPU, and it turned out to stretch *every* game that wasn't running at the laptop's full native resolution (1366x768) to fullscreen. Meaning that, say, if I ran a game that used 640x480 (which is 4:3 aspect ratio) then the game screen was stretched on the laptop to cover the full 1366x768 9:6 widescreen display.
Obviously the aspect ratio setting of the GFX card (AMD Radeon HD 6620G + 7450M Dual GPU) needed adjusting, but, er, the setting was greyed out. Don't you just love it when software treats you like an idiot and won't let you set things up as you like?
Anyway, Google showed this was a common problem when Windows 7 was run with an AMD/ATI GFX card, as for some reason unimaginable to every disgruntled user who complained of the problem, the writers of the AMD/ATI driver software had decided to not allow the user to set the GPU Scaling options, as long as THE CURRENT GRAPHICAL RESOLUTION WAS THE SAME AS THE NATIVE GRAPHICAL RESOLUTION OF THE MONITOR (be it a laptop monitor or an external monitor connected to a desktop). Seriously, for some reason that would baffle Sherlock Holmes, they restricted you from altering the GPU Scaling options if your current resolution was set at the optimal resolution as dictated by the hardware!!!
I've found two working solutions, both from the same forum thread ( http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=312794 ). If you don't want to read them, then skip ahead, the point is that they both worked, but now don't (well, solution 2 does still work to a degree, though for how long is anyone's guess).
Solution 1
Use the program that is linked to in that thread, although the link itself is dead, but I found it at http://media.mymtw.com/downloads/ATIGPUScalingFix-Win7/ (to find other links, google "ATIGPUScalingFix"). You have to keep this program running in the background, but it does stop the G6 1331 from setting everything to full widescreen.
Solution 2
[Quoted from that web page]
"ATI's solution as far as I've read about it was to have it grayed out unless a resolution lower than native was used, later on the ability to enable and disable scaling was added back but the modes remain locked, lowering resolution, altering the options and then setting it back should work although it'll gray out again, main issue with this for me is for older titles using lower resolutions, no way to set scaling mode with that method although ATI's solution is fine for desktop usage and similar.
(I can't remember where I read this but I think it was a post on ATI's forum from a moderator, fairly certain I've seen it explained on that Catalystmaker tweet as well.)"
I've just done this, and it worked. For some reason, the first time didn't take, so I did it again, and it worked. What I did was
a) Take the laptop's screen resolution down from 1366 x 768 to the next lowest (1360 x 768, I don't know why they bothered adding a resolution that was so extremely slightly lower than the next one up, but still...).
b) Go to the AMD Vision Engine Control Center > My Built in Displays > Properties (Built in Display). The scaling options are no linger greyed out (as they are when the laptop is at it's normal, maximum , resolution), and in fact there's a new option, Centered. I selected Centered, and of course applied the setting.
c) Then I changed the screen resolution back to 1366 x 768. The scaling options in the AMD Vision Engine Control Center are now greyed out again (and wrongly show full screen mode as being set, strangely), but the laptop no longer streches everything to full screen, and so far, every game I've tried has kept to it's native aspect ratio.
These two solutions worked for me, but not on a mate's laptop (different model, but also a Hewlett Packard with a Radeon card). He had Windows 8 on it, but neither solution 1 nor 2 worked on it, so I formatted it, put Windows 7 on, and solution 1 above worked fine on his laptop (I don't think I tried solution 2, there was no need), so Windows 8 apparently doesn't work with either of the solutions. The trouble is, recently something (I'm 99.9% sure it was a Windows update) has altered things, and solution 1 (the ATIGPUScalingFix program) is now useless, as it has no effect at all. Solution 2 does sort of work, but of the three options it gives you to choose from, only the bottom two (stretch to full wide-screen regardless of how badly it messes up the aspect ration, and show with the proper aspect ratio but with no stretching as all so it's a strict one to one pixel to screen ratio) work, the top option, the one we want (stretch everything but keep the aspect ratio, so that say a 640x480 game is stretched to full screen vertically, but has black bars on either side of the screen, and is 4:3) can be selected, but when you Apply or OK it, it reverts back to whatever it was set to before. The quick mess about I had with the registry before I gave up in the "I hate PCs/Windows/Microsoft" mood that so often bogs down us Windows users did nothing to help.
This is the same on three laptops (all Hewlett Packard, all with Windows 7 with updates turned on, all with Radeon GPUs) that I know of.So can anyone suggest any solutions or workarounds, please. And what are the experiences of anyone else with a laptop with a Radeon card and Windows 7 (especially if the words Hewlett Packard are involved 😠 ).
And who's fault is this ridiculous problem; Microsoft's, Hewlett Packard, or AMD/ATI?
If I can't find a fix for this problem, it might well be that a future Windows 7 update will remove even the one to one pixel mode, leaving only the stretch-everything-to-full-widescreen.
