[SOLVED!] New video card - can't set my resolution!

Hi. My HD5670 was getting a bit long in the tooth, frame rates dropping below ~25 too often even with low settings so I bought an HD7770 (I'm on a very tight budget).

Using the same driver - 13.12, with a QX9650, 6GB RAM running a recent install of W7 64-bit.

My monitor is only going to be replaced when it's well and truly dead - it's a 4:3 QXGA (1600x1200) Dell IPS and is just great! I like the vertical height when using it for documents etc.

With the HD5670 I'd just go into PoE settings and select 1600x900 full-screen and I was happy. However the HD7770, with the same (latest) driver doesn't give me that option. I get the full 1600x1200 offered, followed by 1280x720, 1280x768, 1280x800, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1360x768, 1360x1024, 1366x758 ad nauseam right down to 800x600. I can select any of the lower res modes and have them blurry - or have it windowed and have it clear but small.

When it's windowed I can drag the window out to the edges of the screen (or double-click the titlebar) - but the biggest it goes is 1600x1178 (and has (custom) after it) - it reserves the other 22 pixels for the window's titlebar. However when I try to drop the vertical resolution down to 900 the horizontal reduces to 1594!!!! (And it's still windowed which I'd rather not have...)

Can anyone help please? At the moment it seems I have a choice of the old HD5670 full-screen 1600x900 but with low details and frame-rate or the HD7770 running much faster but either windowed or running an ugly resolution.

Thanks.

You can change settings manually in the "production_Config.ini" file found in the My Documents\My Games\Path of Exile directory. Give it a try.

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DemiDemon a écrit :

My monitor is only going to be replaced when it's well and truly dead - it's a 4:3 QXGA (1600x1200) IPS and is just great! I like the vertical height when using it for documents etc.

Or anything not related to current gen gaming.

It's this exact reason why I haven't switched to a 120Hz monitor; they're all 16:9 (and TN) and absolutely terrible for anything other than running newer Hor+ games and watching widescreen movies. I regularly play older 4:3 games and do a lot of non-gaming related things, so a drop to 16:9 is completely unacceptable (as is running two separate monitors).

My 1920x1200 IPS monitor is turning 10 this year and I recently discovered it has a microstutter issue so I need to replace it, but despite any inquiries I've sent to monitor manufacturers over the last 3 years, there's still no 16:10 120Hz+ displays over 1680x1050, and I don't see any sign of them coming even after the slow shift to DisplayPort.


As for your question; Warrax's solution should solve it.

However, I assume all your other games function the same way now, which means you'd need to set a custom resolution for all of them. Is this correct?

If so: Install your monitor driver. If you don't have your monitor driver, you can use a utility like Powerstrip to read the EDID of your monitor and write a custom monitor driver so your display drivers will understand what your monitor is capable of.

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Warrax a écrit :

You can change settings manually in the "production_Config.ini" file found in the My Documents\My Games\Path of Exile directory. Give it a try.

Thank heaps Warrax, that worked a charm (once I started the game again and set it to full screen then edited it as I wasn't sure what to do about those lines).

Thanks again, all the best,

Edit: I spoke too soon - it looked to be about the right size so I replied straight away. In fact for some reason it's gone to 1440x900, the closest resolution to the one I wanted that was on the list. :-/

(BTW that list only exists in PoE - In W7 there's a just a slider with several 4:3 resolutions only.)

Hi DAOWAce, I agree with your sentiment re monitors. I'm rather poor (on an invalid's benefit) so I've been making do with a pair of Dell 2007fp monitors, the IPS versions that I managed to buy second-hand when they were 18 months old. I'm hoping they'll last me a while yet. <fingers crossed>

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DAOWAce a écrit :

As for your question; Warrax's solution should solve it.

Alas, not so far.. :-/

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DAOWAce a écrit :

However, I assume all your other games function the same way now, which means you'd need to set a custom resolution for all of them. Is this correct?

I don't know, I've just done a new install of W7 last week and only fired up PoE so far as it's the game I play the most. I should get around to installing Diablo 3 I guess.

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DAOWAce a écrit :

If so: Install your monitor driver. If you don't have your monitor driver, you can use a utility like Powerstrip to read the EDID of your monitor and write a custom monitor driver so your display drivers will understand what your monitor is capable of.

Windows 7 tells me that my monitor driver is already installed and, as mentioned in the OP, the HD5670 worked like a charm.

This has got me puzzled.

[Edited to correct misspelled name]

Capital A in Ace! (There's a fairly bad story behind the lowercase a, but I won't go into it here.)

So in device manager it states your monitor's name as "Dell 2007fp" and not "Generic PnP Monitor"?

If so; not sure what to say. I mean I'd still try the custom monitor driver if you can't get it working, unless there's some sort of custom resolution option within AMD's Catalyst drivers (I have not used an ATI card since the AGP days), as that would be easier and potentially a better solution.

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DAOWAce a écrit :

Capital A in Ace! (There's a fairly bad story behind the lowercase a, but I won't go into it here.)

So in device manager it states your monitor's name as "Dell 2007fp" and not "Generic PnP Monitor"?

If so; not sure what to say. I mean I'd still try the custom monitor driver if you can't get it working, unless there's some sort of custom resolution option within AMD's Catalyst drivers (I have not used an ATI card since the AGP days), as that would be easier and potentially a better solution.

Please accept my apologies for the typo in your name.

Yes, in Device Manager it says 'Dell 2007FP (Digital)" and I've prompted to update the driver file but it's the latest.

As you say, if I could find another way other than Powerstrip it would be good. I've only one experience of that and it didn't end well. One of the first things I did on noticing this problem was explore CCC and I've not found anything there yet.

Could it be possible that the graphics card's crook? I bought it second-hand from a guy who says he's updating.... It seems to work just fine though, other than this issue.

Man, if it wasn't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all! Fingers crossed someone just happens to know the solution - I've posted here as well as several hardware forums and the other forums all say ask here. :-/

Ok, for the sake of anyone else who might have this issue I'll post how I resolved it:

A good friend in the newsgroup nz.comp pointed me to this site: http://www.wsgf.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=21972here thinking that it would do what I wanted. However, while it wasn't the cure it *did* start me off in the right direction.

On reading that page carefully it didn't seem to be quite what I was after but it was very close. They were setting non-standard *desktop* resolutions (and bemoaning the fact that AMD have apparently started restricting what resolutions they could set with newer cards) while I wanted a different resolution in-game.
I backed up the registry first - something that wasn't mentioned in the forum. ;) Then I proceeded to do as directed. However it made no difference - either to the desktop resolution *or* the in-game settings available. However, now I knew where in the registry the resolutions were stored I decided to explore a little...

In that walk-through on the forum the guy's changing the values in "DALNonStandardModesBCD1" and he speculates that "DALNonStandardModesBCD2" might apply to a second monitor, and "DALNonStandardModesBCD3" to a third.... I looked in "DALNonStandardModesBCD2" on my desktop and it was essentially the same as "DALNonStandardModesBCD1". So I decided to add the resolution that I wanted in-game to that set of values and see what happened. I re-booted, started the game and... No luck. :(

However, after spending quite a bit of time browsing through /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0001
(on my machine) I was convinced that the answer must lie in there somewhere, likely in one of the entries that was of type "REG_BINARY" but I didn't like the idea of blindly changing stuff.

Then I remembered that, with the exact same driver but the HD 5670 card I could get 1600x900 in-game *and* I had exactly that set-up in my second machine! So I moved over to that side of the room and spent some time browsing through the relevant registry entries on that machine and that was the breakthrough. I had a look in the second set of stored resolutions in that machine, "DALNonStandardModesBCD2" (that the guy who posted about this frist thought might be for a second monitor). Well, of the eight entries in there seven of them were 1600x900, just with varying refresh rates. So I hoped that I'd found where in-game resolutions were stored. <fingers crossed>

So I edited *that* registry entry on my main machine to mirror the one in the machine running the HD 5670, saved, re-booted, started the game and... YES! 1600x900 (fullscreen) is now selectable in-game. Both Path of Exile and Diablo 3. :)

I still don't know why swapping video cards (to a more powerful one) changes the registry entries and restricts available in-game resolutions (and changes it back if the cards are swapped again [?]) but at least now I know how to change it back manually. It must be a function of the combination of CCC and the card firmware that restricts the registry entries. I'm fairly sure that if / when I update CCC I'll need to go through that again but at least I know what I'm doing now. ;)

It seems that, for some odd reason, AMD are restricting what resolutions can be selected with their newer cards. Resolutions like 1600x900 (which I wanted) and which used to be a quite common resolution for hi-res 19" monitors a few years back have been removed from the in-game choices. Instead all the television resolutions are there now (I remember when it was a real; pain to get a video card to display on a TV properly). I understand why AMD would put the 720i, 720p, 1080i and 1080p resolutions in there but I don't get why they'd have to remove the other resolutions unless they're trying to push people into buying new monitors. Those registry entries I was editing had eight to ten resolutions in each entry but were easily capable of having twice that - so it's not like they had to 'make room' for the newer resolutions.

Perhaps this will help someone else.

Just thought I should mention; If someone else is wanting to play around with these settings please be sure to follow the instructions at http://www.wsgf.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=21972here on how to find where in the registry they are. It varies from machine-to-machine but using CCC they are easy to find. In other words don't just go to /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0001 because that's where they reside on my machine - Yours might be different.

That site has directions on how to find them (and screenshots to make it easier - so there's no point me re-writing it out here). My thanks go to 'suiken_2mieu' on that forum for starting me on the right track.

DAOW, if your monitor is failing, its generally due to capacitors, which are VERY easy to replace. You can either pull the thing apart and look at the capacitors and go source (I recommend digikey) and replace any with bulging tops, or find a capacitor kit for your monitor model.
Nichicon makes good capacitors, most manufacturers use capxcon, which are pretty crappy.