Preventing LCD scaling

[schickb]

I?m planning to purchase my first LCD (not sure which one yet) and have a question about scaling. More specifically, how to prevent scaling. I?ve read various comments that newer video cards and drivers from Nvidia and ATI can display black borders around a "fixed" resolution image to prevent scaling, but I have not been able to find much on either company?s site.

For example, let?s say I buy a 1600x1200 native LCD and I have a game that only goes up to 1280x1024. Instead of having the display scale up the image, I?d rather have the video driver render the game at 1280x1024 surrounded by a black border of 160 on the left and right and 88 on the top and bottom. That way the monitor gets a full 1600x1200 signal and no scaling is required (and of course some screen space is wasted).

Can Nvidia or ATI cards do this? Does one have better support for this than the other? Any links to official docs? Thanks.

 

[cmv]

I believe the decision to scale is made by the LCD control circuitry and not the video card. Perhaps the video card has input but I would be looking for confirmed examples of what you want in any product you consider buying. With laptops, there is often a key combo to switch between scaled and non-scaled but the video circuitry is very integrated so I would not expect the same in a PC.

 

[schickb]

I'm assuming the video card has no input to scaling. But if, in my example, the LCD gets a full 1600x1200 signal from the video card, no scaling is needed. The video card driver simply acts as a middle man: Tell the game (or DX) that it has a 1280x1024 display, fill in the borders with black, then send a full 1600x1200 signal to the display. I have read that some video drivers can do this, but I haven't found anything definitive.

It would seem simpler for LCDs to offer the option of scaling or black borders, but I haven't heard of that existing. I guess the video driver feature I am looking for is just a workaround for the lack of this option in LCDs.