Quick help needed: Displaying 1280x720 on 1920x1080 monitor

[11thHour]

I have a ViewSonic VA2431WM monitor that's 1920x1080. I need to display a non-native resolution on it, 1280x720, but it's not sharp. Is there any trick I can do to display this sharply? (based on the wiki, my guess is no.)

According to the article...

Some widescreen LCD monitors optionally display lower resolutions without scaling or stretching an image, so that the image will always be in full sharpness, although it will not occupy the full screen.

Anyone know which?

TIA

 

[ElFenix]

is it displaying the correct aspect ratio (should have large black bars on the right and left)? if not, switch that in the display settings on the monitor. otherwise, that looks like the only adjustment available on that monitor.

 

[11thHour]

Yes, its displaying correctly, just not as a sharp image. If they exist, I need to get a monitor that can display both resolutions very sharply.

 

[Cerb]

In your diver control panel, if you have a Geforce or Radeon, you should see a scaling option, of which one of them should be 1:1, which will center small resolutions.

 

[mfenn]

Yes, its displaying correctly, just not as a sharp image. If they exist, I need to get a monitor that can display both resolutions very sharply.

To be clear, you don't mind there being black bars around the edge of the screen? Because the only way to get an LCD to display a lower than native resolution sharply is to use 1:1 pixel mapping. This leaves some pixels unused, creating black bars.

You can do 1:1 by having the video card do the scaling as Cerb suggests, or you can get a monitor that can do 1:1 mode natively like a Dell Ultrasharp.