20" Dell 2001FP, 64 bit OS, scaling issues

[cmoses]

So I have been working on a MAME cocktail project on and off when I have had some time.  I have been using a 19" Dell LCD monitor to do some testing and configuring.  It is a pretty good monitor, good viewing angles similar in size to original tube that was in there, but it is 5:4 instead of 4:3.  I have been testing it with HLSL to get the best simulation of an actual tube monitor. 

I was in my local Goodwill computer store recently and ran across a Dell 2001FP.  It is a 20" LCD with a true 4:3 ratio and I have heard seen them used in a few builds on here.  It has an IPS panel and has even better viewing angles and clarity over the 19".  I picked it up at a great price and was very happy with it until I actually started doing some testing with it.  The native resolution is 1600x1200.  I tried running at that resolution with HLSL on my Windows 7 64 bit machine and it looked great but only ran most games aroun 85%.  I have a AMD HD6450 2MB card in my test machine. I scaled down the graphics, trying different resolutions, 1024x768, 800x600, 640x480.  They all ran great at 100% but the images suffered.  I thought this was a little weird because I had no issues running at different resolutions with my 19".  I did some digging and realized that Windows 7 was only recognizing the monitor as a default monitor.  I went to Dells web page and discovered that there is no Windows 7 64 bit monitor driver.  I thought that was a little strange but, figured no problem I can run Windows XP 64 bit and be fine.  I loaded that up on my test machine and same issue, once again I discovered no Windows XP 64 bit driver either.  There is only a Windows XP 32 bit driver for this monitor.

I really want to run MAME64 to take advantage of the speed boost but I don't think it's possible with this monitor.  When the OS sees it as a default monitor I get the resolutions but the scaling is horrible.  Anyone with any thoughts or solutions? 

Thanks

[lilshawn]

all the monitor drivers do is limit what resolutions can be chosen to output to the monitor. it has nothing to do with your FPS.

[cmoses]

all the monitor drivers do is limit what resolutions can be chosen to output to the monitor. it has nothing to do with your FPS.

Do monitor drivers help the OS with scaling at all?  The 19" dell with monitor drivers seems to scale very well. The 20" dell does not. Even at 1024x768 I see a lot of artifacts. I thought 800x600 wouldn't be bad since it is 1/2 of 1600x1200 but even that resolution is not good with some blurriness and artifacts showing.

Thanks

[lilshawn]

monitor drivers contain...

supported resolutions
supported scan frequencies
color correction information
what the computer has to do to get the monitor to drop into power saving mode

you are going to want to display the panels native resolution to eliminate any kind of scaling or video voodoo. I would look into your video card drivers and be sure you are outputting a signal compatible with your panels capabilities. you are also going to want to lock it down to 60hz so you don't get any kind of tearing on the image.

[ark_ader]

Now you know why it was at the Goodwill store. 

[cmoses]

Now you know why it was at the Goodwill store. 

I wanted to post an update to this. It wasn't the monitor or lack of driver. The issues I was having were actually in my MAME.ini file.

I am running MAME at 1600x1200 and it is running fine even without a specific driver. In MAME I had the HLSL turned on and had it set at 0 which is auto. Turning the setting to 2 for the x and y prescale fixed the slowness issue I had and now it runs well.

So no issues with the monitor and it makes a great 20" monitor with a true 4:3 aspect ratio.


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