ASUS notebook screen not Full-HD? Browser says 1536x864, Window says 1920x1080

Hi all,

I have a ASUS N56VZ, which is supposed to have a full-HD (1920x1080) screen. I recently noticed that websites that detect your screen resolution (What is my screen resolution/display resolution? - Screen resolution statistics, Screen resolution detector - find out resolution of your monitor, online rulers, etc.) all state that my screen resolution is 1536 x 864. At the same time, Windows thinks that I'm at the maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080, since that's what it shows my current resolution as when I right-click on the desktop and go to Screen Resolution. How is that possible? Do I actually have a screen that isn't full HD?

I've noticed pretty much since the beginning when I got this notebook that my computer would start acting unstable whenever I ran full 1080p content, such as watching full HD videos or playing games in high definition. All of a sudden, programs would randomly start crashing, and crash again the moment I tried to restart the program (such as Firefox, VLC, Windows Explorer, pretty much any application I had open at the time). This problem would fix itself if I rebooted the computer, but would happen again the next time I played full HD content. Might this have to do with the apparent mismatch between supposed and actual screen resolution? Am I missing some drivers that would correct the screen resolution to what it's supposed to be?

I also want to add that using Firefox and Internet Explorer to check my screen resolution, I get 1536 x 864. However, if I check using Chrome, I get 1920 x 1080. Is there a non-Internet-based method to check the actual resolution to see which one my computer screen really is?

 

Try a different driver and see how that works.

 

The credibility gap between windows and a browser test is like the credibility gap between an engineer and a salesman.

 

Yes:

Agreed with HotBlood. I also get varying results based on the browser.

 

Haha, ok, glad to know it's not just me getting different resolutions being detected based on the browser. I'll assume my screen is a proper 1920x1080, as it's supposed to be. That still leaves the mystery of my applications randomly crashing after playing HD content...All my drivers should be up-to-date, so not sure what else I should look into.

 

.. pretty sure those tools are a kind of carryover from how crt monitors work. I.e., you would switch resolutions up and down and find the one that looks most stable.

LCD and ips, and so on is different. Each pixel is one dot of light at a fixed position over the led.. the lightbulb.

So what we have now is a "native resolution". This is the resolution that fits with the actual number of pixels the screen can show. Anything higher will be impossible to display without dropping pixel info (this is not going to work, and won't give you higher resolution). And anything lower will essentially double information on unaligned pixel pairs (lots of tvs that use supersampling techniques to smooth out the image in that case - unsuccessfully, imo).

And ideally, you would always use an lcd in it's native resolution (or at worst another lower resolution that doubles info/pixel collections evenly, to get the least amount of artefacts and breakage - it's not like with crt that you could lower the resolution to get better and higher refresh on a perfectly stable picture, for example).

Meaning that any lcd screen will have a maximum resolution (that will almost without exception be stored as hardware id info any display driver will see). And that highest resolution you can select is the native resolution of the screen (if you can't select it, windows likely is in rescue mode - but any semi-functioning driver will see and set the native resolution nowadays).

But it's possible to set modes that are different via the display driver. But then the info won't fit with the expected image - you lose accuracy, and the screen will have to compensate somehow. Or software will have to prepare an image that breaks slightly less horribly. So usually unaligned modes aren't even available or marked as supported.

 

I assume you have set 1920x 1080 screen resolution. Also in your display settings there is set 125%. which causes your 1536x 864 resolution.

 

Oh, right, that must be what the script detects.

 

Thanks! This fixed the issue on my Asus N56.