re: laptop display resolution and external monitor

Dear Community,

Hello. First I apologize if this post is in the wrong area. My question is about display on an external monitor, which I believe depends on the graphics card.

In general, I do not use my laptop screen; I connect my laptop via VGA to an external monitor and turn off the laptop's LCD.

The external monitor I currently have and use is the Acer AL2016W 20" Widescreen. According to the box, it has a 16:10 aspect ratio. The maximum resolution is 1680 X 1050 for this LCD display.

As I am currently using a 15.6 inch laptop with a native resolution of 1680 X 1050, everything is fine.

However, I am planning to buy a HP dv4t notebook. It is 14.1" inches and the display resolution is WXGA 1280 x 800. I have set the resolution to 1280 X 800 on my current laptop and the display on my external monitor is not good. That is, roughly 2 inches from the top and bottom is black and the image looks "squashed."

Thus, I am concerned that this external monitor will not be compatiable with the HP dv4t. Is this the case? Can the graphics card (Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD) output display at the 1680 X 1050 resolution? Or would I have to buy a new external monitor? Would the HP dv6t with the 1366x768 resolution be any better or should I look for a laptop that has a 1680 X 1050 resolution?

I am not very familiar with this aspect of monitor display, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much for your time in this matter.


Sincerely,
Joe

 

The resolutions are separate, unless you are cloning the display (same thing being shown on both screens). If it looks squashed, change the scaling option for the monitor. (right click to go graphics options->monitor->panel fit)

 

Thanks for the message namaiki. I have been able to fix that for my current configuration.

Any ideas whether the Intel GMA 4500MHD can output 1680 X 1050 via VGA?

 

I know I can output 1920x1200 via VGA to my TV, so 1680x1050 should be fine.

 

Thanks again.

 

Here's my experience:

I've got the HP 6730b laptop and a 24" external monitor (HP w2408h) connected via VGA. I'm trying to run in the extended desktop configuration with the monitor as the primary and the laptop as the secondary. The max resolution I can get on the monitor is 1280 x 1024 (native resolution is 1920 x 1200) and the max resolution I can get on the laptop is 1680 x 1050 (native resolution is 1280 x 800 which isn't even an option from the Intel drivers). If I run with the external monitor only in single display mode, the maximum resolution is 1280 x 1024.

My optimal setup is extended desktop with 1920 x 1200 on the monitor as the primary and 1280 x 800 on the laptop display as the secondary. I've installed the latest monitor drivers which don't help and uninstalled and reinstalled the latest video drivers which didn't help. I have also tried Ultramon and still can't find a way to get the preferred setup. When I had a similar problem with my previous laptop that had the ATI Mobility Fire GL, I had a similair problem which took ages to resolve but it ended up being one of the 'panning' settings on the video drivers which ended up allowing the higher resolution. I am hoping there is something similair with the Intel GMA 4500MHD that I am just missing so far.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

I finally figured it out after hours of troubleshooting. It was my docking station! In the end, I disconnected from the docking station and monitor, then uninstalled the Generic Plug & Play monitor drivers and the video drivers from Device Manager. I had to change the permissions on the c:\SWsetup\Monitors folder to completely uninstall them. Then I installed the monitor drivers from the HP website.

When I shutdown, I connected directly from the laptop to the vga cable on the monitor. Upon restart, the monitor and the video card were recognised and I can now see both showing correctly (finally rid of the generic PNP monitor) and the right options appeared in the Intel GMA driver graphics properties!

When I reconnect through the docking station, it limits the resolutions I can select again. It might be because I've got an old docking station. Anyway, I would rather have my optimum resolution.