Radeon x1400 DVI widesceen not working

Just got Dell 20" wide-screen monitor, which includes a DVI port. With help from Lenovo support, was able to turn on the DVI port (initially just seeing VGA), BUT results in screen resolution of 1400 X 1050, whereas the monitors naive reolution is 1680 X 1050. Result is "letterboxed" display - that is, display looks OK, bit only uses part of teh screen, with "balck bars" on either side. VGA works fine at full 1680 X 1050, and fills screen nicely at this resultion. Can't seem to get driver from ATI: their web-based app tests the system and says new driver is incompatible.

I want to be able to run at full resolution in DVI (doing digital photos, and everyone says DVI is better).

Help!

thanks

Saul

 

Update: No progress, but it occurs to me that the ThinkPad Prewsentation Management software, which is how Lenovo technical support had me trying to active DVI, may be the limiting factor, since it thinks of the external monitor as duplicatimg the internal LCD, which does not have a widescreen ratio. In other words, I'm guessing it sees 1400 X 1050 as the highest resolution possible because it IS the highest for the internal LCD. So, how can I activate DVI directly for monitor????

BTW, ATI responded to an email querty by saying they do not provide support for laptops using their cards. Bah!

Saul

 

For those who care (not many, apparently, since no one has responded to this Q), I managed to fix this. a BIOS upgrade supports the wide-sceen 1680 x 1050 resolution. Once this was installed, Presentation manager offered an option to drive external DVI device at this resolution. So, have PM set so that it defaults to local LDC when not connected, but drives DVI at full wide-screen resolution when it sees DVI. Only got this going last night, but seems to be working.

As indicated abiove, to get this resolution, have to set so that external device is not just mirroring internal LCD, which does not support this widescreen view

 

Shiffman,

Which BIOS are you referring to ? I don't have monitor to
test, but I have the advanced dock and plan to buy a
monitor in the future. My T60 is at the latest BIOS
(1.09) and also PM is at 2.54.

When I try to configure a new profile in PM with external
DVI monitor, I don't get widescreen options. I only
get a list of 4:3 (up to 2048X1536) resolutions.

 

i have neither a lenovo or x1400 but an x1600 in an asus w3j..but what i did was download hydravision which supports discrete resolutions between the laptop lcd and the desktop..you have to search using google to get to it though..ati's sitemap is quite the garbage -_-

 

Thanks. I downloaded Hydravision, but since I'm not (currently) actually using two monitors at once, it didn't seem relevant. In any case, it appears I found teh magic step.

thanks

 

Don't know version number, but ran Thinkvantage Software update, and it found a BIOS update that added resolution options, and that seemed to have done the trick. After setting this up as a "presentation" option, happily working on WSXGA with DVI

Saul