t420 display scaling issues

I finally got my t420 a few days ago. Coming from a Compal IFL90, I'm still trying to get used to the rather dreadful display and the horrible sound (even with dolby drivers)...

Long story short, one of the problems that keeps bugging me is that when I play a game in fullscreen, using a 4:3 format resolution, the image scales to the entire screen, making it look awful. My incursion into the nvidia control panel led me to discover that Adjust Desktop Size and Position (which I know responsible for scaling) isn't there. After some googling, I found out that this is the general case with Optimus, as it uses Intel's settings regarding this issue. Ok. Right click -> Graphics Properties -> Panel Fitting -> Keep Aspect Ratio (hope I translated correctly, as my menu is in Romanian). This should solve it, right?! The problem is... it doesn't deactivate. The option stays enabled no matter how many times I click the .

Can anyone please help in this matter?


Edit: I just discovered that when right clicking on desktop -> Screen Resolution -> Advanced settings -> Intel Control Panel -> Scaling only has "Keep Aspect Ratio" in the dropdown list (again, I hope I got the translation right). Anybody know why?

 

so... nobody? I'm sure there must be a way to make it display black borders around the image instead of scaling the whole thing...

 

Try lower your desktop screen resolution and then set the aspect ratio option in the Intel graphics settings and then raise the screen resolution back afterwards.

 

I would make sure you drivers are upgraded to the latest version. If I recall, nvidia had disabled the scaling option which made all games and 3D apps scale by default. Head over to nvidia.com and get the latest driver then look for the option again. The option should be "Aspect Ratio" which keeps the aspect ratio of the resolution you choose. If you run a game 800x600 it will be a square in the middle of your screen.

 

Thanks for the help guys.
@ha1o2surfer I should have mentioned that I already have the latest drivers, I even tried previous versions with no luck. Actually namaiki's solution worked for me. It seems that nVidia removes the "Aspect Ratio" option from it's control panel when using Optimus cards.