Damn that was painfull...

[RichL]

My new Dell 2005FPW arrived this afternoon, along with a note from Dell's couriers telling me it would be delivered tommorow evening , and straight away I set out on a quest for Matrox G550 Dual-DVI widescreen goodness


After an hours faffing around failing to get the native 1680*1050 resolution recognised
despite new .INF files and a full driver uninstall/reinstall, I gave up and started Googling round for suggestions.

"The Matrox G550 cannot support different resolutions when using Dual DVI" - quoth Matrox. Aha! My F419 on head 2 can only go to 1280x1024. Unplug, reboot, commence INF file and Driver faffing...nope. Back to Google.

"The Matrox G450 doesnt support 1680*1050 out of the box, try the Matrox Tweak Util, and if that doesnt work, try powerstrip." - quoth Matox again. A Google further. "And neither does the G550 despite us selling them still."

Right. Tweak. Reboot. Nope. Powerstrip. Reboot. Nope. Fiddle. Tweak. Reboot. Reinstall INF and Driver. Reboot. Bang head on desktop. Reboot. Find I can now get 1360x768 and 1920x1034, but no 1650x1080. Curse Matrox.

So I decided to plug the thing into my ATi Radeon 9500Pro instead and at least see what widescreen looked like. Shouldnt be any problems, the 9500 is about eighteen generations more advanced and ATI release new drivers every couple of days...

Plug, Install INF. Blink at lack of widescreen option. Install ATI Cat 4.8's supplied on Dell CD, blink again at lack of widescreen and wonder if I've sited my computer room over a conflux of ley-lines. Check ley-lines with dowsing rod while installing Powerstrip. Reboot. Fiddle. Nope.
Inspiration : Download latest OMEGA drivers. Uninstall ATI Cats, Install Omega, Reboot. Hey Presto! 1680x1050 on DVI and damn, it looks good.

Spend ten minutes marvelling at the wonders of modern technology before having another crack at the G550.

As the DVI input on the Dell was connected to the ATi PC, I plugged the G550 into the DSub and my AG F419 into the G550's DVI.
The 419 came up as primary monitor with the 1920x1034 option, the Dell was secondary.
Hello whats this? A whole raft of extra resolution settings going up to 1920x1200 including, to my shock and annoyance, the holy grail of 1680x1050
Set Dell to 1680x1050. It works, but looks terrible, like it's NOT running native resolution and is badly interpolating the pixels to fit. I realise the picture is oversized and waaaayy off one side of the screen, so spend ten minutes fiddling with the advanced monitor controls to bring it down to the right size.
Spend five minutes marvelling at it, before deciding that now the G550 is running the Dell at 1680x1050, all I need to do is to swap the connections over and use the DVI to run the Dell.
Bzzzzt. Wrong!
Another five minutes and I come to the conclusion that the Matrox G550 cannot support 1680*1050 via DVI, however it looks pretty damn fantastic via D-Sub so for the moment, I'm happy.

And if anyone can prove me wrong about the G550 running widescreen res via DVI, please post a how-to!

[schmosef]

You'll probably need a P series card to be able to run at that resolution.

Welcome to the 2005FPW club!

[Haig]

Hi Rich,

the G cards can handle upto 1280 in DVI. Anything more can be done but the pclock of the panel must be around 90Mhz for that resolution.

Otherwise, as shmo said, you need a P or a Mill P card to run higher dvi res's at a standard pclock value.

[RichL]

..and the story continues

Last night I had the G550 running 1680x1050 on Head 2 D-Sub and 1280x1024 on Head 1 DVI.
All very nice, but I couldnt run anything requiring decent graphics on Head 2, so I thought it would be a simple task to swap the DVI to head 2 and D-Sub to head 1.

Oh no it wasnt. Lost more faffing around this morning and I've got my 2005FPW running 1680x1050 on head 1 using D-Sub, but only at 24 bit colour. 32 bit colour refuses to work. Even better I now can't run anything DVI off head 2, which kinda makes the concept of a Dual-Head mega widescreen desktop a non-starter.

All in all, I think the best thing to to is buy a new ATi graphics card and allow the G550 to do what it's best at : stopping papers from blowing off my desk when I turn the fan on.

[gt40]

have you tried the matrox tech support tweak utility?

[RichL]

have you tried the matrox tech support tweak utility?

Yeah, didnt do a damn thing. Powerstrip got the resolution working and I get the option in the driver panel to set 32bit colour at 1680x1050, but I get an error saying "Cant use this mode" when trying to adjust it using advanced monitor controls.

[schmosef]

@Haig:

This monitor is widescreen. It's native resolution is 1680x1050. I've found that in the recently released driver sets the SE drivers do not support this mode where as the HF drivers not only support the mode but provide it as an option in the wizard that runs after the post installation reboot.

I like the SE driver premise in that it doesn't contain a lot of extra features that I'm not going to use and I'd like to use them on my home computer where I have two of these screens (and a Samsung 191T+). Is there any chance of a fix for the SE drivers to allow this resolution?

[Haig]

The current 2.x SE driver have standard resolutions hard coded, so no matter what utility you use, you won't be able to add new modes. The next 2.x or the one after it will remove the hard coded resolutions and allow folks to add new modes either with pstrip or our monitor manager and will also display all modes coming to our driver via the edid.

[schmosef]

cool, thanks for the info.