Forcing ancient GPUs to modern resolutions?

[Participant]

Hi all

The IT gimp where I work has purchased 22" widescreen TFTs for everyone without checking that the ancient Intel onboard GPUs in our PCs can support the native resolution. They can't.

Is it possible to go above the manufacturer's listed max resolution in the technical data sheets with clever software trickery, or is the only solution a new GPU? I need 1680 x 1050 and the listed resolutions only go up to 1600 and none of them are widescreen so, perhaps even worse, everything's squashed!

Thanks.

 

[sastusbulbas]

My old Mac G4 PowerPC has an ATI Rage 128 4XAGP card which manages 1680+1050.

 

[Participant]

Not exactly sure of the model but it's a 64MB 88435G or something from 2002. An ATi Rage 128 AGP will be significantly newer I would have thought.

 

[Monkeynut]

Does Powerstrip do what you want?

 

[Participant]

Not sure as I can't see the GPU in the compatible list. I doubt it though, but I can try it tomorrow. Thanks for the suggestion. I suppose if PowerStrip can't do it, I'm pretty much screwed?

 

[dante6491]

Has he ever updated the drivers for the intel chips?

 

[Participant]

He hadn't. I mentioned it to him this morning and he muttered and moaned for a bit, then went to the Intel website and updated the drivers. Now looking in glorious 1680 x 1050 goodness!

Thanks all. Should have tried the drivers first but reading the tech specs, it said max supported was 1600. So I guess the tech spec for resolution is fairly meaningless.

 

[deshepherd]

He hadn't. I mentioned it to him this morning and he muttered and moaned for a bit, then went to the Intel website and updated the drivers. Now looking in glorious 1680 x 1050 goodness!

Thanks all. Should have tried the drivers first but reading the tech specs, it said max supported was 1600. So I guess the tech spec for resolution is fairly meaningless.

I think the max resolution will be limited by the speed the GPU can push out the video data for each pixel (at a reasonable frame rate of course). Thus 1650x1050 is probably less taxing than the original max which I assume is a 4:3 1600x1200