Screen Resolution nvidia GeForce 8800M GTX

English Hardware
1

Hi all. This is my first post and my first attempt at using OpenSuse :). I have a laptop with an nvidia GeForce 8800m GTX graphics card. I have searched and tried everything suggested to get more screen resolution choices than just the 1920x1200 allowed. I have the nvidia drivers installed and working but I would like to run my screen resolution at 1024x768 (help out these old eyes and run older games). I’m posting the relevant portions of the xorg.conf file:

Section “Monitor”
Option “CalcAlgorithm” “XServerPool”
DisplaySize 305 230
HorizSync 30-85
Identifier “Monitor[0]”
ModelName “1920X1200@60HZ”
Option “DPMS”
Option “PreferredMode” “1024x768”
VendorName “–> LCD”
VertRefresh 50-60
UseModes “Modes[0]”
EndSection

Section “Modes”
Identifier “Modes[0]”
EndSection

Section “Screen”
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Depth 15
Modes “1024x768” “1024x600” “800x600” “768x576” “640x480”
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 16
Modes “1024x768” “1024x600” “800x600” “768x576” “640x480”
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1024x768” “1024x600” “800x600” “768x576” “640x480”
EndSubSection
SubSection “Display”
Depth 8
Modes “1024x768” “1024x600” “800x600” “768x576” “640x480”
EndSubSection
Device “Device[0]”
Identifier “Screen[0]”
Monitor “Monitor[0]”
EndSection

Section “Device”
BoardName “GeForce 8800M GTX”
Driver “nvidia”
Identifier “Device[0]”
Screen 0
VendorName “NVIDIA”
EndSection

2

are you using Sax2 to configure your video card or the nvidia-settings utility? (it comes bundled with the driver)

If you are using Sax2, i would suggest trying the nvidia-settings utility: simply open a terminal and issue the following command

kdesu nvidia-settings

good luck and welcome to OpenSuse!

3

Thanks for the quick reply. Yes I did use nvidia-settings. It has only two choices - auto or 1920x1200.

4

Hi longgl

Do ‘xrandr -q’ to see valid modes listed. It may be that you need to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf to get desired resolution by default. Backup your working xorg.conf with

cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.working

Have a look at your existing “Screen” section. It will contain entries like:

Section “Screen”
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Depth 15
Modes “1920x1200” “1280x800” “1280x768” “1280x720” “1024x768” “1280x600” “1024x600” “800x600” “768x576” “640x480”
EndSubSection

Edit it so that “1024x768” is first, then this mode will be chosen by default (provided hardware supports that resolution):

Section “Screen”
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Depth 15
Modes “1024x768” “1920x1200” “1280x800” “1280x768” “1280x720” “1280x600” “1024x600” “800x600” “768x576” “640x480”
EndSubSection

If you don’t require the other modes, you can remove them. However, I recommend leaving them until you have new config working at preferred resolution.

Next edit “Monitor” section. Look for “PreferredMode” line and edit:

Section “Monitor”

Option “PreferredMode” “1024x768”

EndSection

5

Thanks deano. I copied my xorg.conf on my first post. It looks like the changes you suggested are already there. The output from xrandr is:

Screen 0: minimum 1920 x 1200, current 1920 x 1200, maximum 1920 x 1200
default connected 1920x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1920x1200 50.0*

What’s interesting is that 1920 x 1200 isn’t even listed in the xorg.conf. Can you suggest anything else? Is there any way to set the minimum and max?

6

Recent versions of Xorg now try to interrogate monitor for supported modes, and this can be problematic.

There are some options which can be set (as quoted from nvidia-config man page:

–use-edid-dpi, --no-use-edid-dpi
Enable or disable use of the physical size information in the display device’s EDID, if any, to compute the DPI (Dots Per Inch) of the X screen. This option defaults to TRUE (the NVIDIA X driver uses the EDID’s physical size, when available, to compute the DPI).
–use-edid-freqs, --no-use-edid-freqs
Enable or disable use of the HorizSync and VertRefresh ranges given in a display device’s EDID, if any. EDID provided range information will override the HorizSync and VertRefresh ranges specified in the Monitor section. This option defaults to TRUE (the NVIDIA X driver will use frequency information from the EDID, when available).

Its going to take a bit of googling and experimentation to find the answer… :slight_smile: