# Dual Monitors - Ati Radeon HD 3650



## Hevnlyst (Sep 15, 2008)

I recently purchased a new laptop for college, and it's been fine up to this point. I used it over the summer, with an external monitor, a 19" widescreen viewsonic, and ran both monitors spanned in a 2 on top of 1 setup, at 1440x900 and 1280x800. The laptop has 15.4" screen, with a max resolution of 1280x800, its native res.

Now, at college, I decided on buying a 22" viewsonic hd lcd tv/monitor, with vga and hdmi input. My laptop also supports hdmi, so i decided to buy an hdmi-hdmi connector, and run the lcd tv as an external monitor. 

After many hours of struggling, I have arrived here. My problem is that the external monitor will not properly display its max resolution of 1900x1080. Running the eternal as either primary or secondary, the highest resolution that monitor will display as fullscreen is 1024x768. Anything higher than that, including 1900x1080, is displayed as a distorted center image on the monitor. There are black edges around it.

Im not sure if this is a graphics card problem or an os( I use vista home premium 32-bit) problem, or possibly a manufacturer issue. My laptop has no problem running at its max native resolution, while the external monitor connected through hdmi cannot display over 1024x768 correctly.

I have used the ATI catalyst CP to force the 1900x1080 resolution, but still, its is displayed as a centered, smaller, and distorted res.

Is it the HDMI? Would that have an effect on a monitor's resolution?
Would switching to VGA fix this? Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated.


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## Hevnlyst (Sep 15, 2008)

bump?


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## Pauldo (Jun 22, 2008)

Some lcd tv's can only support certain resolutions through their hdmi ports for PC use. These are typically lower than their advertised 'native resolution'. Double check that that is not the case with your tv.

It also might help if you give model names and numbers of both your laptop and tv/monitor.

Pauldo


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## Hevnlyst (Sep 15, 2008)

My Laptop is an Asus M50sa with an Ati Radeon HD 3650, and the monitor/tv is a Viewsonic N2230w. After looking at the tv product page, it advertises 1680x1050, but nonetheless, I cannot achieve anything fullscreen over 1024x768.


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## psyclops (Sep 17, 2008)

I wont be buying one of those


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## magnethead (Mar 18, 2006)

so windows recognizes it can broadcast at the high resolution and the TV is not reading the input right?

how many sets of HDMI inputs are there? Have you tried more than 1 if avaliable? My DLP has one specifically for PC, and another for anything else.


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## Pauldo (Jun 22, 2008)

I have to ask this question :grin: but have you actually tried setting the resolution to 1680 x 1050. Do you have the option? 

I also have to ask if you have the latest Catalyst drivers? Download and install the latest ones if you don't.

If you have a vga cable around you might want to hook it up and see if the monitor can actually do resolutions above 1024 x768 from a pc. If it does, I'd be talking to Asus (they have a really long warranty). If it doesn't, I'd be talking to ViewSonic.

Pauldo


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## shdesign (Jun 11, 2008)

I had a similar problem with 2 crt's. My 2nd display would not achieve max resolution nor refresh rate. I did the re-install and all that stuff to no avail. By going to "Display" in control panel and making sure the display settings there matched those in Catalyst (they didn't) I ultimately was able to get the 2nd display working right. If you haven't checked out ATI's q&a, do so. That's where I found out about the Display trick, even though the person's problem wasn't identical to mine. Hope this helps.


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## shdesign (Jun 11, 2008)

Maybe it's a little late, but...I also found that there was a refresh frequency problem with my setup. My Viewsonic wouldn't go over 75 while my other monitor would go 90/85. By setting up each monitor separately, not forcing any setting between the two, I was able to get max resoultion out of my 2nd monitor, the Viewsonic. Also, Catalyst interfered with using Viewsonic's drivers. I had to leave it as a VGA.


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