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Can I disable interpolation on my laptop?

F

farmkid

Commodore
Commodore
I realize this is a very technical question, but I hope someone here will know something about this.

My laptop has a problem with the GPU. The laptop is actually a ChemUSA 2500, but internally it is essentially an Acer Travelmate 800. The GPU is a Radeon 9000. The problem is that I cannot run with the graphics drivers installed. If the grahics drivers are installed, it seems to use some circuits in the chip that the generic VGA drivers do not use which have become defective. No, it is not a software problem, since a fresh install of Windows or Linux does not solve the problem. It will load the OS until it gets to the point of loading the graphics drivers, at which point it stalls in an infinite loop. It will start fine in safe mode or with the grahics drivers uninstalled.

It runs fine with the generic VGA drivers in Windows, though with reduced performance. The real problem that drives me insane, though, is the interpolation. I can barely stand to use the computer now because of the eye strain. The generic Windows VGA drivers will not run at a resolution higher than 1280X1024. My screen is 1400X1050, so I am seeing an interpolated image. Now for the question: is there any way to disable interpolation so that the image is just a little smaller than the screen, but not interpolated?
 
I believe that there is an option within Windows to change the display scaling, which may help.

Unfortunately, any resolution on a LCD other than its native one will result in some distortion of the image, so even changing the scaling in Windows may not help your eye strain.
 
Do you have the latest drivers for that card?

I know more about NVIDIA than ATI, sorry.
 
Sec31MikeThanks for the tip. But, I don't think I have that option in the BIOS (or at least it's well hidden), but I'll keep looking for it.

SA22CWhere is the display scaling setting? Is that actually in the Windows display settings, or is it part of your driver settings? If it's in the driver settings, I won't be able to do change it because I can't run with the drivers installed.

LindleyI do have the latest drivers, but they aren't exactly what I would call "new". The date is Dec 2003. ATI doesn't provide drivers to end users for mobile GPUs, so I have to get it from the manufacturer, and their latest ones are nearly 4 years old. It doesn't really matter, though, because the problem in the GPU won't allow it to start with the drivers at all. The problem persists in Linux and Windows, so it's not a software problem. I guess there's a problem in just one part of the chip that is only used for features available only with the full drivers installed.

Thanks for the tips so far.
 
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