Gaming Games not running Full Screen on the Laptop

[Agjsdfd]

So got my Dell XPS 15. Still waiting for crysis to arrive to test on it lol.
BUT, games are not running full screen

.
I have Installed NFS Carbon, and few other games.
All run on a scaled screen covering the middle of the screen only.

Whats wrong?

 

[Gangboy]

So got my Dell XPS 15. Still waiting for crysis to arrive to test on it lol.
BUT, games are not running full screen

.
I have Installed NFS Carbon, and few other games.
All run on a scaled screen covering the middle of the screen only.

Whats wrong?

Normally it's a setting in your videocard drivers. Whether it's nvidia, ati or intel. Should be a scaling to full screen setting somewhere (right mouseclick at your desktop and see if you've got ATI, Nvidia or Intel Control Panel thing). Else also your BIOS could also have this setting, but is not most common...

 

[FAST6191]

Before going more in depth. I am not sure where laptop drivers and the manufacturers sit these days but if you can do consider rolling up to Nvidia's site and grabbing (or indeed hacking- assuming the OS can take it) some of their drivers.

After that though it looks like the screen is widescreen, most PC games (although it is far better these last few years and Valve are due a nod) are terrible at widescreen (even if you can manage to get resolution the viewing angle might still trouble you).
Fortunately we have http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/...x.php/Main_Page or in your case
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/...r_Speed:_Carbon

 

[Agjsdfd]

I am updating to the latest drivers at first.
I have Geforce GT 420M. 1GB
when I look up the device manager, it shows 2 display adapters. Intel HD and NVdia. When I disabled the Intel HD, screen resolution went down to 840...
confused

 

[FAST6191]

On a PC I would call old integrated but Dell are too cheap for such things- some laptops (not sure about this one) have a simple intel low power bit of junk to run on a battery and last more than 10 minutes with a proper graphics card in reserve* that is used for real work but at the cost of having a battery last all of ten minutes.
You quite possibly have a button on the case like you often do for wifi or indeed have it mapped to function and screen change (usually f4 or around there).



*graphics cards have not yet caught up with the idea of speed steeping and similar tech.

 

[Agjsdfd]

Its working fine.
By right clicking at the desktop I can set the Scaling

.
BUT, I suppose to have Nvidia Geforce GT 420M, WHY IS IT INTEL HD :/
I am confused.. in Device manager I can see 2 Display adapters as I mentioned. I tried disabling the Intel HD, but then the Nvidia settings also dissapeard along with screen resolution changing to 800...

 

[Jiggah]

You should not be disabling the Intel HD. The XPS 15 has Optimus technology, which allows the computer to switch between the integrated and the discrete GPU (your laptop has two GPUs). You'll want this to save battery life.

You need to set the scaling on the Nvidia driver side. Also, for whatever games you're playing, you may need to add them to the Optimus game/program list. This will enable it to utilize the discrete Nvidia GPU and run in fullscreen.

 

[murkurie]

I have a similar probably with certain games, so this might fix it for you, might not.
Go into your games video settings and change screen size from 4/3 to 16/9 or 16/10 whatever yours is, to make it wide. Like a res of 1080p is 16/9.

 

[ThePowerOutage]

I believe the intel I-core series have the Intel HD built-in.

 

[Agjsdfd]

You should not be disabling the Intel HD. The XPS 15 has Optimus technology, which allows the computer to switch between the integrated and the discrete GPU (your laptop has two GPUs). You'll want this to save battery life.

You need to set the scaling on the Nvidia driver side. Also, for whatever games you're playing, you may need to add them to the Optimus game/program list. This will enable it to utilize the discrete Nvidia GPU and run in fullscreen.

how would I do this?

 

[Delta517]

So got my Dell XPS 15. Still waiting for crysis to arrive to test on it lol.
BUT, games are not running full screen

.
I have Installed NFS Carbon, and few other games.
All run on a scaled screen covering the middle of the screen only.

Whats wrong?

Do you mean like having two black bars on each side?

 

[Agjsdfd]

So got my Dell XPS 15. Still waiting for crysis to arrive to test on it lol.
BUT, games are not running full screen

.
I have Installed NFS Carbon, and few other games.
All run on a scaled screen covering the middle of the screen only.

Whats wrong?

Do you mean like having two black bars on each side?

Thats exactly what I mean

 

[Law]

So got my Dell XPS 15. Still waiting for crysis to arrive to test on it lol.
BUT, games are not running full screen

.
I have Installed NFS Carbon, and few other games.
All run on a scaled screen covering the middle of the screen only.

Whats wrong?

Do you mean like having two black bars on each side?

Thats exactly what I mean

It's probably because the game isn't running in a widescreen resolution.

Do what FAST said for Carbon (and for other games that don't support widescreen), and for other games just make sure it's running in something like 1280x720 minimum.

edit: vvvvvvvvvvvv Have you got things like anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering turned on? Try putting them at their minimum settings, or try turning them off altogether.

also does your laptop have multiple battery settings? Like Low-power, Normal and High Performance? Make sure it's in High Performance, otherwise it might be underclocking your CPU and not using the GT420M

 

[Agjsdfd]

Its working fine

.
But for a 1GB Graphics card, with i5 processor, I would expect Carbon to run smoothly at high settings.
But even at medium settings its lagging..

 

[DeMoN]

First off, make sure that the game itself is set to the same resolution of your monitor.
Secondly, right-click on your desktop, and go to nVidia Control Panel. Under the Display section on the left, choose Change Flat Panel Scaling, and try out each of the different settings.

 

[Originality]

I believe the intel I-core series have the Intel HD built-in.

Amendment: the Clarkdale range of Intel Core i3/5 have an Intel GMA HD built in. That's what nVidia take advantage of with their Optimus technology. This is also why the laptop displays 2 display adaptors.

The Intel IGP can be disabled, but then Optimus wouldn't work (because it wouldn't know what to do when you're not running intensive games). It's better just to leave it on and reconfigure your display settings as others have suggested.

 

[Agjsdfd]

messed around with the settings. Performance of the laptop and battery life has improved greatly but games still dont run the way I would expect them to.
Not the full screen issue, I dont think Carbon is running any more than 30frames per second even at medium settings.
But quite impressed with the battery life though. 5 Hours! Its a normal 6 cell battery

 

[Jiggah]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U874jC2blJQ

Forget that the guy thinks it only works on the Alienware laptop.

Also, detail instructions in the comments.

Edit:

NFS: Carbon is an old game and it does not have native support for widescreen resolution, which is why it's pillarboxing (two black bars on the sides) the game.

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum...opic.php?t=7915

According to that link, the only way to make it support widescreen resolutions is to use third party software.

 

[Agjsdfd]

Thanks for the hints guys.
It seems the scaling settings has to be set manually for each Programs(games).
And carbon was the only problematic game. Even at lowest resolution and low details, it runs very laggy.

Even crysis is working pretty decently I must say

. Playing Orange Box 2 and loving the graphics

 

[Deleted User]

To test your graphics card and memory try streaming fullscreen in FireFox for one hour. It works for me... Sometimes the reason for slowdown in games is the Sound Card.