video card for Dell 2405FPW

[Bill McDonald]

My IT guy surprised me with a new wide screen Dell 2405FPW monitor to use with my existing Dell Optiplex GX 270 computer. This computer has a 3-4 year old NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 video card. The maximum resolution shown in settings is 1600 x 1200. This video card works with ACAD Map 3D but objects do not display properly. Circles appear as ellipses and square objects appear as rectangles. Everything is stretched and when square objects are rotated the corners do not appear square.

Undated video drivers from Dell did not solve my problem. Dell support suggested I flash the system bios. Do I need a new video card?

[Glenn Pope]

Have you tried getting the video drivers straight from NVIDIA? They are most likely are more up to date compared to what Dell would have. You can get the WinXP drivers here (http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_84.21.html). You'll need to have a resolution of 1920x1200 to look right. From what I have been seeing the 5200 should handle that.

[jpfsiglo]

It could be an DVI limitation. Some cards limit are 1600x1200, or 1920x1200 in single link DVI. It is not nVidia problem, it's card manufacturer problem.

Plug the LCD at the vga port or with an adaptor and test it.
If you set 1600x1200 the LCD scale it to fullscreen and that's why you see circles like elipses.

[Bill McDonald]

We tried plugging the monitor into the VGA port and have downloaded the latest driver from
NVIDIA. I don't it supports the 1920 x 1200 resolution recommended for my new monitor.

[jpfsiglo]

Uncheck the option Hide unsupported modes in the Monitor properties and see if it let you select more resolution. Your monitor can be telling the card wrong data about supported res.

[Bill McDonald]

I thought I had the problem solved.

While the old Monitor was connected I unchecked the box "Hide modes that this monitor cannot support". That box was found under the settings tab, advanced, GeForce FX 5200 tab. I then noticed the 1920 x 1200 setting was available.

After reconnecting the new monitor this resolution setting was missing and the "Hide modes that this monitor cannot support" was ghosted. Instead of plug and play the name of the new monitor was shown and I only can do a 1600 x 1200 setting.