Can't drive Samsung SyncMaster 245BW at 1920x1200 with nVidia Quadra FX 3450 (64-bit)

[randallecook]

Sorry for the long title. I wanted to pack in as much information as possible. Here's the story:

At work I received a Dell Precision 490 workstation, which I hooked into my Samsung SyncMaster 245BW monitor with a DVI cable. The computer came with Windows XP, but I wanted to run Ubuntu 64-bit Linux on it. Installation was smooth and fast, and all hardware was recognized, even the nVidia Quadra FX 3450 it came with. Linux simply rocks on this hardware.

After install, the highest resolution I could get was 1280x1024. Ubuntu recognized the nVidia graphics card and asked if I wanted to install the restricted drivers for it. I did, and after doing so I could get 1600x1200 with full compiz effects. Getting there.

The monitor's natural resolution is 1920x1200, and I wanted to run it that way. I have an identical monitor on a machine at home (32-bit AMD Thunderbird, Ubuntu 7.04, nVidia GeForce FX 5200), and it works at 1920x1200 just fine. Others in my office run the same hardware with Windows XP and get full resolution, so it is clearly not a hardware issue.

I read through everything I could find about monitor configuration and tried many things:

- 'dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg' did not help
- the open source driver did not help
- installing the Linux driver from the nVidia site really did not help
- copying modelines found on the web did not help
- using PowerStrip under Windows to generate a modeline did not help

In all cases I either get a relatively low resolution (1024x768 or 800x600) with xorg running in failsafe mode, or something higher, but no 1920x1200. Xorg.0.log generally says "No valid modes for "1920x1200"; removing" and I am back at 1600x1200.

At this point I am out of ideas and am appealing to the community. I suppose giving up and getting a different video card is an option, but I'd like to think that we can use this opportunity to extend Linux's hardware reach. I can post xorg.conf files and log lines if that would help. Thanks.

[randallecook]

One more thing: I also tried the EnvyNG tool. It didn't help either.

Randall

[wkulecz]

Try using an analog cable. Can't get anything better than 1600x1200 on my Sony with DVI. But 1920x1200 is great with the VGA analog cable. Go figure.

DVI appears to be a rip-off to my eyes, expensive, short, stiff cables and no improvement to the image over analog that I can see.

--wally.

[cor2y]

you can try the nvidia tool that comes with the closed drivers
via the terminal

sudo nvidia-settings

and go to x-server display configuration, see if you can select your default monitor output from there.
If you can then export that setting to the xorg.conf file (theres a setting to do that in nvidia-settings) when you restart you should have that resolution.
Also on another note its always a battle to get the correct res you wish using a Samsung monitor in ubuntu i have no idea why.

[Mark Phelps]

Hey randall -- see you did start a new thread ...

I've see other posts about not being able to get greater than 1600x1200 with DVI connection. I have the same monitor, and although I AM able to get 1920x1200 with DVI, when I tried to use the Screen Resolution panel to add drivers for the Samsung 245BW, the max resolution the panel would allow was 1600x1200.

So, maybe there's something to this needing to use the analog port to get the higher resolution. I'll change the connections tonight and try the panel again to see what happens.

I, too, am nervous about going to Hardy because it's been such a struggle to get this monitor working in Gutsy -- and I keep seeing post after post about new Hardy-related video problems.

[Mark Phelps]

Randall:

Sorry to report but there is definitely a problem using this monitor with a digital cable connection and Ubuntu 7.10. I swapped in an analog cable, and not only was Ubuntu able to detect the resolutions properly, when I added the Samsung 245BW settings to the Screens panel (using the windows .inf file), they actually worked!

When I then swapped back the digital cable -- it all turned to crap again. Just like last week. While I was able to select resolutions higher than 1600x1200 in the Screens panel, and confirmed that the xorg.conf file got properly updated, that same file might as well have not existed. Every time I rebooted or restarted the Xserver, it came up in low res mode! I even copied back the xorg.conf file that I was using before these experiments -- one that I KNOW worked. And even then, Ubuntu came up in low res mode.

I was only able to get 1920x1200 back using my digital cable by restoring my /root and associated files from a backup I made last week.

This really sucks!! I just don't understand how the xorg.conf file can be absolutely correct but still come up in low-res mode! Perhaps this is why they did away with a lot of the .conf file settings in Hardy.

I'm going to try installing Hardy and testing the Samsung there. But if I have no better luck -- it goes back!

[wkulecz]

Why are you in love with the DVI cable if it don't work and the analog one does?

Its not confined to the Samsung monitor, I have the same issue with my Sony and am happy runing 1920x1600 with the analog cable since it works!

--wally.

[randallecook]

Thanks for your suggestions, Mark, cor2y, and Wally, and sorry you got roped into that system restore, Mark. Way beyond the call of duty there.

BTW, in my travails I sometimes ended up in low resolution mode as well. Restoring my xorg.conf did not help. I discovered that there was an /etc/X11/xorg.failsafe file (or something like that) that seemed to override the main xorg.conf. Deleting that failsafe file and restarting X made xorg.conf be respected again.

Cor2y, I tried 'sudo nvidia-settings', and while I could view a lot of settings, the 1920x1200 resolution option was not available. I set the resolution to the "auto" setting, had the nVidia control panel modify xorg.conf, and restarted X, but no luck. I'm still at 1600x1200, but Xorg.0.log is no longer reporting errors or problems.

My Quadra FX 3450 card has no analog output (well s-video, but that doesn't count). It has two DVI connectors, only one of which I can get a signal on. Frankly, I would prefer analog, since I have an analog KVM that I need to support some older systems under my desk. And I find that with good quality components, modern monitors do an excellent job of aligning analog video with the LCD pixels. DVI doesn't help much.

I have a simple adapter that looks to be able to split a DVI cable into another DVI cable and a VGA analog cable. I tried it on both DVI connectors, and could not get analog on either. It is possible that the card is simply not putting an analog signal on the analog pins on its DVI connectors, but I don't have the equipment to check that.

A colleague has identical hardware and is able to drive his monitor at 1920x1200 with a DVI cable, under Windows XP, of course.

Any other suggestions, guys? I'm sorry this is such a stumper.

Randall

[Mark Phelps]

wkulecz: To answer your question ... when I switch over to the analog cable, every time I boot my machine, every single program shift forces me to press the auto center button ... so ...

When I first boot, the text is displayed off the left side of the screen so I can't see half of it ... press auto center ...

The grub splash screen comes up, items are displayed off the screen ... press auto center ...

The Ubuntu login screen comes up -- login box is displayed off the right side of the screen where I can't see it ... press auto center ...

The Gnome desktop comes up -- off-center ... press auto center ...

Then, when I restart and reboot into any of the other three OS's I'm running on this box ... I get to go through the whole drill again.

With the DVI cable connected, the screen comes up aligned properly every time. No having to press auto reset again and again.

So, short answer, it's a lot less annoying to use the DVI cable.

[wkulecz]

I solve the resolution change centering issues by using the monitor's menu selections to put it in "native mode" where the 640x480 BIOS screen appears at 1:1 pixel size (no scaling) in the center of the screen etc. But really, unless something goes wrong I don't need to see anything until my destop boots up -- I have auto login enabled for the default user, and then use the "switch user" to log into my private desktop. This so I can work around the bug where only the user setup by the installer gets sound. If I log out the default user, other users added with the "Users and Groups" tool don't get any audio.

Two 8.04 bugs that at least I've found workarounds I can live with.

--wally.