'External Screen'-problem (Blurry)

[GoldenUFO]

Hello all.

First of all, I am quite new at Ubunbu, as I have just installed it for the first time, so be gentle ;)

My problem is as follows:

I have installed the drivers for my graphics-card (correctly I think), but when I plugs in my external Screen, i cant make it work the way I want to.
I can find the screen, and have them both on at the same time, but the I can only set it to the 4:3 formats, 1024x768 and lower, but my screen is a widescreen :mad:

When I select the 'laptop'-screen and turns it of, my external screen gets all blurry, and it is impossible to see anything on it, which I do not understand.

INFO:
$ lspci | grep VGA
$ 01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)

Samsung SyncMaster 940MW 19"


I hope someone can help my :p

Greatings from Steffen.

[efflandt]

It is apparently normal for X to default to a resolution that works on both displays, since it does that even with my Toshiba with more capable graphics, reverting to 1024x768 for both laptop screen and 1080p HDTV.

I just tried an old Compaq V2000 which has same video as yours using xorg-driver-fglrx package in Ubuntu 9.10, and it too came up in 1024x768.

lspci | grep VGA
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)

From xrandr, it appears that it is not capable of my 1080p or your native 1440x900. Following is xrandr after I switched off laptop display (LVDS) and changed to an existing 1360x768 mode with ($ indicates system prompt):


$ xrandr --output LVDS --off

$ xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode 1360x768

$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1360 x 768, maximum 1360 x 1360
VGA-0 connected 1360x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
1360x768 59.8*
1152x864 60.0
1024x768 60.0
800x600 60.3
640x480 59.9
LVDS connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
1280x768 60.0 +
1280x720 59.9
1152x768 59.8
1024x768 59.9
800x600 59.9
640x480 59.4
S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)Note that it shows "maximum 1360 x 1360", but I don't know if that is total pixels (RAM limitation?), or that it cannot go wider than 1360 (frequency limitation?). See what xrandr shows for your system.

And see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Resolution to test if other resolutions work for your system. 1440 x 900 is less that 1360 x 1360, so if it is a RAM limitation, maybe you could find a mode that would work. Otherwise if xrandr shows a 1360x768 mode, you might try that like I did above (it worked on a different native 1280x720 HDTV that did not even list that mode in its docs).