maintaining aspect ratio

i have a 19" monitor with a native resolution of 1280x1024. unfortunately, guild wars runs like crap at that resolution due to a weak video card, so i currently run it in window mode at 1024x768.

i want to run it full screen. however, it looks distorted (1024x768 is 4:3, 1280x1024 is 5:4). i want to eliminate the distortion by forcing either my monitor or my video card to maintain aspect ratio, however, i can't seem to find the option for it.

here are the relevant specs:
geforce FX5500 256mb PCI
19" LCD monitor, with VGA input
driver version 169.21

i've checked my monitor settings and nvidia control panel. i can't find "maintain aspect ratio" anywhere. i wonder if there's a 3rd party program that i can run to force it.

thanks in advance.

I just checked my Nvidia control panel and under the display section you can find "change flat panel scaling" then you can set it so that it maintains the aspect ratio.

mine doesn't have a "change flat panel scaling" option :S

If your monitor's naitive resolution aspect is that of 5:4 no matter what you do, trying to play something fullscreen that isnt 5:4 will not look right

Since 1280x1084 is the lowest available 5:4 aspect resolution, your options are either

1. Go into your video card settings under custom resolution and try to enter a custom resolution lower then 1280x1024 that retains the 5:4 aspect ratio. May not be great for your monitor or video card but I cant be sure.

2. Play in Windowed mode with the width of the guildwars screen to fit your monitor and height adjusted not to make things look too squished.

on my laptop, it does allow for "maintain aspect ration". if i run anything that's not at native resolution, the ratios will be correct, but the two sides are filled by black bars.

i'm trying to achieve the same thing on my desktop. instead of black bars on the sides, it should have bars on top and bottom.

it's kinda strange. my laptop's nvidia control panel DOES have a "change flat panel scaling" option, but there isn't one on my desktop. i thought nvidia use the same driver software for everything :S

They may use the same driver code, but the feature may depend somehow on the hardware as I don't think it was in the driver control panel a few years back when the GeForce FX 5 series was new. Maybe they added it in the GeForce 6 series?

At least with Nvidia the control panel usually only shows stuff the hardware supports; I once spent hours figuring out how to get ATI's equivalent feature to work on a friend's computer. I don't think ATI ever fixed it on that particular card.

I looked this one up. I'm going to guess that you're not using DVI output, are you?

You might try looking
here
and
here
to see if you can find anything that will help.

yes, i'm using a VGA output.

i wonder if there's a way to force the driver to use "maintain aspect ratio"...

I'm sure that there must be a registry tweak to do it, but I don't know what it is.