How do I increase the resolution of a laptop screen more than it supports?

I have a laptop, which has a screen resolution of 1366x768, as most laptops have. Is there any way to increase it? The laptop is an HP Pavilion dv6, with Intel HD 3000 graphics and Radeon HD 6490M GPU.

I want to increase the resolution beyond 1366 x 768, as I have a application that requests that, and I want to run the application on this laptop only. The application requests a resolution of 1280 x 900 or higher.

8 Answers

Sometimes increasing resolution is useful (even though it does reduce quality). If a dialog's height is hard-coded to 800px it'll be off the bottom of the screen, and there's very little way to see it. On a 1366x768 monitor it's less of an issue, but on a 1024x600 netbook I hit this issue all the time. Maybe you have a higher resolution external monitor and you want windows to appear the same physical size on both screens - there are lots of reasons.

You can change the resolution to above native res on Linux using the following command:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --scale 1.25x1.25 

I find that a scale of 1.25 is on the edge of usability, probably 1.2 is more sensible. On your laptop, the output name may be different - but a quick google for XRandr will show you how to use it.

Having said that - the command worked perfectly on my Ubuntu 10.04-based netbook, but for me, on 12.04 (with gnome-panel) it changes the resolution but the mouse is still locked to the old area of the screen. It appears to be a regression, and there is a fix below so hopefully it will be fixed soon:

Use the xrandr command. For example: My native res is 1680×1050.

If I type in terminal:

xrandr --output LVDS --panning 1920x1200 --scale 1.1428571429x1.1428571429 

I will get perfectly good 1920×1200 resolution (it's 16:10, as my screen is) but, as an earlier answer suggested, this creates an oversized desktop. I need to pan around because the whole screen cannot be shown at once, you just don't have enough pixels, that's why it's your max res. scale # you get by dividing your desired res with current res (for me 1920/1680 therefore 1.1428571429).

If you wanted full HD (e.g., 1920×1080 for your 16:9 display) you'd type in terminal:

xrandr --output LVDS --panning 1920x1080 --scale 1.4055636896x1.4055636896 

We got your scale by dividing 1920 (desired) by 1366 (current/native). If LVDS doesn't work then try LVDS1 or type xrandr and see which one is connected. Could be VGA1 or CRT, but if it's laptop it's most likely LVDS or LVDS1.

It would not make sense to increase output resolution more than the screen is capable of displaying.

In best case it would have to rescale the output back to its native resolution (it must show is using a fixed number of pixels), which would require processing power and give you a worse result than just using the native resolution (most likely 1366x768, not 1399) due to interpolation errors.

In worst case it would just fail and not give you an image at all.

Sometimes it makes sense to send a resolution lower than the native resolution, e.g. for games where the graphics adapter doesn't have the power to render it smoothly at the native resolution, and use interpolation to show it on the full screen, but this should be avoided.

For completeness: to increase the resolution on your laptop you would have to buy a new laptop panel that is compatible. This is most likely not available, unless you are in real luck and your laptop is part of a series where a higher resolution model is available. It would still be a bit of a gamble to find a new panel unless you can find trustworthy verification of the specific panel model working with your specific laptop model.

If this is not what you mean by your question, you need to clarify.

One possible way around that could be to use what is refered to as a Oversized Desktop.

From Wikipedia:

[Oversized desktops] make it possible to pan around a desktop that is larger than the available hardware is capable of displaying. This facility is sometimes referred to as panning, scrolling desktops or viewport.

Although not free, you could try the trial of GiMeSpace to at least see if your application would work with such as tool.

I'm pretty sure that some old video drivers (ATI, NVIDIA) used to support this feature natively years ago, but I can't seem to find anything about it anymore. :/

Try QRes on Windows

Qres

It works on command line

QRes.exe /X:1024 /Y:768 

You can use PowerStrip to force it into a higher resolution than supported. However, forcing an incompatible resolution may be harmful to your display, graphics card, or any other component in the way.

Depending on your model, some models allow an oversized desktop, but everything starts looking like tunnel, as you need to pan around. Oversized desktops might not let some oversized desktop sensitive applications to open.

Some oversized resolution of an FHD display might me 1152 pixels or 1440 pixels, but setting these resolutions might show the entire screen, depending on your model, whether it has 'auxiliary' pixels, make a tunnel, lower the color depth, show blurry letters, or even turn black and go dead in the worst cases of very oversized desktop sensitive desktop monitors.

I suggest not trying this unless you know that is is true non-oversized desktop sensitive monitors or true very oversized desktop-sensitive monitors. All monitors have the option to hide modes that monitor can't display properly or not. In that case, when a monitor can't display properly, it is the GPU to show the picture which might look poor, depending on how sensitive your monitor is to an oversized desktop.

In that case, you must call the computer model maker to see if it's sensitive to an oversized desktop or not.

The solution that worked for me was to increase my resolution size to 1366 x 766, by going to Control Panel & then Display.