I just got a new monitor and use overscan to match my picture to its borders. Unfortunately, the overscan keeps deactivating when I run applications like Skyrim or Kingdoms of Amalur. Overscan then stays off when I end the application. Otherwise, the overscan works perfectly.
This is an HDMI-connected monitor, so I thought the following might be useful, but that’s from two years ago.
In any case I can’t quite figure out why this keeps happening and can’t find somethign which would keep the apps from doing this.
Honestly, I find it odd that you are having to use overscan to get the picture to cover the entire screen. There ought to be a way to set your new monitor to no overscan and set your graphics card to output at native resolution without any underscan.
I only know about this theoretically, though, so I don’t know how to tell you to that.
As for your problem with the games–are they running at native resolution? If they are running at a different resolution than your desktop, then the problem may be a bug in your graphics card or monitor, where overscan settings aren’t saved when changing the resolution back. But, if you can make it where you don’t need to use overscan, that should eliminate this problem.
First thing, make sure you have the drivers, but I suspect that the issue might have to do with your screen though it is more common with hdtvs. With some TVs the hdmi “hand shake” doesn’t occur properly, sometimes when editing full screen apps, our waking from sleep. This trends to mess up overscan, and sometimes resolution settings.
Try seeing if you can remove the need for overscan by changing your monitor settings. There might be a 1 to 1 pixel setting, or per haps using a specific aspect radio might help. Alternatively try using display port or a DVI connection instead of HDMI.
As mentioned above, also make sure you are actually outputting to the native resolution of your monitor.
Is overscan really necessary? I feel like I’m missing something-- I’ve never heard of someone using (or even having the option to use) overscan for LCDs, since they are all 1:1 pixel mapped. Are you using a CRT?
The apps probably don’t respect your overscan setting because the developers and testers have never come across anybody using it before.
Is your computer set to the LCD’s native resolution? Some LCD monitors, when running at less than their native resolution, will letter-box the image instead of stretching it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that is what you’re seeing. (Edit: of course you still haven’t said whether it’s an LCD or not, so I’m assuming here.)
VGA might solve the problem, but it seems to me that it’s just going to cause problems down the road… VGA is really not suited for any resolutions over about 1280x1024. If I were you, I’d attempt to fix the HDMI input.