Desktop not filling screen

When I'm set at 'optimum display settings' (1920 x 1080) a ~1" black frame surrounds the display, and text looks funky suggesting the picture is being artificially scaled down for some reason. This doesn't happen when I lower my resolution to 1440 or smaller.

My ATI 4800 series card's max resolution is 1920x1080 and my 24" monitor's native resolution is the same. They're connected via a HDMI cable (DVI-I to HDMI converter on the video card). Vista x32 always output clearly with this setup, but since my upgrade to W7 Ultimate x64, I've been having this problem.

Windows has updated my video card drivers, and I've also done so manually. Any help on what I can do?

Hi Zephyr,
have you looked for monitor drivers? I know some other users have had similar issues and installing the monitor driver did the trick.. Why not the monitors manufacturers web site?

Thanks for the suggestion! As soon as Acer gets around to putting out a W7 driver, my problem might be fixed. In the meantime I've been allowed to 1660 rez without issues so it's not life-or-death. Unless anyone else has any issues, or if a stroke of genius hits me, looks like I'm gonna have to just wait it out.

I had a similar problem with my HD 4850 when switching from vista to win7. I actually found a fix inside the ATI Catalyst Control Center. Open CCC and somewhere in the display configuration for your monitor ensure that there is no over/underscan. For some reason my CCC had a small degree of underscan turned on which led to the black bars you mentioned. A word of caution, when you start your games up and pick the native resolution the underscan may show up again. Just turn on any options for windowed mode and/or full screen and then turn off windowed mode again and the black bars should go away. Hope that helps!

Wow! Thanks, I'll try this when I get home!

Originally Posted by Waghelsg

I had a similar problem with my HD 4850 when switching from vista to win7. I actually found a fix inside the ATI Catalyst Control Center. Open CCC and somewhere in the display configuration for your monitor ensure that there is no over/underscan. For some reason my CCC had a small degree of underscan turned on which led to the black bars you mentioned. A word of caution, when you start your games up and pick the native resolution the underscan may show up again. Just turn on any options for windowed mode and/or full screen and then turn off windowed mode again and the black bars should go away. Hope that helps!

Great! Hopefully this will help others in the same situation...Thanks for posting

Yes, this does indeed work. If you go to CCC and hit "FORCE" and then select 1920 x 1080 i get a full clean image. Thanks for the help. I'll post other things related to this issue here if I discover them.

Great news!
Thanks for updating...

I have a Acer monitor H213h. I'm using windows 7. My resolution is at 1920x1080. But for some reason it does not fill in the whole screen on my monitor. Theres black side bars on each corner of the screen. Is that a way that I can fill the whole screen without losing any resolution?

Originally Posted by xdrew

I have a Acer monitor H213h. I'm using windows 7. My resolution is at 1920x1080. But for some reason it does not fill in the whole screen on my monitor. Theres black side bars on each corner of the screen. Is that a way that I can fill the whole screen without losing any resolution?

This is the third thread today about this... use the search feature here or google for the overscan/underscan fix.