So it worked! Now what?

[Mosad]

I connected my 9800xt video card to my 37 inch LCD TV through a DVI->HDMI. The image displays rather well... at 1280x720 resolution.
HOWEVER,
The picture exceeds the monitor. What can I do, what programs can I download, to scale the image to my display. As it stands... my taskbar isn't visible, nor are any of the corners for that matter.
I may have read somewhere.. something about using ATI's Catalyst Center. The problem is, mine refuses to load. I will click on it either through my desktop shortcut or through other methods... and it will not load. The computer does not register the command.

Solutions? Advice?
Anything and everything would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks guys!

 

[tatteredpotato]

Make sure your TV isn't set to any kind of Zoom. I did that once and it took me 20 minutes to figure out what was going on.

 

[Mosad]

It's not the television. I played with all the formats and the zoom and so on and so forth and it has to do with the settings...

Advice?

 

[darkswordsman17]

You're getting overscan it sounds like. Do you have it set to output the resolution of 1280x720, or do you have it outputting 720p? If you have newer drivers I think you should have options for overscan and TV out specific settings. I know AT did some articles comparing overscan on nVidia and ATi cards a while back and both companies were supposed to be working on making their TV output better.

 

[Slammy1]

What is your monitor? Read your manual and verify you have the correct resolution and refresh. Does CCC show your monitor's name? It may require an update to the Catalyst drivers. With my Westy 37" and a 9700 AIW I simply ran a 1920x1080 resolution and a 60Hz refresh. The HDTV resolutions would produce overscan like what you describe. Also, make sure you don't have any scaling options set in CCC (like fit to screen). It should run the same as a PC monitor (with the Westy, that's what it is).

EDIT: Rereading your post it seems you definitely need to reinstall the Catalyst drivers. Make sure you remove the old ones as described on the web site.

 

[Mosad]

Slammy - I went to the web site and followed the instructions... and uninstalled the old drivers before installing the new ones. Upon restarting the computer as the instructions state... I no longer get any image at all on the television.

What do I do now?

 

[Mosad]

So I got a VGA to VGA cable and loaded the computer, installed the new Catalyst Drivers and reloaded the settings.
Here are my results:
Running on VGA, the highest resolution without overscan I can achieve is 1280x720. It looks good.
However, I plugged in my DVI->HDMI cable and the picture looked better... yet rife with problems. The picture is horrendously overscanned and when I go to the settings and attempt to change the resolution.. the display has a crack-overdose of sorts and resets itself back to its overscanned original self. Furthermore - my Catalyst Control Center does not load. It presents this error:
.NET Framework Initialization Error.
This error came up when I plugged in the computer through VGA initially. The display then righted itself... but I cannot access CCC.
I want to use DVI. The picture is better. How do I go about doing this? How can I fix the overscan?

 

[Slammy1]

Do you have the .NET framework installed? You won't be able to access CCC unless it is installed (I don't think you can even install CCC w/o it, it should return an error), and it's something you need to specifically select to install (it doesn't auto-select in Windows update and I'd recommend you use ATI's version and update that through Windows update). Also, you might find on optimization of the image (contrast, color, etc) that you like the VGA more. DVI is not inherently better than VGA, it depends on how well each is implemented in the display. If you cannot see your display when you've tinkered with settings, you may need to boot to safe mode to correct the problem (though your solution of a VGA cable works as well).

The catalyst drivers are very dependent on order of installation and uninstalling properly. If you've followed all of the procedures, including installing the .NET framework (you can always go to your user settings and delete the extra log-in if it bothers you to have that pause), you may have some deeper issues with your OS installation. Right now it sounds like your .NET framework isn't installed, or maybe installed incorrectly. Hope this helps. Coming from a 9700 Pro on a 1080P display, take heart in the fact that it should work. I ended up buying another GPU to run some games, I currently have an x850 installed and will upgrade my whole system once I find a final HD format and pricing that matches my strategy. Best of luck, and I'll look in again after work.

 

[Mosad]

I installed a new .NET Framework... and no longer receive that error. HOWEVER, CCC remains stubborn. The latest and greatest: errors with my CLI.Implementation and MOM.Implementation. I went so far as to download the CLI Language (I have no idea what it is, to be honest)... but have no idea what to do with it.

I am tempted to again uninstall all my Catalyst drivers and ATI software... and install not the absolute latest, but one version older of CCC.

Few people would complain about the VGA quality I am getting... but DVI is sharper and after reading text for twenty minutes... your eyes feel the difference. I would love to make DVI work... it just seems so riddled with problems.

Slammy, I truly appreciate the help.

Looking forward to your reply.

 

[apac]

Originally posted by: Mosad
I installed a new .NET Framework... and no longer receive that error. HOWEVER, CCC remains stubborn. The latest and greatest: errors with my CLI.Implementation and MOM.Implementation. I went so far as to download the CLI Language (I have no idea what it is, to be honest)... but have no idea what to do with it.

I am tempted to again uninstall all my Catalyst drivers and ATI software... and install not the absolute latest, but one version older of CCC.

Few people would complain about the VGA quality I am getting... but DVI is sharper and after reading text for twenty minutes... your eyes feel the difference. I would love to make DVI work... it just seems so riddled with problems.

Slammy, I truly appreciate the help.

Looking forward to your reply.

There are some TVs that do not 1:1 pixel map on digital inputs. It sounds like yours is one of them. AFAIK there isn't a way to fix this .

 

[Mosad]

Even if that were true... have I proven that? The only definitive fact is that CCC does not load, be it through VGA or through DVI. Would that not be more of a driver/software problem than my TV's inherent fault?

 

[darkswordsman17]

Get the program Driver Cleaner and the latest ATi drivers (I would go driver only and use ATi Tray Tools instead of the Catalyst Control Center), uninstall the ATi drivers and boot into Safe Mode and run Driver Cleaner. Reboot, install the drivers and go from there.

 

[Slammy1]

Originally posted by: darkswordsman17
Get the program Driver Cleaner and the latest ATi drivers (I would go driver only and use ATi Tray Tools instead of the Catalyst Control Center), uninstall the ATi drivers and boot into Safe Mode and run Driver Cleaner. Reboot, install the drivers and go from there.

I agree with this. I thought you needed to do the .NET framework before driver install, but I could definitely be wrong there (it's been a while since I've tinkered with reinstalls). Try tray tools and see if you can't get CCC to work if you still have issues. The drivers are very dependent on the order you install things so you may find yourself doing it a couple of times to get it to work. It's normal, don't get too frustrated.

EDIT: One thing I wanted to point out is that the Catalyst drivers are universal to all Radeons. What this means to older cards is that there's a lot of extra stuff in them. I did a lot of work with the drivers when I had my 9700, and when I first bought my x850 I played around with them a lot, but overall I've had a lot less problems with the newer card. There was a time I would update every time a new Cat came out, now it's been over a year since I last updated. At your resolution, it is hard to justify $100 for a new card, I understand that, but a part of your issue is almost certainly the age of the card. Not that this knowledge helps, I know.