I think 1680x1050 res. can be done on standard res. screen

[emir]

Hello, i am using a hackintosh for a week now. I am using it just to get used to Mac OS X because i am switching to a Macbook Pro in a couple months. I switched from PC to Mac officially now. OK, let's come to the main topic of this thread;

-At first, my hackintosh couldn't get my gfx card, i couldn't find the driver(kext) so my resolution was very bad. Everything was huge and blurry. I couldn't even look at my 17" Samsung LCD screen. I made an entry to "com.apple.boot.plist" file which was something like this;

<key>Graphic Display</key>
<string>1280x1024</string>

so by doing something like that to your com.apple.boot.plist file on your Macbook Pro maybe you can get 1680x1050 resolution on a standard screen.

Or is this entry to plist file is just a hackintosh thing?

 

[spinnerlys]

What exact Samsung model do you have? It seems strange though, that it would have 1680 x 1050 as a native resolution and how does it look?

Btw, my com.apple.boot.plist looks like this.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Kernel</key>
	<string>mach_kernel</string>
	<key>Kernel Flags</key>
	<string></string>
</dict>
</plist>

 

[Hellhammer]

If the panel itself has 1440x900 resolution, it cannot be improved AFAIK. It's a physical fact, there just isn't enough pixels!

 

[neversaynever]

it is not a software limitation, it is an hardware one. 1440x900 screens have 1440 times 900 pixels whereas 1680x1050 screens have 1680x1050 pixels respectively. it is of no use forcing a lcd to adopt an higher resolution. it simply does not have enough pixels.

 

[emir]

What exact Samsung model do you have? It seems strange though, that it would have 1680 x 1050 as a native resolution and how does it look?

Btw, my com.apple.boot.plist looks like this.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Kernel</key>
	<string>mach_kernel</string>
	<key>Kernel Flags</key>
	<string></string>
</dict>
</plist>

mine was exactly the same, i just wrote <key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1280x1024</string> above the </dict> line.

i have a samsung syncmaster. Can it have more than 1280x1024?

 

[Fry-man22]

Hello, i am using a hackintosh for a week now. I am using it just to get used to Mac OS X because i am switching to a Macbook Pro in a couple months. I switched from PC to Mac officially now. OK, let's come to the main topic of this thread;

-At first, my hackintosh couldn't get my gfx card, i couldn't find the driver(kext) so my resolution was very bad. Everything was huge and blurry. I couldn't even look at my 17" Samsung LCD screen. I made an entry to "com.apple.boot.plist" file which was something like this;

<key>Graphic Display</key>
<string>1280x1024</string>

so by doing something like that to your com.apple.boot.plist file on your Macbook Pro maybe you can get 1680x1050 resolution on a standard screen.

Or is this entry to plist file is just a hackintosh thing?

I did this to get 1920x1200 (true native res for the panel) on a Dell XPS M1710 - it's an OS X preference file and is always present (not a Hackintosh specific config). The max resolution on an LCD is defined by the number of physical pixels so that number cannot be changed unless you change the LCD.

 

[tkingart]

I believe it is a hardware limitation, however- this is some speculation...

I once bought a 500gb external drive, and I wanted to replace it with a 1tb drive a few months later, figured it would be cheaper to just buy the drive on newegg without the external enclosure and re-use the one I had (and set the 500gb aside with backups), anyway- upon opening the case, the drive read 1tb on it, and I found a pin setting that allowed it full access to the rest of the drive space, reformatted and it worked perfectly at 1tb.

I don't why companies even do this kind of thing to begin with, but I suppose it's not impossible for manufacturers to set LCD's down to a lower resolution than they are capable of. I guess handling 1 LCD with 2 configurations instead of 2 physical is cheaper is the grand scheme of things? I don't know. I would first check into it, because it could also possible to damage the hardware if it isn't capable of a higher resolution, and forced into it.

PS. As for the boot plist, I've only ever used it for setting the 64 bit kernel EFI; instead of having to press 6 and 4 when booting, wasn't aware resolution could be set in it. is that possible? I run in 1920x1080 on my iMac, so I don't see a need to change into any other resolution.

 

[emir]

PS. As for the boot plist, I've only ever used it for setting the 64 bit kernel EFI; instead of having to press 6 and 4 when booting, wasn't aware resolution could be set in it. is that possible? I run in 1920x1080 on my iMac, so I don't see a need to change into any other resolution.

that was the advice i got when my gfx card was not working on hackintosh forums. It works too. I think correct form is;

<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>12801024x32</string>

of course the code has to be written somewhere above as a new line </dict>

 

[whateverandever]

It's absolutely not an artificial limitation. Scaling a 1680x1050 screen back to 1440x900 makes the screen blurry, and standard resolution MBPs are not blurry.

 

[cili0]

My desktop machine is a hack, and i'm afraid that kind of tag works only with the chameleon bootloader.

cheers!

 

[emir]

My desktop machine is a hack, and i'm afraid that kind of tag works only with the chameleon bootloader.

cheers!

very much possible. I have a chameleon bootloader, worked for me.

 

[murdercitydevil]

wouldn't work, it's a string that only a chameleon bootloader would know what to do with. There's obviously no EFI string to set resolution, why would there be? It's done in the OS.
EDIT: someone beat me to it.

Also, the thing about it being a hardware limitation is interesting. I'm not saying it's not true, but I also recall some years ago using my Dell laptop and somehow achieving a waaaay higher resolution than my panel was intended to display. I don't remember the specifics, but I think essentially what happened is i used video drivers that made available all the resolutions supported by the GPU, rather than limiting to the ones that the display handles, in this case 1440x900. When the higher resolutions were applied, parts of the screen were cut off though, and you had to drag your mouse over the edge for them to show up. So I think that it's not impossible (i.e. "there's not enough pixels") I think that it's pointless to do it because the display couldn't fit the entire image regardless.

 

[ValSalva]

It's absolutely not an artificial limitation. Scaling a 1680x1050 screen back to 1440x900 makes the screen blurry, and standard resolution MBPs are not blurry.

So true. It's interpolation and it makes everything look blurry and smudgy. That's an advantage to CRT displays: they scale perfectly. Not that anyone should go out and buy a CRT...

 

[Fry-man22]

My desktop machine is a hack, and i'm afraid that kind of tag works only with the chameleon bootloader.

cheers!

This is incorrect - you can use that plist to set options for the regular OSX install/bootloader. You can set any valid res for the panel here and the OS will honor it (along with the other boot options that can be set there)

 

[green86]

so by doing something like that to your com.apple.boot.plist file on your Macbook Pro maybe you can get 1680x1050 resolution on a standard screen.

Or is this entry to plist file is just a hackintosh thing?

Wow it's scary to think you made a hackintosh but think you can change the max resolution of a LCD panel by software... thats like saying "Hey guys, I changed this kext and now I have 4GB of Ram instead of 3!" It doesn't work like that. It only worked for you because your screen can actually display that resolution...