MacBook + external diplay issues

[sunfast]

Got a bit confused by this one last night....

I've been considering an external display to go with my MB. My flatmate has a very nice 20" Acer so I bought a miniDVI - DVI cable to give it a go to see how well the MB would drive it.

So I plugged it all in and got the display preferences up on the two screens. For some reason the pref pane on the Acer would only offer me normal aspect resolutions (rather than widescreen) so that whatever I selected was stretched on the monitor and looked rubbish.

My flatmate said his old PC graphics card used to do this but the problem was solved when he put a new card in. Does this mean my MB can't cut it?

 

[MalcolmJID]

I''m having the same problem, with a 19" external widescreen, should have a native resolution of 1440x900 but I'm stuck with "normal" resolutions so I have to put it on 1280x1024 and the screen stretches it. It's quite annoying, but then my screen is one of the "bargain" ones from Asda, and I don't think it's got the best Plug&Play driver. It really is quite annoying!

 

[thenetstud]

I believe if you are mirroring your MacBook screen with your external display you will only get the options available for the MacBook screen on both.

Try turning Mirroring off and see if you can setup the native resolution on your external monitor.

 

[MalcolmJID]

I believe if you are mirroring your MacBook screen with your external display you will only get the options available for the MacBook screen on both.

Try turning Mirroring off and see if you can setup the native resolution on your external monitor.

Definitely didn't have mirroring on. Still doesn't work! This is a bit rubbish as I'm buying a 20" iMac next week sometime and was hoping to set this screen up next to it!

 

[MalcolmJID]

I believe if you are mirroring your MacBook screen with your external display you will only get the options available for the MacBook screen on both.

Try turning Mirroring off and see if you can setup the native resolution on your external monitor.

I've also just realised that I don't even get these resolutions when mirroring. The monitor will only allow normal aspect and then my MacBook screen also changes. I've downloaded an app called DisplayConfigX and SwitchResX but I don't understand any of them and don't want to damage my new LCD!