quadruple pixels in xorg

[kmieciu]

Stupid question early in the morning. Is it possible to quadruple pixels using only xorg settings? I have a panel with native resolution of 1280x1024. I want to run xorg at quarter of that, 640x512, but with each pixel rendered as four pixels so the panel stays at its native resolution. Is it possible to get this using xorg settings - combination of dpi, display size or something? The panel itself does not support 640x512 - I wonder why, it supports a lot of other resolutions and scaling by 2 in each dimension should be easier than scaling by some fraction.

[notfred]

What drivers and hardware is this on? The nvidia driver in the GUI settings tool has a "Force Full GPU Scaling" option that I think does what you want.

[kmieciu]

I have nvidia drivers v304.64 and the drivers control panel does not allow such configuration. It does not even have option to force GPU scaling anymore.

[Flatland_Spider]

It's not possible. The Xorg windowing system isn't built to support resolution independent of the native resolution of the monitor. OS X's windowing system comes the closest to being able to do that.

[chuckula]

It's not possible. The Xorg windowing system isn't built to support resolution independent of the native resolution of the monitor. OS X's windowing system comes the closest to being able to do that.

I'm not sure I agree with that statement completely... back in the day when you had CRT displays it was perfectly possible to have different X output resolutions. On top of that you had the panned desktop output thing which was ugly but moderately workable.

OK: I just ran nvidia-settings and was able to get my 1920x1200 native desktop down to 1280x1024 and a bunch of other intermediate resolutions. It's a little ugly due to being non-native resolution, but it works. Is there some other setting you are talking about that doesn't work?

[Flatland_Spider]

I'm not sure I agree with that statement completely... back in the day when you had CRT displays it was perfectly possible to have different X output resolutions. On top of that you had the panned desktop output thing which was ugly but moderately workable.

OK: I just ran nvidia-settings and was able to get my 1920x1200 native desktop down to 1280x1024 and a bunch of other intermediate resolutions. It's a little ugly due to being non-native resolution, but it works. Is there some other setting you are talking about that doesn't work?

That reply was badly worded and unclear.

It's still perfectly possible to have X output different resolutions. It's dependent on the monitor to support the resolutions though.

I remember the desktop panning feature. It was pretty cool. I'm not sure X still has that ability, but I've been meaning to find out.

The OP wants Xorg to scale the output to 640x512 while actually outputting 1280x1024, which is the native resolution of the monitor. This is not possible. Xorg will output 640x512, but it's not going to simulate 640x512 while actually outputting 1280x1024.

[bhtooefr]

Code: Select all

xrandr --output VGA --mode 1280x1024 --panning 640x512 --scale 0.5x0.5

Worth a shot. (Use the actual output, instead of VGA, if it's not VGA or it doesn't do anything.)

[jihadjoe]

Scaling via Viewportin/Viewportout should make this possible:

Code: Select all

Option "metamodes" "CRT-0: 640x512 { ViewPortOut=1280x1024, ViewPortIn=640x512 }"

(replace CRT-0 with your display device id)

Basicaly tells X that when it gets a 640x512 video mode, it should scale the output to 1280x1024


Reference: http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/L ... tions.html