Soyo Topaz S – Hacking Native Widescreen Resolution on an Intel 945GM Express
This evening started out disappointing, but here lies the key to a simple, relatively safe hack that helped me. I’ll start at the beginning…
I was so stoked today when my new 24″ monitor came in! A Soyo 24″ Widescreen 1920×1200! Nothing fancy of course, but it was a whopping $200 at geeks.com. First thing that happened was I plugged it in to the external monitor slot on my home laptop – a Dell XPS M1210.
It came right on, but hmmm… I couldn’t set anything but 1024×768 resolution! WTF!?!
I tried everything, tweaking the registry settings, hacking the inf file, installed PowerStrip… nothing worked.
I searched google one last time hoping to turn something up before I was going to just return the damned thing. Lo and behold I stumbled on this:
http://www.ryosa.com/widescreendrivers.html
That link explains how to use the Intel Embedded driver development kit to create custom drivers. I know it sounds daunting, but really, it’s simple. They have a wizard for the whole thing.
A quick run through the instructions at the above link, and I had it all working. I also used the linux documentation project to find the Modeline for the monitor, which is a good key to use to figure out what the timers should be. In case you happen to be using this exact same Soyo Topaz S 1920 x 1200 on an Intel 945GM Express chipset, then you’ll want the following settings:
linux kids can just copy this line directly:
Modeline “1920×1200@SOYO” 154 1920 1968 2000 2080 1200 1203 1209 1235 -HSync +Vsync
The rest have to use it to find these other settings:
154000 - Pixel Clock in Khz
1920 - Horizontal Active Area
1968 - Start of the Sync Pulse
2000 - End of the Sync Pulse
2080 - End of the Blanking Interval
Horizontal Sync Offset = 1968 - 1920 = 48
Horizontal Sync Pulse Width = 2000 - 1968 = 32
Horizontal Blank Width = 2080 - 1920 = 160
1200 - Vertical Active Area
1203 - Start of the Sync Pulse
1209 - End of the Sync Pulse
1235 - End of the Blanking Interval
Vertical Sync Offset = 1203 - 1200 = 3
Vertical Sync Pulse Width = 1209 - 1203 = 6
Vertical Blank Width = 1235 - 1200 = 35
I’d have really liked to have found that somewhere before digging around. Thanks to the modeline on tldp, it worked on the FIRST TRY of this trick because I had the right numbers. It’s beautiful, and I’m happy! YAY! Hopefully this helps at least one other person out of a jam. I’m just contributing to the massive store of knowledge google can bring to you and your kin by posting this. Feel free to ignore it if has nothing to do with you, your laptop, or your monitor.
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Hello, I’m glad to read that my article helped you out, I know how frustrating these things can be, that’s why I wrote it
Can this work for Vista? I have the same monitor as you and the same problem, but I have Vista OS. The IEGD with CED for 845 seems to be for XP at the newest, not Vista.
Maybe I’m not interpreting it correctly. Any guidance is appreciated.
I have exactly the same problem with you on the soyo monitor. I’m just wondering if you could send me the driver you’ve created by the development kit, as my laptop has the same intel 945 chipset as yours. email address: Thanks a lot!!!
I can’t send you the binary driver no, since … well, it’s not mine to send or redistribute. I’d recommend just using the wizard. That’s why I provided the instructions.
I was unable to get it working using your method. However, I was able to get it working using a special fix release driver from Intel (http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?strState=LIVE&lang=eng&ProductID=2102&DwnldID=15559). One thing to note, the install crashed the first time, but I reran and woila!