Manually change the screen resolution

Question

My system: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. My graphic card: nVidia GeForce gt430. My monitor is Samsung LE26R51B. And my connection is digital (HDMI).
The current screen resolution is not good at all, I can't see the top bar and the left one.

Here are the available resolutions in settings:

1920*1080
1280*720
960*600  
and lower resolutions

But with no one of these I can see the top bar in it. They are bigger than the monitor.

---

In Windows 7 I use 1202*670 resolution.

How can I change the resolution to what I want exactly?

Solution 1

Open a terminal and enter:

xrandr

It will output possible resolutions. To set 1202x670 enter:

xrandr -s 1202x670

See here if you need to add new modes.

Solution 2

First I'd try to install the nvidia binary driver (there's a tool named "Additional Drivers" or "Jockey" that will assist you). If that doesn't help, you've won the Jackpot. Your prize is editing the xorg.conf file.

First have a look at this xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/963/

Be warned that if you misconfigure xorg.conf, you might end up without a graphical session, just with a command line. Don't worry, you can simply (backup and then) delete xorg.conf and the graphical session should work again.

Then have a look at that guide: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NvidiaResolutionXorgConf

Depending on the driver you are using, you might need to put a different driver in xorg.conf - for the binary nvidia driver it's "nvidia", for Nouveau it's "nouveau" I think, and for the old nv-driver it's "nv".

Solution 3

You may be able to set the right resolution and also change the driver via a graphical interface by installing the utility called nvidia-settings. I've used it on my desktop many times.

sudo apt-get install nvidia-settings

Comments

[SirCharlo]

It's rather complicated, but have you checked out this guide?

[Dz WarSoldier]

i get this error: xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default

[Admin]

According to this link, which has been quoted in the top answer, xrandr is run without sudo. May be useful to explain why sudo is used here?