Resolution on second monitor being extra funky despite being set to the correct one

Saturn420 · September 19, 2019

I installed a new GPU (gtx 1660) and my second monitor, which is an old LG tv, is not displaying properly.

The resolution of my main monitor is 1920x1080 and the tv is 1680x1050, these are what both monitors are set to in the windows display settings.

Also i cannot seem to change my main monitor to be monitor 1 even though i have clicked the make this my main display box and restarted my pc. That didnt do anything so i unplugged the second monitor restarted my pc, checked the the main monitor was monitor 1, it was, then i plugged in the second monitor and it changed to being monitor 2

Any suggestions?

flibberdipper · September 19, 2019

Starting off with the primary display thing, that is kind of a fucky thing with Nvidia at least (can't remember how it was with AMD). On my 1050Ti I want to say the ports in order from 1 to 3 go DisplayPort, HDMI, and then DVI. So even though my main monitor is in fact DVI, my TV connected to DP ends up being the primary, so if I ever have to muck around before Windows starts I need to use it, which is rather annoying.

Anyways, first stop would be playing around with your TV and checking for anything relating to overscan, PC mode, or game mode. Had a similar-ish issue on my dad's living room TV (an older RCA fwiw) and changing that HDMI ports' name it to game mode fixed the issue.

Another thing that could help (even though it's not ideal) is messing with overscan in the Nvidia Control Panel. I believe this is the right area to do this kind of adjustment in, but I'm not able to check for myself since I don't have this issue obviously.

Glenwing · September 19, 2019

The "monitor numbers" don't indicate which monitor is primary, they are just arbitrary numbers assigned to the monitors so you can identify which one is which. It doesn't matter which monitor is "1", it doesn't affect anything.

TVs don't use 1680×1050 resolution, so that is not the correct resolution for your TV. Use either 1366×768 or 1920×1080. If they aren't available, I assume you are using VGA or some kind of adapter to connect. Use HDMI instead.

Saturn420 · September 19, 2019

3 hours ago, flibberdipper said:

Starting off with the primary display thing, that is kind of a fucky thing with Nvidia at least (can't remember how it was with AMD). On my 1050Ti I want to say the ports in order from 1 to 3 go DisplayPort, HDMI, and then DVI. So even though my main monitor is in fact DVI, my TV connected to DP ends up being the primary, so if I ever have to muck around before Windows starts I need to use it, which is rather annoying.

Anyways, first stop would be playing around with your TV and checking for anything relating to overscan, PC mode, or game mode. Had a similar-ish issue on my dad's living room TV (an older RCA fwiw) and changing that HDMI ports' name it to game mode fixed the issue.

Another thing that could help (even though it's not ideal) is messing with overscan in the Nvidia Control Panel. I believe this is the right area to do this kind of adjustment in, but I'm not able to check for myself since I don't have this issue obviously.

Fixed the issue; I was messing about in the nvidia control panel looking for overscan and for some reason i decided to drag around the boxes on the display config bit on the set up multiple displays tab, i clicked apply and my monitors did the usual turn off and on thing they do and when they came back on things were as they should be. weird how i did the same thing in the windows settings and it did nothing.

Anyway thanks for the help