Increasing the resolution on 14.04 beyond what is shown

Question

I've got a new installation on Compaq 6715b. I tried following these instructions to increase my screen's resolution.

What I did:

Ran the command:
```
sudo cvt 1680 1080 60
```

Found out my device like this:

xrandr -q

And I got this:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
LVDS connected primary 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 331mm x 207mm
   1280x800       60.0*+
   1280x720       59.9  
   1152x768       59.8  
   1024x768       59.9  
   800x600        59.9  
   848x480        59.7  
   720x480        59.7  
   640x480        59.4  
S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

Then I typed this:

sudo xrandr --newmode "1680x1080_60.00"  151.50  1680 1792 1968 2256  1080 1083 1093 1120 -hsync +vsync

And then did this:

sudo xrandr --addmode LVDS 1680x1080_60.00

Finally, I got to the GUI and took display settings. I changed the resolution and my screen went crazy. Just one flat colour with no components. Only a few random squares.

I've searched and the task seems pretty challenging to me.

Is there an easy way to fix this?

Many thanks!

JP de la Torre · Answer 1 · 2015-11-12T03:31:23.967

I'm not an expert on this, but I think you need to be sure you graphics card and screen both support the resolution you are trying to set.

Try this to test: xrandr --fb 1680x1080.

If the resolution doesn't change, your system doesn't support a bigger resolution than it is already set.

If it changes, it may change to a different resolution than expected. Check that by running xrandr and looking for the resolution:

LVDS connected primary WxH+0+0.

An apparent workaround would be to scale up your resolution with:

xrandr --output LVDS --scale-from 1680x1080

It is not the same (characters appear blurry) but it works.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 13 '15 at 11:28

Don't set the refresh rate in the cvt command; let your monitor do all the work:

cvt 1680 1080

You're using your monitor name as LVDS, but it would be a good idea to check what xrandr detects:

xrandr | grep " connected " | awk '{ print$1 }'

And last of all, don't use sudo!

Increasing the resolution on 14.04 beyond what is shown

2 Answers2