Is there any way to make ATi Radeon 4550 fit the WHOLE TV Screen with HDMI?

S

Snooble

Gawd
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Mar 19, 2004
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Hi all

Got a ATi Radeon 4550 (Asus flavor) and was going to use it in my movie playing system with Windows 7, but it's driving me crazy. Maybe Im missing something but I can't seen to get it to go the full screen (to the edges) like my NVidia laptop does.

Am I missing something, or is the ATi much worse off than the NVidia brand?

Edit : I also have Windows Vista available to me.

Oh, here's the card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121281
 
there is a scaling option in the Catalyst Control Panel. Under desktop and displays choose the display and right click/configure/scaling.
 
Sweet, never saw that there!

On another note, the fan sucks ass and is pretty loud considering it's small size. Is there a way to underclock it and unplug the fan, or would unplugging the fan hurt it bad? I'm only using it to watch movies on the TV, nothing else.
 
There are many cards that are passively cooled that would be sufficient for decoding videos. You should consider getting a different card or getting yourself a new passively cooled heatsink. Underclocking won't help you bring the temps down to where you run with the fan off.
 
I tried running it w/o the fan on, looks like its sits around 70-75 degrees...is this an OK temp to run at?
 
Well monitor the temps of the video card while watching a movie during the day when the ambient temp in your home should be highest. Note the highest temp you see the video card reaches while watching that movie. GPU-Z measures temps relatively accurately.

Report back with the highest temp you saw. From there we can tell you if the fan needs to be on or not.

But if you don't want to go through all that, don't unhook the fan. IIRC, there's a way to control fan speed in ATI Catalyst.

EDIT: Ahh didn't see your post there. 75C is a tad high actually.
 
Snooble said:
I tried running it w/o the fan on, looks like its sits around 70-75 degrees...is this an OK temp to run at?
Click to expand...

I would have used MSI afterburner and instead created your own fan profile there with a curve. You can downclock it as well within that program. Much safer. :)
 
I don't think the fan has a control, either on or off because it only has 3 wires :(
 
Snooble said:
Works with all video cards. even non MSI?
Click to expand...

It does and if you go into settings and click on the fan tab, you can make a curve on how low the fan should go after what temps. Make it load with windows and you would know that if the card is getting high temps, fan would be higher, while you can enjoy lower fan speed (and noise) when temps are good. :D
 
Sweet!! Installing Windows 7 and all my stuffs as we speak to try this out. Can't wait!

Thanks :D
 
Seems that the MSI program doesn't affect my card...the slider won't come on.

So I unplugged the fan and the ambient room temp sits at 57 degrees, going to run a movie to see how it sits for that, but on the stress test w/o the fan it sat around 68-72 degrees for 5 mins or so.
 
Snooble said:
Seems that the MSI program doesn't affect my card...the slider won't come on.

So I unplugged the fan and the ambient room temp sits at 57 degrees, going to run a movie to see how it sits for that, but on the stress test w/o the fan it sat around 68-72 degrees for 5 mins or so.
Click to expand...

It works with all cards. But, don't use slider, use custom settings. To activate slider, you need to press off auto. Don't disconnect fan, you'll have no protection then (other then the thermal throttle) if summer temps makes it hot.

Here is what I use with custom settings (from settings menu, I adjusted the curve). Just using the slider gives a min of 20% fan speed:
powercolorfanspeed8.jpg
 
Nope...goddamn fan doesn't work with it at all. The auto button is greyed out, and the options under settings do jack all.
 
Snooble said:
I enabled Overdrive, and disabled. still no effect
Click to expand...

Something must be wrong then.

Since you have an ASUS card, you can also use their own tool, the ASUS SmartDoctor. I prefer MSI Afterburner, even when I used a Asus 5870.
 
If all else fails, go ghetto. Unhook the fan but aim a 120mm fan that you can control at the Vidcards heatsink. A 120 fan even on it's lowest speeds should be enough CFM to keep that card cool.
 
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