In my desktop W7 PC with 8800 GTS and latest drivers, I cannot truly change the display resolution as Windows just 'boxes' lower resolutions on the native resolution of 1280x1024x85Hz (e.g. running a 800x600 game displays a centered image of the game with black thick border and the monitor still says it is in 1280x1024).
Is there a way I could force the display back to a lower default resolution of 1024x768 (it has something to do with the EDID)?
I'm not familiar with the standard nVidia drives these days (my last card and the one that will arrive tomorrow are ATIs) but centered/scales/stretched timings when displaying lower-than-native resolutions are an option in the ATI drivers.
I suggest browsing round all the tabs in the nVidia settings to see if you can find a similar option.
It could also be your monitor responding wrongly to the signal timings. Have you tried just using it's horizontal and vertical size+position controls?
I had the exact same problem when I was playing games with Windows 7 and it is now fixed. Simply go in Control Panel, Appearance and Personnalization, NVIDIA Control Panel, Select: Change flat panel scaling and check the following option: Use display scaling. After you apply these changes you will see the option change back to where is was but don't worry your settings has been apply the way you wanted.
