How to increase the resolution of a laptop screen more than it supports

Question

I have a laptop, which has a screen resolution of 1366x768, as most laptops have. Is there any way to increase it? The laptop is an HP Pavilion dv6, with Intel HD 3000 graphics and Radeon HD 6490M GPU.

Edit: I want to increase the resolution beyond 1366 X 768, as I have a application that requests that, and I want to run the application on this laptop only. The Application Request the Resolution of 1280x900 or higher.

Answer 1

Sometimes increasing resolution is useful (even though it does reduce quality). If a dialog's height is hard-coded to 800px it'll be off the bottom of the screen, and there's very little way to see it. On a 1366x768 monitor it's less of an issue, but on a 1024x600 netbook I hit this issue all the time. Maybe you have a higher resolution external monitor and you want windows to appear the same physical size on both screens - there are lots of reasons.

You can change the resolution to above native res on Linux using the following command:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --scale 1.25x1.25

I find that a scale of 1.25 is on the edge of usability, probably 1.2 is more sensible. On your laptop, the output name may be different - but a quick google for XRandr will show you how to use it.

Having said that - the command worked perfectly on my Ubuntu 10.04-based netbook, but for me, on 12.04 (with gnome-panel) it changes the resolution but the mouse is still locked to the old area of the screen. It appears to be a regression, and there is a fix below so hopefully it will be fixed soon:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/883319

Answer 2

It would not make sense to increase output resolution more than the screen is capable of displaying.

In best case it would have to rescale the output back to its native resolution (it must show is using a fixed number of pixels), which would require processing power and give you a worse result than just using the native resolution (most likely 1366x768, not 1399) due to interpolation errors.

In worst case it would just fail and not give you an image at all.

Sometimes it makes sense to send a resolution lower than the native resolution, e.g. for games where the graphics adapter doesn't have the power to render it smoothly at the native resolution, and use interpolation to show it on the full screen, but this should be avoided.

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For completeness: to increase the resolution on your laptop you would have to buy a new laptop panel that is compatible. This is most likely not available, unless you are in real luck and your laptop is part of a series where a higher resolution model is available. It would still be a bit of a gamble to find a new panel unless you can find trustworthy verification of the specific panel model working with your specific laptop model.

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If this is not what you mean by your question, you need to clarify.

Answer 3

Try QRes on Windows

Qres

It works on command line

QRes.exe /X:1024 /Y:768

Answer 4

You can use PowerStrip to force it into a higher resolution than supported. However, forcing an incompatible resolution may be harmful to your display, graphics card, or any other component in the way.

Answer 5

One possible way around that could be to use what is refered to as a Oversized Desktop.

From Wikipedia:

[Oversized desktops] make it possible to pan around a desktop that is larger than the available hardware is capable of displaying. This facility is sometimes referred to as panning, scrolling desktops or viewport.

Although not free, you could try the trial of GiMeSpace to at least see if your application would work with such as tool.

I'm pretty sure that some old video drivers (ATI, NVIDIA) used to support this feature natively years ago, but I can't seem to find anything about it anymore. :/