Thinkpads Forum

Can a non-widescreen laptop drive a widescreen external monitor at it's native resolution?

I have a T60 with a 15" (non-widescreen) display and an ATI Mobility Radeon x1400 graphics chip. I want to purchase a 22" external monitor with a 1680 x 1050 native resolution. Will I be able to drive this external at native?

When I go to "Display Settings" and try to adjust the screen resolution for Display 2 it gives me the option of choosing 1400x1050 and 1600x1200 but not 1680x1050.

Is this because my T60 screen is not a widescreen? Will I be out of luck with the external widescreen? Please help. Thanks.

I believe part of the problem is that you have no external monitors connected yet so the ThinkPad defaults to the 4:3 ratio resolutions of your LCD screen for the external output.

That's right the ThinkPad knows when an external display is connected and the newer display seems to actually communicate with the laptop so the laptop knows which of the normal or wide ratio is available.

I had the opposite problem, I noticed this when I first got the WS T60 and could not find the 1400x1050 selection for a 20" Viewsonic(VG2021M) with 1400x1050 native resolution that I bought a few months ago, but as soon as the monitor is connected to the T60, the 1400x1050 selection became available.

You may want to take the laptop to the store and try it out with the monitor you want to purchase before paying.

Both my T60p (1600x1200) and T42 (1400x1050) were able to successfully show off on Dell 1680x1050 widescreen 20' monitor.

The 1680x1050 option becomes available only after you've hooked up the monitor. My T60 can drive a 24" 1920x1200 external monitor.

There should be no problems connecting a widescreen monitor to the T60 - I use a 1680x1050 Dell monitor at work with the dock and there are absolutely no issues whatsoever - the monitor works without the dock too. Just use presentation director (Fn+F7) to set up a profile and you will be good to go

Although I'm sure the T60 can drive a widescreen display over the analog VGA port, I've only tried it via the DVI port on the Adv Mini Dock, and it works fine. Docked my T60, hooked up my Dell 2405FPW 24" display, and Vista automatically brought up a 1920x1200 secondary display.

I couldn't get my X40 to output WS ratios no matter what I tried.

Too bad we don't have a dual-link DVI option.

For the X40, have you tried running Developer drivers on there? If it's an Intel chip, they shouldn't be too hard to find on the Intel site. I did it for my X30 and it can run 1400x900 just fine.

It irks me to end that my T23 that uses my 1400x900 monitor can't display widescreen. Sigh.