Overscan issue with NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti proprietary drivers and AcerM230

gelfand · 2018-09-23 12:54:06

Hi everybody,

I just installed Arch on my computer which has an NVidia GTX 750 Ti card, and I'd like to use it with my Acer M230 TV Monitor.

Everything seems quite ok when I use the nouveau driver, but when I try to switch to the nvidia driver via

pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils

I always get the same "overscanning" problem (exactly as described, e.g., here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overscan). I looked on several forums and people claim to be able to solve the problem, but none of their techniques had any effect on my settings. Some of the things I tried are

* change the monitor settings (from auto fit to any other format, nothing work),
* use xrandr to try to modify resolution/centering of the screen - that was totally uneffective, I always get an output like

X Error of failed request: BadName (named color or font does not exist)
   Major opcode of failed request: 140 (RANDR)
   Minor opcode of failed request: 11 (RRQueryOutputProperty)
   Serial number of failed request: 37
   Current serial number in output stream: 37

after commands like

xrandr --output HDMI-0 --set underscan on
xrandr --output HDMI-0 --set "underscan hborder" 33 --set "underscan vborder" 20
xrandr --output HDMI-0 --set audio force-dvi --mode 1920x1080

etc...

Does anyone have any idea on how to fix this?

seth · 2018-09-23 14:22:50

grep -iA16 -B3 overscan /usr/share/doc/nvidia/README

gelfand · 2018-09-23 15:17:05

I tried to add

"Option" "MetaModes" "DFP-0: 1920x1080 { ViewPortOut=1900x1060+10+10 }"

to the monitor section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, as I think it is suggested by the README.... I also tried other configuration of ViewPortOut with (1920 - 2*k)x(1080 - 2*k)+k+k for several values of k (k=10, 20, 50, 100, 200...) but nothing changed... Am I interpreting the guide in the wrong way or is there another problem?

seth · 2018-09-23 15:42:36

First try nvidia-settings, X Server Display Configiguration / Advanced…
ViewportIn is the logical resolution, ViewPortOut is the physical one. See whether that gets you the results you desire.

To be sure: you lack some pixels on each edge of your TV, right?

gelfand · 2018-09-23 16:48:04

Thanks Seth, it actually worked after some (a lot...) of trial and error! I'm just posting the ViewPortOut here just in case someone else in the future will need it: in the screen section, I put

Option "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {viewportin=1920x1080, viewportout=1782x1010+68+30, ForceCompositionPipeline=On}"

On the other hand, I noticed that now some of the fonts are super blurry... I tried to put

Option "DPI" "96 x 96"

in the screen section, but nothing happened. Do you have any idea on how to solve this as well?

Btw yes, that was exactly the problem

seth · 2018-09-23 17:00:54

The fonts are blurry because the output is scaled, likely even twice (down by the GPU and up by the TV)
Overscanning sucks big time and you'll unlikely ever see a crisp picture (nvidia-settings has a sharpness filter which you might try) with this kind of setup (after all, it's a Tv, it's meant to watch soap operas…)
Ideally, turn off the overscanning in the Tv (maybe not possible, sometimes it depends on the input)

Arch Linux

#1 2018-09-23 12:54:06

Overscan issue with NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti proprietary drivers and AcerM230

#2 2018-09-23 14:22:50

Re: Overscan issue with NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti proprietary drivers and AcerM230

#3 2018-09-23 15:17:05

Re: Overscan issue with NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti proprietary drivers and AcerM230

#4 2018-09-23 15:42:36

Re: Overscan issue with NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti proprietary drivers and AcerM230

#5 2018-09-23 16:48:04

Re: Overscan issue with NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti proprietary drivers and AcerM230

#6 2018-09-23 17:00:54

Re: Overscan issue with NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti proprietary drivers and AcerM230

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