ProTip: ATI Radeon Catalyst 10.4 GPU scaling

Hardware and technical stuff
1

In getting my 8 year old copy of RalliSport Challenge going (it still works great, running at a max resolution of 1280x1024) I found out how to get the Aspect-Ratio-respecting GPU scaling working. My HD5850 was totally overkill though.

If you have a widescreen LCD, these old 4:3 games automatically stretch and the GPU scaling/maintain aspect ratio option grayed out.

I found the trick is that you actually have to temporarily switch to that lower resolution before the option is ungrayed. You can switch back to your full 1:1 1920x1080 or whatever and the 4:3 games are no longer stretched.

Hope this helps someone with old fullscreen games.

2

I’ll be damned… your tip really works for me! After four years of staring at stretched images, browsing widescreengamingforum for the occasional half-baked widescreen fix, running games in windowed mode, cursing my monitor for its lack of scaling, and shaking my fist at ATI for never ever fixing this, I just saw a game (Indigo Prophecy) running fullscreen in its correct aspect ratio.

THANK YOU!