The title says it all. I have a 5770 and would rather play game with 40ish FPS with high settings in 720p than 25ish on medium-high 1080p but despite both resolutions having the same aspect ratio, 720p doesn't stretch to fill up my screen, nor do the other 16:9 resolutions.

Any workaround for this?

Try changing your refresh rate. That might help. Maybe.

Check the aspect ratio on your display; it should have an option called just scan. Also try playing with scaling options in your video card drivers

Refresh rate does nothing, as was to be expected, seeing as how I'm not using a CRT monitor (I remember it helped on those).

As far as the "just scan" option is concerned, I'm unable to find it - googling indicates that this is primarily a LCD TV option, which I am unable to find both in my monitor settings and ATI's catalyst centre.

EDIT: Some more googling around for "scaling ATI" got me an answer.

For anyone wondering:
Start the AMD VISION Engine Control Center - >My Digital Flat-Panels -> Properties (Digital Flat-Panel) -> check "Enable GPU scaling" under the Image scaling tab". "Scale image to full panel size" should be selected.

Thank you for your help.

The "enable GPU scaling" feature has been a part of the Catalyst drivers for years.

Now that you know how the feature works you can actually start using it to your advantage. And, yes, CRT monitors function much differently than LCD/flat panels in general--especially in terms of resolutions and refresh rates, contrast & brightness, etc. Time to learn the differences as they can really enhance your gaming experiences. (I'd never go back to a CRT...;))

i have a HD5750 and mine runs at constant 30fps at 1600x900. :)

Try using the user.ini tweak from the link below to get the best out of your settings. Good luck!

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=28106991&postcount=2825

I have actually learned a few things that differ them, but most of it I learn when a problem arises (eg when I decided to switch from CRT to LCD I spent about a week just reading up on the pros and cons of such change + another week searching for an ideal model) and then I try to go in-depth as to why it arose in the first place :).
Also - most of the games scaled their 16:9 resolutions just fine... or I simply haven't played in 720p for a while now. :P

@mukhlisz - Thank you for the link, I'll certainly give it a look, hoping for the best because those jaggies and smudgeness are kinda bothering me when playing in 720p :S

I don't know if it would be true for every game or every display, but witcher 2 looks exactly the same in my 1080p display, be it 1280x720 with antialiasing or 1920x1080. And of course, it runs a lot better in 720p.

Maybe you need glasses? If you can't see the difference between those resolutions it could be that your vision is slightly blurred. Or your monitor has problems.

Well, after upscaling the image and applying proper antialiasing, the difference is negligible. And believe me, my eyesight is great, as is my monitor.

I want a monitor like that :) 1280x720 looks pretty poor on my monitor.....(the scaling isn't too good)

I just tested it with battlefield 3, batman arkham city, alan wake and splinter cell conviction. No visual difference between 1280x720 and 1920x1080. Maybe the upscalling quality varies across monitors.

Personally, I'm about to puke after even the slightest upscaling, and that's taking into account that my display has pretty good scaling as well. Any game is close to unplayable for me unless running in native res. But then on the other hand, I'm picky.

But it is worth considering that by nature running a lower res upscaled on a LCD/TFT monitor will always be significantly worse compared to running at native res. That's a fact and cannot be changed, you cannot compensate for the information lost and 'mismatching' of pixels in the scaling-process. Either you see it and and may or may not find it bothersome, or you don't see it. But that does not change the fact that it's significant and there.

It also depends on the distance from the monitor. I'm looking at a 22" 1680x1050 panel from a distance of about 70cm. When I double that distance, I still see the difference.

On my 32" television from a distance of 2.5m it's very hard to see the difference between 1280x720 and 1920x1080 when a decent amount of AA is applied.