Hi guys,

when I use the GPU scaling (AMD catalyst 14.9 WHQL on an AMD HD7950) the game completely ignores the "maintain aspect ratio" scaling and insists on using "centered timings" scaling - so instead of fitting the game on-screen in correct aspect ratio, it just centers it with actual pixels. So a 800x600 resolution becomes a small patch in the middle of a black screen.

If I turn off GPU scaling, the game plays fullscreen, stretched, changing the resolution of the monitor to what it wants.

I want to play it in 2560x1440 resolution with the 800x600 scaled up to that in correct aspect ratio, but no.
Either I play it in a teeny tiny patch on a huge black field or I have to turn GPU scaling off every time I want to play the game and screw up my entire desktop at the same time because the game changes the *actual* resolution of the monitor.

The silly thing is that the intro movie completely bypasses all GPU scaling, always plays stretched and screws up the resolution anyway.

I have the exact same issue with Tzar - Burden of the Crown, a game from the same publisher, published on GoG at the same time. I have no issue with any other game I've tried on GoG. Baldur's Gate for instance, works flawlessly with GPU scaling, so does Port Royale 2, Arcanum etc. etc.

I've already tried to ask GoG customer support for assistance and they couldn't find any answer to this. I don't think this is a driver problem, I suspect the game has been rigged to do this by... GoG or someone who prepared it for GoG.

So I turn to you, dear community.

Any ideas?

Hi! Unfortunately I've found your post just now, but to you or anyone else who still reads this: I'm using a single Radeon HD 7850 connected to my monitor via a DVI cable and I can confirm that in Catalyst 14.9 (and also even in the new 14.12 "Omega" driver release) GPU scaling is broken.

I still use use the 14.4 driver release which is fine. It's not that bad because you can still update Catalyst Control Center and use it with the old driver, and most optimizations in the new drivers are only for the newer R9 series of cards anyway. Hope this helps. :)

Hi, thanks for the reply, this is a strange problem and I know I've had it with the 14.9 and 14.12 drivers.. but *only* for those two games mentioned above in my original post. All other games that rely on GPU scaling work 100% fine.

The problem with the 14.4 drivers for me is that there's a DisplayPort bug in them that prevents me from using my monitor at all, so I can't actually try that driver or use it at all.

So if the 14.4 drivers scale these two games correctly, well I'm out of luck, since I can't actually use them due to the DP bug.

Well, I'll just hope that this will be patched in a future driver update.

But that bug must be really obscure since it only affects 2 specific games.

It seems to be a bit of hit and miss. Recently I discovered if I use my combination of 14.4 driver and 14.12 Control Center it would scale only my custom resolutions (that you have to add via registry with AMD cards) but not the standard VGA/SVGA resolutions. Because DirectDraw games like Jagged Alliance 2 are getting stretched, I'm back to 14.4 Control center now, which fixes it.

You can always use DirectX/DirectDraw wrappers to try and work around the issue. Although unfortunately they are all highly experimental software which never got out of alpha development status. The most popular has to be DxWnd. I managed to get Requiem: Avenging Angel to run on Windows 7 with it.

BTW, these are not the only trobles I've had with AMD drivers since I got my HD 7850 (although I'm satisfied with the overall performance of the card). Bottom line for me is, next GPU I buy will be a Nvidia one.

Thanks for the information, I'll look into those wrappers, but after seeing the issues people are having with new games like Dragon Age: Inquisition and Nvidia cards, I'm sticking with AMD for the foreseeable future.

This issue is annoying, but graphical glitches, DX11 related crashes-to-desktop and performance issues are plaguing Nvidia cards on the newest titles.

http://www.gog.com/forum/tzar_the_burden_of_the_crown/this_game_completely_ignores_and_overrides_the_gpu_scaling/post2

This poster solved it, use Win98/ME compatibility mode and GPU scaling will work fine. At least for me and him, and I'm using AMD and he's on Nvidia.

So it's not all catalyst.

I highly doubt just putting compatibility mode will work with most games. I could be wrong, but I don't think hardware based scaling has anything to do with OS compatibility flags.

Also, chosing one of the Win9x compatibility modes on a game shortcut evokes the annoying UAC prompt which is mostly unnecessary for software not installed into the protected "Program Files" directories (I install all my games into a separate "Games" directory).

Here's a recent post on the official AMD support forums - same OS, same GPU, same problem.

Thanks for the approach but I'm not updating my graphics drivers until a conclusive fix for the scaling issue is covered in AMD's release notes. However, I'm glad you have finally found a solution for your game specific issue. :)