you can try changing your display resolution, and sometimes games' .ini file allows you to set the resolution to a custom one that the game doesn't officially support. (The latter was how I got Age of Empires 2 to play nice on 16:9)

Could you try installing ATI's version of the nvidia control panel to see if it recognizes your chip?

Not the most elegant solution but you can play the game in window mode?
Cannot recall if CRU (custom resolution utility) is able to include black bars but you can try.

I had a HD4850 dual dvi (excelent card for a 1280x1024 monitor) on secondary pc and don't seem to recall such a option as well. End up changing for HD5770 for DirectX 11 support, later to HD7770 and finally to HD7850.


Disclaimer, its very early and I need coffe:
If indeed the lack of scalling option on the driver is because of analog port is used, HD5770's (little faster and use less power) can be had for 10 Euros on my country used market nowadays and have HDMI output. You can get one and use a HDMI to VGA adapter.
Or use DVI->HDMI adapter and HDMI->VGA.
Most likely, a direct DVI to VGA adapter won't work because it's probably using the analog pins.

First, if you have any trouble locating handling software for your gpu try the free version of iobits driver booster. Most of the time this program will locate any missed files you could need for playing the game,

Second, changing resolutions as is earlier suggested can work great in some games, manually adjusting your windows enviroment to 640x480 does show some nice results in some older games Battle Isle III for example

Third, play around with the different type of display scaling options such as Aspect Ratio / Full-Screen / No Scaling and Integer Scaling

Not sure if that is the reason in your case, but from my past experience years ago at least with laptops, you have to be in a 4:3 resolution before the "keep aspect ratio" option appears in the graphics driver options. If you are in a resolution where it doesn't have to do any stretching (like 1280x720, 1366x768 or 1920x1080 on a 16:9 monitor), then the aspect ratio option is hidden or greyed out.

So, try to change your Windows desktop resolution to some 4:3 resolution like 1024x768, and see if that makes the aspect ratio option appear in your graphics driver options. If it does and you can change it, then you can change the desktop resolution back to whatever it was before. The aspect ratio option should come into effect whenever some game or you yourself change the resolution needing a different aspect ratio.

Or then it could indeed be about the connection that you use...

PS. Since your monitor has ONLY VGA input... what is its aspect ratio anyway? The last VGA only monitors I remember were probably 4:3 aspect ratio anyway, maybe 5:4 (like for the 1280x1024 resolution). It is not a CRT monitor, right? :)

Here is a good list of common resolutions and their aspect ratios, click on the picture on the page to enlarge it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution

The resolutions are divided into different aspect ratios by their color coding.

That explains it. Does your monitor not support a digital connection.

Looking around, it seems that the option was there for VGA connections before

https://community.amd.com/thread/220608

Try using an older version of Catalyst maybe.

There is also a link in the above thread to CRU
https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU
It's old but it might work.

The alternative, as mentioned by others, is to try and do it in the game itself. DOSBox has the option to set custom screen resolution.
They should really rename this option; I've spent countless times explaining to people what it really does. Call it "pixel_aspect" or something.

don't forget the shortlist on dosbox commands and which file to alter ;)

scaling either off 2x 3x, resolution original etc

I found the service manual for your screen:
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/269409/Acer-Al1916.html?page=8#manual
It is an Acer AL1916W right?
The manual says that has a DVI port. It also shows on pictures of the monitor I found online. Why don't you get a DVI cable and connect it with that?

There's probably an option on the Catalyst software to change the scaling with two options: GPU and Video. It's probably defaulting to video, and what you need is for it to be GPU.

One of the DOSBox devs is occasionally active here in the forums...I can't remember his username, though. But if someone suggested this to them in a sensible way, they might take it under advisement. (Maybe someone else can find one of their posts? Edit before posting: I want to say the nickname was something like "Q-Bix".)

Yes, Qbix is around on the forums: https://www.gog.com/forum/warcraft_orcs_and_humans/mouse_issues/post4

Sadly, it seems he has the ability to directly initiate a Chat convo with him disabled (at least for non-friends), so if ZFR or anyone else wanted to contact him here, it would probably have to be via a (random) forum reply.

EDIT: Nice detective work, BTW. :)

Your mention of "Q-bix" was enough to jog me into remembering it was Qbix without the hyphen. Then I literally just googled "qbix gog.com" and found a thread they'd posted in. I'm sure there'll be an appropriate thread to ping them in somewhere around here.