Don't know about the other questions but you can force the correct aspect ratio by setting your graphics card to scale to aspect ratio on the GPU. I recommend this for all games because only weirdos and tech-inept people want their circles elliptical.

EDIT: I just realised this probably fixes your first issue as well, if I understand you correctly. With the NVIDIA Control Panel you can scale according to Aspect Ratio (scales up until the picture touches the top and bottom of the screen), Full-screen (stretches the image to fit the whole screen regardless of resolution) and No scaling (correct aspect ratio, pixel perfect, but if your desktop resolution is higher than the game resolution it will not cover the entire screen).

I have not used ATI graphics cards for over 10 years but I'm sure they have similar settings built into their basic control panel.

Hi, at the moment I am using an old VGA monitor and the scaling options don't seem to work with it. I guess I'll play it in window mode and forget about full screen. Cheers!

You misunderstand me. You're supposed to scale to your GPU, not the monitor. I have never gotten 'scale to monitor' to actually do anything on any computer I have ever used.

Nope, I expressed myself poorly :P

What I meant to say is that the scaling options in ATI control panel (Mantain aspect ratio, etc.) are greyed out and don't seem to work properly, and I am assuming this is due to the fact I am using a VGA monitor. :D

Cheers

I doubt the monitor is the problem as it has nothing to do with how the graphics card renders and delivers the picture. Perhaps you mean something other than what I understand it to mean but I'm also using an unidentifiable plug and play monitor with a VGA port. The difference is I'm using an nvidia chipset. I haven't looked at the ATI control panel for years so I can only guess what the problem might be. Perhaps you are using some automatic or pre-made image quality setting that disables custom user specified settings? Something like a slider with different combinations of pre-made settings balancing image quality and processing speed which overrides or disables your ability to tweak settings manually.

The control panel has a GPU scaling option that I can enable. In theory, having done so I should be able to select how it scales (centered timings, scale with aspect ratio, scale to full size). For some reason, these options are greyed out and the selection stays on scale to full size. It is working though, because if I ask the monitor which res it is rendering, it keeps saying 1440x900, while with GPU scaling off the resolution goes all over the place, with the old classics 1024x768 and so on.
I did notice that if I change resolution in the control panel, let's say 1024x768, the GPU scaling options become active and work as expected. This means that to have it work properly I have to change res first, then launch the game. Honestly, I find running in windowed mode a faster solution to the problem.

Thanks for trying to help me out, I'm sure we could get to the bottom of this if I was stubborn enough but I honestly don't care enough and using the windowed option works fine. :P

P.S. I said that it might be the VGA interface's fault because in the AMD help it says "This page (GPU scaling options) is not available for all VGA display types." ;)

Ok, I've discovered something new. It looks like changing resolution and then the GPU scaling seems the way to go. These changes should be retained even if I go back to full res and the options go back to default and are greyed out.

If I go for centered timings, it works fine. The image gets smaller and I can play without issues. If I select maintain aspect ration though, going back to full res resets it to full size scale. It seems like the setting is forgotten if I opt for keep aspect ratio and is retained if I select centered timings. Oh well, back to windowed mode once again. :P

Hi
I am trying to play theme hospital on a windows 8 pc and its incredibly slow and jerky. I know it has something to do with the display but I am a bit of a beginner at computers and don't know how to fix it anyone any ideas?

thank you