Ok I have a HP vs17e monitor suggested window settings are 1280x1024-60Hz

I was using the generic nv driver but i could not play anything that required hardware acceleration. I installed the nvidia driver and now I get a "signal out of range" error from the monitor whenever I try to play one of those games. Does anybody know how to fix this error.

also I made the changes to the xorg.conf file that nvidia suggested manually and automatically neither way worked. The manually edited one is listed 1st.

# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "single head configuration"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us+inet"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection



# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "single head configuration"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us+inet"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"
HorizSync 30.0 - 110.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 150.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

hurrah for proprietary drivers :|
right; the manually edited one doesnt have any specifications for upper and lower sync/refresh rates, while the second one does. this is important, because without them your monitor will try to skim through the supportable frequencies for your chosen resolutions. also; neither xorg.confs actually say what resolution to run at; you'll net to specify that under most circumstances if you dont want it to try and figure it out by it's lonesme..

however, as i've found after eight hours of misery with the ati version, sometimes proprietary drivers choose their own arbitrary refresh/sync rates, or try to auto detect them with no regard whatsoever for your configuration.

I basically found that I need to add modes to my monitor section but all the hellp I have found gives a vague discription of a modeline or mode section I am not a hardware expert nor do I ever expect to want to be. so how do I figure out the correct numbers that are needed for this to work all I know is that my monitor suggests 1280x1024 @ 60Hz I don't know what Hsync or Vsync or any of those others numbers are or how to calculate them.

OK I found more info on the modeline but I still can't figure out what the other numbers are or how to figure them out I have found 0 strait forward listings on this.

the line goes like this

modeline "1280x1024" dotclock 1280 hsyncstart hsyncend htotal 1024 vsyncstart vsyncend vtotal

an example :
(mine)
Section "monitor" describes the physical characteristics that you want X to use with the monitor attached; HorizSynch (in KHZ) is used to do something, not sure what. Vert Refresh in Hz is the number of times your screen is repainted per second. Apparently you can do some mathemagical function to these and get your possible screen resolution.

HorizSynch/VertRefresh are only likely to be found through your monitor's back panel, OSD or manual.

Section "Screen" is the combination of everything specified in xorg.config to actually give you a gui;

modes 1280x1024 is the pixel resolution ( obv) and in your case i'm assuming the extras are added on by the proprietary graphic driver to take advantage of it's keen features of niftiness.

if you've got a known good HorizSynch/VertRefresh; its a matter of trial and error to find the right resolution, but most sane displays will run at the usual suspects, or at least 800*600

my driver for my graphics card also installed a little setup utility it let me configure some other modes to use for games and it seems to be working fine at the moment I don't get the errors anymore but I'm still gonna look into creating my modes manually just cause it got me mad and I want to know how.

To make modelines, you can use gtf. If it is not already installed, it should be available in your package manager.

Google also found this:
http://xtiming.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/xtiming.pl

And many more like it.