a frame round a game!!

[tokyochojin]

Hey guys in need some advice!! recently bought ff7 for my ole laptop but having a problem!! when i play ff7 (and champ man) i get a black fhe frame round the screen and it makes the pic smaller?????but its ok when i play civilisation on my laptop?? can anyone help??
also is there anything i can download to boost the speed of my computer and the graphics so ff7 moves a little smoother??

thanks

Cho

[eASY aDDICT]

This is probably to do with the resolution of both the game and your laptop. I would recon that you laptop cannot display the resolution that FF wants to run at.

[Super Stu]

Or, it's running at a lower resolution than the native resolution of your TFT and either it's not configured to auto stretch the picture or it is incapable of doing so.

On my laptop, there's a FN + number key combination to do it, so you might want to poke around and see what you have there.

Not all laptops do it though, my work's compaq doesn't.

[choddo]

Indeed, don't FFVII and VIII run exclusively at 640x480 thanks to the console origins? You can stretch in the laptop config usually (I have to do it in a config application, sometimes BIOS, sometimes Fn key combo as SS says) ... but it looks too blocky for my tastes then.

[tokyochojin]

i got the laptop while i was in tokyo for a measley 140quid! a tiny panasonic job! does anyone think i may need a better graphics card to solve the problem??

cheers

[Super Stu]

Personally, I've yet to encounter a laptop which didn't have the graphics card mounted directly on the motherboard. It's highly unlikely you'll be able to upgrade it, sorry.