retrace lines only at one resolution

Try not to laugh too much, I'm trying to keep this old system going a few more months. A power outage killed my old monitor a couple of months ago, I splurged for a new one but it has a higher native resolution than the old one and would probably tax my old HD5670 too much for decent gaming, so I dug out an old 19" CRT monitor (which still looks great ...and doesn't worry about native resolution). I settled on 1440x900, which looks and runs well at full screen letterboxed. A week ago the 5670 died (randomly stops outputting and the monitor pops up "no signal or cable disconnected", turn the system off and back on and it's working again) so I dug out an ancient 8500GT, a slouch even when new, and immediately I worry that it has gone bad just sitting all these years - the top 20%-30% of the screen has retrace lines and flickering which worsens when the cursor is moved to that area (otherwise the image is fine). It isn't a driver issue as distortion is noticeable even during boot up, before the drivers load. Trying other resolutions I noticed the problem is only with 1440x900; I can drop to 1360x768 and all is well, except I cannot get the image to go full screen horizontally (a full inch of black at both sides). I want to use 16:9 or 16:10 as 4:3 now makes me feel I'm missing something.

 

So, how can I either

1 - get this to work at 1440x900 without the retrace lines (preferable), or

2 - get 1360x768 to work using the full screen width

I'm guessing a bit here.

 

I had a 17 inch flatscreen. Native resolution was 1024x768.

I forced a resolution that wasn't available, using my nvidia setup menu.

Clicked through all the (serious) warnings "may damage screen beyond repair... etc".

And set up a 1280x1024 resolution.

 

That worked for a short time, the view in fsx was a bit more detailed. (Disadvantage, icons on desktop got a bit small.)

 

It worked for about a month. Then after watching tv I walked back to the computer to find the screen had gone black.

Screensaver I wondered? Because I had no screensaver set up as far as I knew.

No, screen dead.

 

I dug up another old screen, again 1024x768. Second hand store.

Again forced it to 1280x1024 resolution.

And again, after a month, the screen was fried.

 

I'm not sure about the native resolution of your display, but I Googled -19 inch crt- and fond a few references to 1280x1024.

Whatever the native resolution of it is, I would use that, or smaller. Your 1440x900 sets it wider, which could cause problems I think.

 

Again, I'm partly guessing here. My damaged screens were both older, so that could have just been wear and tear.

 

Did you have to force the resolution?

(I mean, create a resolution in NVidia menu, that was not there originally. (I had to type in the numbers by hand back then))

 

Did you get warnings "choosing this resolution may damage it beyond repair."?

 

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Oh, the videocard should be able to show a 1440x900 resolution fine normally. (looked up specs.)

I think the problem is the screen can't cope with the resolution.

This monitor has a max resolution of 1600x1200. The HD5670 card I had previously ran 1440x900 perfectly well. This 8500GT runs every resolution I've tried quite well, except for 1440x900, which has the retrace lines and flickering (it is currently running 1600x900 and looks great, but that is a bit high for gaming with this card, there's a noticeable fps loss).