How to make the RetroArch window larger than my monitor?

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

I’m using RetroArch to take screenshots of games with CRT shaders active – as y’all know, crisp pixels aren’t necessarily representative of how a game is suppposed to look – but there’s a problem: even if I set the window scale high (to, say, 6× or so), the window is clamped to a maximum of 1920×1080 (my display’s resolution). This is an issue, as CRT shaders – especially fancy ones – need resolutions close to 4K to properly render detail.

RELICS
RELICS1666×1041 1.08 MB

(This might look alright, but… you can do a lot better, and what’s more, it’s not integer-scale!)

How can I set the window scale of RetroArch without it worrying whether everything fits on my screen?

#2

Go to settings > video > scaling and set integer scale ON, aspect ratio CUSTOM and then use the width/height setting to make it as large as you want.

Once you have it the right size, if the screen is black (happens sometimes on my laptop), turn off integer scaling and it should come back.

1 Like
#3

Thank you kindly for the reply! Sadly, it doesn’t seem to quite do the trick:

Hydlide
Hydlide2560×1600 958 KB

The window doesn’t grow to match, and RetroArch’s screenshot feature only seems to screenshot what’s inside the visible area. The rest turns to black. (This is with the “image display” core, if that’s relevant somehow.)

#4

That’s to be expected, unfortunately. It can only render what’s on the screen, so this gives you whatever scale you want but only as much as will fit on your actual monitor.

#5

Are you trying to take a 4K screenshot on a 1080p monitor? If so, and you’re using an Nvidia GPU, you may be able to enable DSR via the Nvidia control panel. Turn DSR factors to 4.00x native resolution. Before I had a 4K display, I used to do this to see more detail in shaders.

Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot about any other GPU setting, because I only have an Nvidia GPU.