Is my monitor acting up?

I recently swapped out my monitor cables because the old ones kept slipping out of the ports... so I decided to get some replacements. Ever since then, this happens whenever the monitor is powered on: http://i39.tinypic.com/a0gfau.jpg

Every single game I try to run at an 800x600 resolution (4:3) basically shrinks the image down to that size, leaving me with these huge black bars on both the left and right sides.
It looks exactly like this: http://zaslike.com/files/r431jatukz37dm0dagt.jpg

It’s the same story with every game. If I actually want to play, I have to switch to widescreen (16:9) and pick the native resolution or something close to it... but my graphics card isn't exactly top-of-the-line, so I can't handle playing at those higher resolutions.

I am asking for any kind of help you can provide. I'm honestly at a loss here...

Dude, your hands are shaking like a politician during a Senate hearing. Maybe put your phone on a table or something before you take a picture... 😁

What kind of monitor are you even using?

While you're actually playing a game (that's when you'll notice the shift easiest), pull up the monitor's built-in menu—you know, by hitting those physical buttons on the screen—and start digging through the settings... you gotta look for whatever option handles how the monitor scales non-native resolutions... stuff like fill, aspect, fit, 1:1, or whatever they call it these days...

stormypilot312 said:I recently swapped out my monitor cables because the old ones kept slipping out of the ports, so I decided to replace them, and ever since then, this happens whenever the monitor is powered on: http://i39.tinypic.com/a0gfau.jpg

Every single game I set to 800x600 (4:3) basically shrinks the image to that size, leaving these huge black bars on the left and right sides.
It looks like this: http://zaslike.com/files/r431jatukz37dm0dagt.jpg

It's like this with every game, and if I want to actually play, I have to switch to widescreen (16:9) and use the monitor's native resolution or something close to it, but my GPU isn't great, so I can't really handle playing at such a high resolution.

Please, I need any help you guys can give, I'm totally lost here :/

Thanks man, I finally tracked it down. Everything is sorted now. 🙂

By the way, I took this shot using an old iPhone Young with a 2-megapixel camera... 😁

stormypilot312 said:Man, thanks buddy, I actually managed to find it, so everything is all squared away now 🙂

By the way, I took this photo of an old iPhone using a tiny 2MP camera 😁

Do you mind sharing how you pulled that off?
I ran into this exact same headache today while I was installing a fresh version of macOS on my laptop. No matter what resolution I pick, if it isn't the native display setting, it just leaves these huge black bars on the sides—it’s honestly such a weird thing because I don't think I've ever dealt with this before 🤷

EDIT: Got it sorted! Just in case anyone else runs into this mess, you just have to dive into your graphics settings; on my machine, I went into the NVIDIA Control Panel and set the scaling to "full screen" to fix the aspect ratio.