Hi there, just got an MSI K9VGM-V motherboard with the K8M890 Chipset, and integrated VIA Chrome9 Graphic.

Problem is the motherboard thinks I'm using a CRT when I'm on a 21" LCD, and it's not allowing me to change the resolution to the monitor's native display of 1680x1050.

I installed MSI's live update program which updated all of the chipset, video, etc. drivers, as well as going to viewsonics website and getting the most up to date monitor drivers. Still nothing. Any ideas?

Also... the rear USB are 2.0, and the front are only coming up as 1.0? What gives?

If you mean the Front Case USB are 1.0 but the on-board USB is 2.0, then the case USB Ports are not 2.0 complient, contact the case manufacturer and request an upgraded USB Board.

The on-board graphics are your bottleneck as it uses shared memory and therefore you need to buy a *REAL* graphics card.

Your onboard video and it's drivers may not be capable of displaying the 1680x1050 resolution. All 3 of: your monitor's capabilities, your video drivers, and your monitor drivers must support 1680x1050. You could try increasing the amount of ram shared with the video in the bios Setup, but it may not help.

Windows has no way of "knowing" whether you have a CRT or an LCD monitor unless you install the drivers for the specific monitor.
If you just have generic Plug and Play Monitor drivers loaded, they were designed to support CRT monitors, and you are probably limited as to the max resolution you can select - by default Windows will not show you settings not supported by the drivers - and LCD monitors often cannot use some of the higher Play and Play Monitor settings - higher resolutions, and higher refresh rates.

If you have the latest video drivers, and you load the specific drivers for the monitor model, if you can't select 1680x1050 then it can't be done with the onboard video and it's drivers that you have. OR you may only be able to select 1680x1050 if you lower the number of colors displayed - 16 bit color still looks pretty good.You could try increasing the amount of ram shared with the video in the bios Setup, but it may not help.

You don't necessarily have to use the native resolution for the LCD monitor, but the display will look the best if you can set it to that. If your monitor is a better brand such as Samsung, it will still look pretty good in other resolutions. In any case you may have problems with the text fonts not looking as good in other resolutions.
You can use a built into XP tool to make your fonts look look better at any resolution on an LCD display.
Turn on Clear Type in Windows XP - makes type on LCD screens look clearer
http://www.microsoft.com/typography...
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"Also... the rear USB are 2.0, and the front are only coming up as 1.0? What gives?"

What have you tried plugging into the front ports? If the device only requires USB 1.x then that's all the port and the mboard header circuits will supply for that device.

When the mboard has USB 2.0 built into it, usually all the built in ports and the ports accessed by connecting to the mboard header(s) support both USB 2.0 and USB 1.x, but it's possioble on some older mboards that you may have only USB 1.x support on the circuits connected to the header(s) on the mboard - see your mboard manual.

There is no difference between the wiring for case ports for USB 1.x and USB 2.0 that I know of.