Solved Windows 4:3 stretching of games

so i have fullscreen optimizations enabled on my machine. i currently play cs2 at 1024x768 4:3 resolution. Windows 11 automatically stretches this to fit my monitor. oddly enough, i dont know how its doing this. i have GPU scaling disable in AMD Adrenalin, so it cant be that

then all of a sudden, i launch cs2 and my game is no longer stretched and has black bars. this happened out of nowhere and i dont know why it occured. im on windows canary builds so maybe it was a canary bug

but during this time, when cs2 wasnt being stretched anymore, my fps was substantually higher. whatever post processing was occuring and stretching out the image was lowering my fps.

before i start debugging and trying to figure out if and which fullscreen optimization setting is causing this, does anyone here by chance already know what feature Windows uses to stretch 4:3 resolutions?

i just found that when trying to change my refresh rate from 60Hz to 75Hz via "Settings > System > Display" that this will stretch the 1024x768 4:3 resolution. i tried googling and it appears this can happen when the display doesnt really support the refresh rate. im using a poopy vizio tv for a monitor afterall, so i guess using unsupported refresh on a monitor can stretch the image and cause lower performance

well i guess it keeps getting more interesting. i am running Windows 11 canary and AMD vulkan beta drivers, so this might be a bug and not user error. i did find out that i do need GPU Scaling enabled in Adrenalin settings to get the resolution to stop changing back to native as often, although it still happens.

running the game in windowed mode will preserve the aspect ratio and not stretch, but when i switch cs2 to fullscreen, it reverts the desktop back to native res and then stretches out the 1024x768 res in game.

i manually set my desktop resolution to 1024x768 to prevent the desktop from switching to native res, but when entering cs2 in fullscreen mode, it reverts the desktop res back to native and then stretches the 1024x768 res in game like before

very odd behavior, i dont know if its an issue with windows 11 canary, amd beta drivers, or cs2 even?

"Windows 11 automatically stretches this to fit my monitor"

That will be the Monitor not Windows, so adjust your Monitor settings.
As it is actually a TV they will confuse by using sometimes odd expressions, and maybe not the options you require.

"so this might be a bug and not user error."
Simple user error.

that was part of this. when cs2 all of a sudden was non stretched 4:3 and getting 20 more fps (310), i had to go in my tv settings to make it stretch. i then did a PC refresh which brought my machine to normal performance with 290ish. i had to switch back my tv scaling settings just now.

i dont know what occured to have the game render that way randomly, but 20 fps faster? my desktop resolution will still revert to native when entering fullscreen mode cs2. this is lame because if i want my desktop res at 1024x768 (its 1366x768 native), it should stay at that res and not switch back to native