Tuning Samsung TV Game Mode

Properties3

Type	Practice
Note created	May 13, 2026
Last updated	May 14, 2026

When using a modern Samsung TV (2022+) as a PC monitor with Game Mode enabled, the TV advertises extra ultrawide resolutions (3840×1600 for 21:9 and 3840×1080 for 32:9) over the HDMI EDID. These modes are intended to support Samsung’s Ultrawide GameView feature, but they pollute the resolution list seen by Windows and the GPU driver. Some games — like FL26 — pick one of these modes when entering exclusive fullscreen, even on a regular 16:9 game, resulting in a horizontally stretched picture that only affects the game window. As soon as you alt-tab out, the desktop renders correctly.

The Game Bar on the TV may report the screen ratio as 16:9 (because the signal coming in is 16:9), while the TV is internally scaling a 3840×1600 source up to fill the 4K panel. The regular Picture Size menu is greyed out in Game Mode, so the TV side offers no fix.

Diagnosis

The smoking gun: open the GPU overlay (AMD Adrenalin or NVIDIA Performance Overlay) while the stretched game is running. If it reports the active display mode as 3840×1600 (or 3840×1080) instead of 3840×2160, the game has switched the display into an ultrawide mode it had no business picking. AMD’s Preserve Aspect Ratio scaling does not help here — that setting only kicks in when the GPU outputs less than native, but 3840×1600 is being treated as a real native mode by the TV.

Fix — strip ultrawide modes with CRU

The cleanest, permanent fix is to edit the TV’s EDID using CRU by ToastyX so that those ultrawide modes simply don’t exist in the resolution list.

1. Download CRU.exe from monitortests.com and extract anywhere. No installer.
2. Plug the TV into the HDMI port you’ll use long-term (CRU edits are per-port).
3. Make sure Game Mode is ON during the whole process — that’s the state where the bad modes appear.
4. Run CRU.exe as administrator. In the top dropdown, select the Samsung TV.
5. Click Export… and save a samsung-original.bin backup before touching anything.
6. In the main window:
   • Detailed resolutions: delete any entry with width 3840 and height ≠ 2160 (most importantly 3840×1600), plus any 3840×1080. Leave 3840×2160 alone.
   • Standard resolutions: delete any 21:9 / 32:9 entries (e.g. 2560×1080). Leave normal 16:9 modes.
7. Open each CTA-861 extension block → Edit → delete any ultrawide entries inside. Leaving the list empty is valid — do not substitute with anything.
8. Confirm the first entry under Detailed resolutions is 3840×2160 @ 60 Hz (or 120 Hz). That’s the preferred mode the game will now fall back to.
9. Click OK and run restart64.exe from the CRU folder as administrator. The screen blanks for ~2 seconds while the driver reloads.

After this, the GPU overlay should report 3840×2160 while the game is running, and the picture renders correctly in 16:9 with Game Mode still on.

Undo

• Hotkey Ctrl + Alt + F7 disables all CRU edits immediately if something goes wrong.
• To fully revert, run CRU → Import… → pick samsung-original.bin → OK → restart64.exe.

Caveats

• CRU edits are per HDMI port per TV identity. Moving the cable to a different port requires redoing the steps for that port.
• Replacing the TV resets everything.
• Driver updates usually preserve the edits, but if not, restart64.exe will reapply them.

Alternative fixes (less robust)

• Borderless windowed mode in the game (when supported) bypasses the DXGI mode switch entirely, since the game just renders into a desktop-sized window without calling SetDisplayMode. Worth trying first if the game offers it.
• Disabling Game Mode also works but sacrifices the low-latency gaming pipeline.
• Removing modes from AMD Adrenalin / NVIDIA Control Panel is fragile — they often re-appear after the TV re-advertises the EDID on the next handshake.

Related

• SP Football Life 26 exhibits this problem out of the box; once CRU strips the ultrawide modes, the game renders correctly at 3840×2160 in fullscreen.
• The same fix should apply to other PES 2021-engine games and likely any DX11/12 title that uses the system-preferred display mode at fullscreen.