Windows 7 Change windows resolution to see more content

If the custom resolution of 1920x1080 was actually being produced on your monitor, you would be getting 18% more content. You are probably not getting what you think you're getting. For example, are you sure that you are not just losing content from the edges (displaying 1680x1050 from the middle of a 1920x1080 image)? Your monitor has a fixed pattern of pixels. It cannot display more pixels than that.

Displaying actual resolutions higher than the monitor specs used to be possible in the days of CRTs when the image was analog. There were video cards that did that by playing games with the visual decay in your eyes and manipulating multiple scans to create synthetic images of higher resolution. The results were abysmal, though, migraine-producing. For practical purposes with LED/LCD monitors, the native resolution of your monitor is the highest you can go in terms of actually displaying the unaltered image.

It sounds like you are willing to settle for something that shrinks higher-resolution content to fit on your monitor. The effect would be the same as shrinking any digital image. All of the actual content will get averaged/dithered to fit in fewer pixels so you will lose detail. You won't actually see more content but a smaller, cruder version of more content. Text is likely to become unreadable.

Many programs have a zoom function that will do that for its own window or full screen view. I'm not aware of one that will function like a video driver to shrink a larger virtual screen onto you monitor.

Your video driver may, however, allow you to create a huge virtual screen with your monitor acting like a scrollable window into it.