Help me understand gaming and screen resolutions

[XLeezardx]

I have a 20.1 widescreen LCD monitor that is 1680x1050 Native res. I will be running the 7900GT 512 Video card and want my games to look the best on this LCD. Do I have to play games in 1680x1050 for it to look its best on this monitor? Would my video card handle games like FEAR at that Res? I heard if you go any lower res other than its native res, it looks crappy.

 

[DusanV]

I think you'll be fine with FEAR at that resoution. If it's not OK, turn down AA and AF a notch and it'll be OK. Some people say games at non-native resolution don't look good. I personally find it not that bad but native is always better.

 

[falconman515]

I run my 21" widescreen HD Gateway at the same native res with a 7800gt on a athlon64 3200 and it runs pretty good even with a little AA. i would always recommend running your moniter in its native res.

 

[Ahriman4891]

It's not even the native res, it's that mapping of "signal pixels" (coming from the videocard) to "screen pixels" must be 1:1 (i.e. no stretching). You are obviously fine if you play in the native 1680x1050. For games that don't support widescreen or those that are too slow, you can switch the monitor to a 1:1 mode and play in 1400x1050 or even 1280x1024--you will waste some screen space, but the image quality will be just as good because the image is not stretched. All Dell monitors have the 1:1 mode in the OSD, and I believe you can set it in the nvidia drivers as well if your monitor does not support it.