High Resolution Gaming Overrated: 4850/Warhead nice at 1024x768 4xAA on 24" Monitor

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DWade

Limp Gawd
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I got a 4850 clocked at 700 / 2040 and am satisfied with the performance. $102 open box card. I figured
I couldn't play Crysis Warhead on this low end card though, so why bother. Well I decided to try it and
see what kind of results I would get.

I was actually surprised how good Crysis Warhead looks at 1024x768 4xAA "Gamer" Settings.
Game is smooth at these settings on a 4850. I didn't think it would look good at first since
on my 24inch monitor, as my native res is 1920x1200, but it actually looks fantastic.

I am now starting to wonder if gaming at higher resolutions is overrated. I mean, yah, it will
probably look better if you take a screenshot, but I think as far as the overrall gaming
experience is concerned, it really makes no difference at all, especially when you can just
use AA at low resolutions to clean up the jaggies.

Edit: Some Screenshots at 1024x768 4xaa...you be the judge. Game plays nicely at
these settings.

Crysis2008-12-2606-26-21-76.jpg


Crysis2008-12-2606-26-26-35.jpg


Crysis2008-12-2606-27-13-87.jpg


Crysis2008-12-2606-27-26-88.jpg


Crysis2008-12-2606-23-39-08.jpg
 
Yup, you got a great deal for $102...but I wouldn't exactly call the 4850 a low end card.
 
Ya,1024x768 totally blows away HD gaming.Wow,and to think ATI/Nvidia and all these other companies waste time and money with HD products.Hmm,maybe I will throw my Blu Ray player out the window and grab a VHS player on the cheap.You have shown us the light.:rolleyes:
 
Warhead is one of those games that's blurry regardless of the resolution. The text and UI in general looks crap if you dont have it at native resolution, but I think its the way the environment LOD scaling works, the actual world looks blurry regardless of whether you have native or not.

Most other games I notice a lot when I'm not playing at native res, Warhead I dont. That said, its not a good thing, as Warhead gives me a headache when I play it for more than a few minutes.

However, you said you were playing at 1024x768 on a monitor that's 1920x1200... that means you're not playing at your monitor's aspect ratio, so the image must be stretched a lot.
 
i wonder if the OP has been to an optometrist recently...or at all.....
 
Warhead is one of those games that's blurry regardless of the resolution. The text and UI in general looks crap if you dont have it at native resolution, but I think its the way the environment LOD scaling works, the actual world looks blurry regardless of whether you have native or not.

Most other games I notice a lot when I'm not playing at native res, Warhead I dont. That said, its not a good thing, as Warhead gives me a headache when I play it for more than a few minutes.

However, you said you were playing at 1024x768 on a monitor that's 1920x1200... that means you're not playing at your monitor's aspect ratio, so the image must be stretched a lot.

Yah, I'm playing it on a 24 inch monitor and it looks fine. I haven't tried this on other
games yet though at 1024x768 any way. I've played far cry 2 at 1680x1050 and it looks
great as well.
 
I just play high-end games on my LCD with lower than the native resolution, don't even need AA. :D
 
If your monitor's native res is 19x12, you should probably play a game like warhead at 720p, 1280x800, that way you will keep the aspect ratio, if the system will handle it, since the game won't run well at native
 
ye... you seem to like distorted Aspect Ratios along with insane blurring...to each his own I guess.
 
If your monitor's native res is 19x12, you should probably play a game like warhead at 720p, 1280x800, that way you will keep the aspect ratio, if the system will handle it, since the game won't run well at native

Looks fine to me at 1024x768 but I'll try running that res.
 
Looks fine to me at 1024x768 but I'll try running that res.

Have you tried running it at native res just to see what you're comparing it to? I find it hard to believe that it looks "fine" at those settings and on top of that on an LCD with a much higher native resolution.

You're right about the high-resolution thing in one sense though - at some point adding resolution does not add detail to the game as the game's assets end up being at a lower resolution than they end up on the screen. However, this will only apply to older games. The texture resolution on something like Crysis is so high that running the monitor at that low resolution will probably cause the graphics card to never access the highest resolution mip-level of many textures unless you're standing real close to them which means the game world you see will be a lot less detailed than it would be at 1920x1200.
 
Have you tried running it at native res just to see what you're comparing it to? I find it hard to believe that it looks "fine" at those settings and on top of that on an LCD with a much higher native resolution.

You're right about the high-resolution thing in one sense though - at some point adding resolution does not add detail to the game as the game's assets end up being at a lower resolution than they end up on the screen. However, this will only apply to older games. The texture resolution on something like Crysis is so high that running the monitor at that low resolution will probably cause the graphics card to never access the highest resolution mip-level of many textures unless you're standing real close to them which means the game world you see will be a lot less detailed than it would be at 1920x1200.

I wouldn't say it looks "fine" I would say it looks very good actually. I was skeptical at first as well, but
I'm surprised it looks very good. Maybe it's because I use 4xaa at that resolution.
 
Sure, it looks good at 1024x768, but who wants to game on a 15" LCD or a (very) small portion of their monitor that is of a larger size?
 
I tried this same idea with stalker clear sky and it was ass.... my machine couldn't handle 1680x1050 with all the pretty stuff so I bumped the res down to 1280x800 and it looked look like junk. Using the native res it looked fantastic but I couldn't play the game.
 
Sure, it looks good at 1024x768, but who wants to game on a 15" LCD or a (very) small portion of their monitor that is of a larger size?

Actually I ran it on full screen mode at 1024x768 on a 24 inch monitor. Looks real good too.
 
Actually I ran it on full screen mode at 1024x768 on a 24 inch monitor. Looks real good too.

That's very subjective. 1024x768 scaled to 1600x1200 (assuming you're not stretching it out of aspect) would look terrible to my eyes due to the fixed pixel nature of LCDs.
 
Can't argue with a man's subjective opinion but you've obviously got lower standards than most. 4xAA won't help with the lower texture resolution and lower detail that you seem to be happy with. Not to mention playing at a 4:3 resolution on a 16:10 display.

So you're running it stretched, blurry and low-res and think it looks great. Boggles the mind :)
 
yes you can still game at 1024x768..... doesn't make it a great idea, those days are over. Every computer in my house is widescreened.
 
That's very subjective. 1024x768 scaled to 1600x1200 (assuming you're not stretching it out of aspect) would look terrible to my eyes due to the fixed pixel nature of LCDs.

Its correct that 1:1 ratio is the best on LCD's due to fixed amount of pixels, but you can get a pretty decent picture depending on the scaler. Here's one I took from my screen in 1440x900 scale to aspect (took it for a member of my forum who wondered about non-native resolution text):

wsgfnec4002dz7.jpg


I'm not a good photographer though. :)

Personally I prefer higher resolutions, but its not like its bad in lower resolutions. It depends much upon the game on how much it benifits from higher resolutions.
 
At risk of getting a warning ding on my account I will refrain from making any comments about this thread.

2560x1600 FTW.
 
I'd have cared less about this thread if you at least played a resolution that kept the same aspect ratio of your monitor as mentioned above.

1024x768 on a 24" if stretched would look terribly weird, wide heads...

1280x800 is what you should be playing with or if your machine will allow 960x600 to make the stretching a little easier.

But you do miss a lot by not having those super high res textures.

Try running it at 1920x1200, even if it's not smooth, just try and see the detail it shows in comparison.

Plus a lot of games scale their UI's based on the games resolution, so I don't want a bunch of huge indicators around my screen, I'd rather they be small and not blocking a large portion of the view.
 
ye... you seem to like distorted Aspect Ratios along with insane blurring...to each his own I guess.
Nvidia and ATI's drivers can preserve apect ratios with black bars. I played through part of far cry 2 at 1024x768 on a 19" widescreen monitor and it looks fine.
 
my hd4850 could play warhead @ 1680x1050 on "gamer" with one or two settings turned down no problem,so you could up the res a bit
 
I played Crysis on my 4830 at 1280x1024 with everything on high, no AA, 16x AF and it looked great and ran plenty smooth enough to play and enjoy... I'm sure you can do better than 1024x768 on a 4850, that's hardly a low end card.
 
I played Crysis on my 4830 at 1280x1024 with everything on high, no AA, 16x AF and it looked great and ran plenty smooth enough to play and enjoy... I'm sure you can do better than 1024x768 on a 4850, that's hardly a low end card.

most of the issue is that he stretched a 4:3 image over a 16:10 screen, at least play in the right aspect ratio.

and he might have been happy with those settings and didn't care to tweak anything more and actually just wanted to play the game, which it seems like, cause he's enjoying it just fine without all the super high res stuff it seems
 
I played at 1280x800 which is the same aspect ratio and it looks the same as 1024x768...very good.
 
my hd4850 could play warhead @ 1680x1050 on "gamer" with one or two settings turned down no problem,so you could up the res a bit

I know I can probably play at a higher res but I wanted to see how it would like at lower
resolutions. Looks very good at 1024x768 with 4xaa applied. It plays well and looks like
the screenshots I took in my first post. This is on a 24inch monitor.
 
I tried to run Crysis at 2560x1600 at very high settings and 8AA. I was getting 1 frame every three seconds. That's bull considering the game came out last year and I'm running Xfire.
 
dual x2's are good for gamer/high settings with 16x aniso at 25x16. when the game came out is irrelevant considering how sophisticated the graphics engine is.
 
There's a very good reason for the push towards higher resolutions. Modern games have more detail than than it is possible display with only 1024x768 pixels. There's not much point in maxing out Crysis below around 1920x1200.
 
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