Native Resolution

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Stupid_Newbie

Gawd
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Dec 4, 2005
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Well, as im looking at ordering my new PC, i have been looking at adding a new monitor. I read a lot about people playing at high resolutions on single monitors, however all the monitors I see are 1920x1080 native. I remember when they warned me not to go outside native resolution as it degraded image quality (this is when LCD first came out), is this still the case?
 
Stupid_Newbie said:
Well, as im looking at ordering my new PC, i have been looking at adding a new monitor. I read a lot about people playing at high resolutions on single monitors, however all the monitors I see are 1920x1080 native. I remember when they warned me not to go outside native resolution as it degraded image quality (this is when LCD first came out), is this still the case?
Click to expand...

I am guessing that you're worried that your new pc will suffer frame loss at a higher resolution such as 1920x1080. I wouldn't be too worried, I am guessing that
"Asus P4C800 DLX Mobo
P4 3.0C /w SP94, 92mm Enermax Fan
1GB OCZ Platinum Rev.2 Dual Channel DDR400 2-2-2-5
Audigy 2 ZS
80/160GB WD Cavier SE 8MB HDs
Lite-on 52x32x52
Benq DW1625 DVDRW
ATI Radeon X850XT PE 256MB
Enermax 350W PSU "

Is your current system. If so any decent cpu and mid range video card out now will have no problem playing @1080, granted I am not saying crysis maxed out will be no prob with mid range hardware, but your typical FPS such as Bad Company 2 will be as smooth as silk with current day hardware.
 
If you use less than native resolution the quality will degrade a little, but it will not make games look horrible.

Take console games as an example. They are not 1920 x 1080 resolution, the PS3 and Xbox 360 simply do not have enough processing power for that resolution with all the eye candy. The games are rendered in lower resolution which is then stretched to fill a 1080p HDTV.
 
No im asking because i am going to be building a new PC, and i see all these people praising high res gaming (over 1920x1080), yet I see no monitors rated for over that, so was wondering If shopping the local big store retailers is misleading me to much better monitors available online. Or if the newer monitors dont suffer as much from above native resolution, as it used to be.
 
They don't run resolutions above native, they're all running either:

- eyefinity (ATI)/nvidia surround setups (multiple monitors all running one game)
- or are running a 27" or 30" display with a native res much higher than 1080p.

Big store retailers are probably an incredibly poor indication of what monitors to look at...
 
JaguarSKX said:
If you use less than native resolution the quality will degrade a little, but it will not make games look horrible.

Take console games as an example. They are not 1920 x 1080 resolution, the PS3 and Xbox 360 simply do not have enough processing power for that resolution with all the eye candy. The games are rendered in lower resolution which is then stretched to fill a 1080p HDTV.
Click to expand...

I only have a PS3 so I can't speak about the Xbox, but on the PS3 you can choose either to use the lower resolution or upscale to 1080p. Upscaling looks worse, it's blurrier. Letting your TV just switch to 1280x720 resolution works fine. Some games are actually internally rendering at lower resolution and that is upscaled to 720p. GTA4, Red Dead Redemption and the latest Halo games are doing that, which is IMO bit of a copout since other developers get very graphically intensive stuff running at native 720p.

But on the PC if the display has a good scaler then running games at 1080p (which makes sense for increased field of vision it allows in most modern games) is no problem. If there is no scaler, the graphics card will have to do the scaling and in my experience this is again blurrier than if the display can just switch to lower res and scale on its own.
 
The two common resolutions above 1920 x 1080 are:

2560 x 1440 (16:9 27" monitors)
2560 x 1600 (16:10 30" monitors)

You will need a compatible graphics card to drive such a resolution though, one that has a Dual link DVI output or full size DisplayPort output. VGA/HDMI/Single link DVI will not cut it here.

The trouble with these are that they tend to be hideously expensive and not just on their initial purchase. Driving the latest games that that kind of resolution will require some serious GPU horsepower.

It actually seems more economical to have a display setup dedicated to gaming using larger, lower resolution monitors. In the long term you can save on GPU upgrades as long as you have enough outputs on the card for at least one "desktop" screen and one "gaming" screen.
 
one 1080p monitor will have no problems running the latest games with a mid priced ($200-250) graphics card. Better yet, get 2 low priced graphics cards and put them in SLI (gtx 460s for example) .. higher resolutions require more video RAM for smooth performance, but with one 1080p monitor, you will be fine. Don't waste your time with any lower resolution.
 
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