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Resolution vs Eye Candy...

S

Seufari

Gawd
Joined
Sep 7, 2005
Messages
871
Hey guys...

My budget for builds always puts me in the middle of video card offerings. Something priced like last gen top of the line...

Anyways, on my budget I find a lower resolution LCD TV to be great. At the lower resolution, I can turn on AA and AF and all the best shadows/textures. With a huge resolution, I would have to run at a more modest setting with limited eye candy.

So what are your thoughts on Resolution vs Eye Candy?
 
I find playing at a lower resolution that allows me to have max settings (and possibly vertical sync) gives me the best gaming experience. It's the best reason to buy a monitor that supports 1:1 pixel mapping.
 
Its 2009, I've never had to make a decision on Res vs Eye candy since my 7800GTX. (Crysis is another story though). With the mainstream cards offered today, hell even last year, here should be no reason to compromise max eye candy settings at your native resolution (save for levels of AA with respect to how many frames per second you get).
 
kuyaglen said:
Its 2009, I've never had to make a decision on Res vs Eye candy since my 7800GTX. (Crysis is another story though). With the mainstream cards offered today, hell even last year, here should be no reason to compromise max eye candy settings at your native resolution (save for levels of AA with respect to how many frames per second you get).
Click to expand...

qft
 
I prefer resolution over eye candy, although I rarely have to compromise.
 
Yeah, I haven't had to really compromise either. Back when I first got my 4850 (512MB) I was running a 19" monitor and was really wanting to upgrade it to a 24" and I was having the same dilemma. I feared having to upgrade my GPU far more often than I had been with the 19".

I found a decent deal on a nice 24" Samsung so I went for it. I was pleasantly surprised that even the 512MB version of the 4850 had no problems running all my games just fine, and the majority of them still played fine maxed out. I may have had to go from 8x to 4x or 4x to 2x AA on a few games, but that wasn't an issue. Crysis was really the only game I had to turn settings way down to keep playable frames.

That said, if I HAD to pick, I'd go with a higher resolution screen. You can see quite a bit more of the environment around you which is very helpful in shooters and racing games and it also has it's benefits outside of gaming as well.
 
I prefer eye candy. I only game at 16x10 resolution so I like to have high textures, shadows, AA, filtering, etc. I like the environment to look as real as it can, and you can't get that simply by bumping up the resolution.
 
Darksword said:
I prefer eye candy. I only game at 16x10 resolution so I like to have high textures, shadows, AA, filtering, etc. I like the environment to look as real as it can, and you can't get that simply by bumping up the resolution.
Click to expand...

Well you shouldn't have to turn down ALL the eye candy unless you're running you 1080p+ resolutions on a 6800 series card or equivilent
 
I prefer eye candy. I don't really mind playing at lower resolutions, hell, many of the DosBox/old windows games I play are at 640x480, and I think they're fine. I'm much more sensitive to lack of antialiasing, or short view distances, or bad water textures.
 
kuyaglen said:
Its 2009, I've never had to make a decision on Res vs Eye candy since my 7800GTX. (Crysis is another story though). With the mainstream cards offered today, hell even last year, here should be no reason to compromise max eye candy settings at your native resolution (save for levels of AA with respect to how many frames per second you get).
Click to expand...

i play a few games that make my system take massive fps loss.
 
Wotan said:
It's the best reason to buy a monitor that supports 1:1 pixel mapping.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Very nice feature.

jediknight73 said:
i play a few games that make my system take massive fps loss.
Click to expand...

Same. Though I can play Fallout 3 on ultra high settings at 1920x1200, I have to set iFPSclamp to 50 to remove hitching. That introduces the slow-mo/high speed bug. The farther below 50 the FPS go the slower the game/character becomes. As it goes up over 50, it speeds up, even to the point of ridiculous.

It takes these sudden nose dives no matter what settings I use, especially in Point look out. So I have had to scale everything to try and maintain an even 60 FPS the best I can. (V-Sync'd.)

I was really sad when I realized my sig rig could not do ultra @ 1920x1200 with no hitching. :( (If I remove the iFPSclamp, I can mange those settings, but the hitching gives me head aches.)

I want it all, but sadly can seem to get it. I'll drop resolution before eye candy usually.
 
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Darksword said:
I prefer eye candy. I only game at 16x10 resolution so I like to have high textures, shadows, AA, filtering, etc. I like the environment to look as real as it can, and you can't get that simply by bumping up the resolution.
Click to expand...

You're gaming at only 16x10 resolution? You do realize what that would look like right?

24045152.jpg


I applaud you if you can figure out that the above screenshot is Halo 2 ^ :rolleyes:

On a serious note, resolution comes first. Once I'm running at the native resolution of my LCD, I hike up everything else as far as it will go at that resolution.
 
Resolution and screen size help with immersion as seen by Eyefiniy's popularity.

It's unlikely you'll be losing all of your eye candy by adding pixels. Check out the [H] reivews and see how much they have to reduce setting when going from 1920x1200 to 2560x1600. It's often just a bit of aliasing or filtering.
 
I go for resolution. Only sacrafice of eyecandy is i'll turn aa down. I can barely tell a difference after 2x at 1920x1080 tbh
 
jediknight73 said:
i play a few games that make my system take massive fps loss.
Click to expand...

Same here, mods can do stuff like that. My old 4870x2 couldn't handle a heavily modded Morrowind install.

Little_4nic8er said:
Indeed. Very nice feature.



Same. Though I can play Fallout 3 on ultra high settings at 1920x1200, I have to set iFPSclamp to 50 to remove hitching. That introduces the slow-mo/high speed bug. The farther below 50 the FPS go the slower the game/character becomes. As it goes up over 50, it speeds up, even to the point of ridiculous.

It takes these sudden nose dives no matter what settings I use, especially in Point look out. So I have had to scale everything to try and maintain an even 60 FPS the best I can. (V-Sync'd.)

I was really sad when I realized my sig rig could not do ultra @ 1920x1200 with no hitching. :( (If I remove the iFPSclamp, I can mange those settings, but the hitching gives me head aches.)

I want it all, but sadly can seem to get it. I'll drop resolution before eye candy usually.
Click to expand...

Are you also using fpslimiter (a frame rate capper) with iFPSclamp? It will help (get rid of) with everything speeding up when you are at 50 fps.. Also you should check out the Fallout Stutter Remover, you can download it at FONexus, you just need fose as well. It will help when your framerate drops under 50 or whatever you set the cap to. I haven't really tried it but Oblivion stutter remover worked great and it's made by the same guy. Just don't use the two at the same time.

BTW, a heavilly modded Fallout install is one of those games that can really bring my rig to it's knees.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
Same here, mods can do stuff like that. My old 4870x2 couldn't handle a heavily modded Morrowind install.



Are you also using fpslimiter (a frame rate capper) with iFPSclamp? It will help (get rid of) with everything speeding up when you are at 50 fps.. Also you should check out the Fallout Stutter Remover, you can download it at FONexus, you just need fose as well. It will help when your framerate drops under 50 or whatever you set the cap to. I haven't really tried it but Oblivion stutter remover worked great and it's made by the same guy. Just don't use the two at the same time.

BTW, a heavilly modded Fallout install is one of those games that can really bring my rig to it's knees.
Click to expand...

hell Homeworld2 modded will brimg my fps to 10- fps,and it came out like 2003.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
Same here, mods can do stuff like that. My old 4870x2 couldn't handle a heavily modded Morrowind install.



Are you also using fpslimiter (a frame rate capper) with iFPSclamp? It will help (get rid of) with everything speeding up when you are at 50 fps.. Also you should check out the Fallout Stutter Remover, you can download it at FONexus, you just need fose as well. It will help when your framerate drops under 50 or whatever you set the cap to. I haven't really tried it but Oblivion stutter remover worked great and it's made by the same guy. Just don't use the two at the same time.

BTW, a heavilly modded Fallout install is one of those games that can really bring my rig to it's knees.
Click to expand...

I've used FPSLimiter in the past with no success. I just tried the Fallout Stutter Remover and it kinda seems to help a bit, but I'll have to play some more to get a better impression. (Did about 15 minutes worth of testing, starting and stopping a few times.)

I ran it at 1920x1200, Ultra high (I've been using high.) and though it did hit the high 30s at one point, it wasn't too bad, not so jarring of a drop I guess. Seemed to recover more smoothly.

I have very few mods, 6 I think. Nothing major, mostly UI/unofficial patchy type stuff, plus all the DLC.

Thanks for pointing it out, I had not heard of it.
 
Little_4nic8er said:
I've used FPSLimiter in the past with no success. I just tried the Fallout Stutter Remover and it kinda seems to help a bit, but I'll have to play some more to get a better impression. (Did about 15 minutes worth of testing, starting and stopping a few times.)

I ran it at 1920x1200, Ultra high (I've been using high.) and though it did hit the high 30s at one point, it wasn't too bad, not so jarring of a drop I guess. Seemed to recover more smoothly.

I have very few mods, 6 I think. Nothing major, mostly UI/unofficial patchy type stuff, plus all the DLC.

Thanks for pointing it out, I had not heard of it.
Click to expand...

Oh, there are a couple of fpslimiter downloads floating around. One is corrupted, thats probably the one that you downloaded. I did the same thing at first. One is a zip and one is a rar. The .zip works fine. I can email it to you if you want.

Also you can set up the fallout stutter remover so it won't drop down to 30 fps as easily. There is also a different memory heap manager that works pretty well. The readme will tell you how to set that up.

jediknight73 said:
hell Homeworld2 modded will brimg my fps to 10- fps,and it came out like 2003.
Click to expand...

:D I have to try that out, now.

Darkplaces is another good one, a Quake 1 mod.
 
kuyaglen said:
Its 2009, I've never had to make a decision on Res vs Eye candy since my 7800GTX. (Crysis is another story though). With the mainstream cards offered today, hell even last year, here should be no reason to compromise max eye candy settings at your native resolution (save for levels of AA with respect to how many frames per second you get).
Click to expand...

I have an 8800GTS and I always find myself balancing between in game settings, resolution and framerate (and AA/AF if I can manage it without big losses). At 1920x1080 there's plenty of games that aren't silky smooth with all in game settings turned up.

Anyway, it really depends on the game. Some games really benefit from high resolution. Other games, like Crysis, high res isn't massively noticable and higher settings at lower res is better (largely because of the filters that make everything look blurry regardless of resolution).
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
Oh, there are a couple of fpslimiter downloads floating around. One is corrupted, thats probably the one that you downloaded. I did the same thing at first. One is a zip and one is a rar. The .zip works fine. I can email it to you if you want.

Also you can set up the fallout stutter remover so it won't drop down to 30 fps as easily. There is also a different memory heap manager that works pretty well. The readme will tell you how to set that up.
Click to expand...

I'll look for the zip version. I can't remember which I tried before.

I'm just playing around with the settings for FSR now. I used the default earlier. I'll let you know how it turns out in Point Lookout as it's the worst for the sudden drops. (When I find those save games on my good character. I'm using a "dummy save" right now for testing.)

Thanks again.

P.S.

I'm starting to think it's the memory contributing to it.

It's definitely just the transition loads. I can maintain 60 (V-sync'd) FPS everywhere until I hit an exterior to exterior transition point. I'm wondering if faster RAM would help. (Considering I just got an SSD and it hasn't fully helped.) My mobo takes both DDR2 and DDR3 up to 1333Mhz. I screwed up when I was piecing different PC builds, and forgot to swap back to the the right RAM after I made my choice of mobo. So I got DDR2 800Mhz OCZ Reaper for a 1333 FSB board. :(

I did try and get DDR3 but it kept BSODing so I just went with more DDR2 800Mhz at the time. (Wanted what I knew worked, rather than hope for the best the RMA'd stuff would work.) There is no DDR3 supported RAM listed for the board. So I didn't want to play a guessing game.

Sound like a plausible cause? I know part of it is simply how the game works, but I still kinda expected better with the SSD upgrade. RAM is the last bottleneck I have.

Started a thread rather than derail this more. Apologies.
 
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I prefer eye candy over resolution personally. However, since I got a new computer and videocard a little while ago, I don't have to compromise anymore, at least for some time.
 
I choose resolution and AA over eye candy. For me, I'd rather play a game that looks like Quake III at my native resolution with 8xAA than play something with the visual fidelity of Crysis without AA and at a lower resolution.

Unknown-One said:
I applaud you if you can figure out that the above screenshot is Halo 2 ^ :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
It wasn't too hard for me. That's what Halo 2 looks like ordinarily (zing!)

SereLaw said:
I choose real a state.
Click to expand...
Real estate.
 
I dont see why resolution has such a fuss.

eg. if I prefer to play fable lost chapters at 1280x800 instead of 1680x1050 because the text etc. in the game is far more viewable and not too small, and the graphics to my eyes look no worse.

I also play a lot of older games such as warcraft 3 and again I find the resolutions available fine.

Of course if you playing on a huge screen eg. a 40" tv then pixels are more noticeable, my monitor is 22".
 
CRT user as well so resolution really isn't a factor. Coming from console gaming for the last 2 years I prefer maxed with some AA and AF.
 
High resolution. Monitors can display much more than just a high amount of eyecandy, word documents, High def motion pictures, editing images with Adobe Photoshop (TM) or reading long (and perhaps boring) papers.
 
Yoy0YO said:
High resolution. Monitors can display much more than just a high amount of eyecandy, word documents, High def motion pictures, editing images with Adobe Photoshop (TM) or reading long (and perhaps boring) papers.
Click to expand...

lol, I'm pretty sure we're talking about gaming. I think it's safe to assume everyone here knows that monitors can display pictures and word docs.
 
I find sometimes dropping to a lower resolution that is not native res actually imparts a nice graphic quality to the game that comes with a performance enhancement. It's sort of like a full screen AA that costs nothing and even makes your game run faster.

I played Ghostbusters not at 1680x1050 native res but at 1600x1000 which imparted a subtle smoothing effect not just to aliased edges but other hard points and sharp objects and lighting effects and textures that at native res just stood out too much and looked unnatural. A lot of games and especially console ports have a weird plasticky look to models that are supposed to be human or fabric and this slight smoothing effect from going down to a lower resolution and undergoing scaling (via card or monitor) made everything look better and softer for me while still being sharp enough.
 
The "softening" you're refferring to by going to a lower resolution gets applied to the whole picture, not just hard edges. Your entire envornment will be duller.
 
RamonGTP said:
The "softening" you're refferring to by going to a lower resolution gets applied to the whole picture, not just hard edges. Your entire envornment will be duller.
Click to expand...

Of course it was, that was the point. I actually enjoy Borderlands at one step lower resolution than native res and it has nothing to do with FPS.

My eyes just hurt when the image is too sharp and I play for too long as well. There are a lot of games where a full screen softening by a slight drop of 50-80 pixels coupled with rescaling to fullsize has made me enjoy games more. It also helps get rid of sparkly bits or light artifacts that pop up every now and then in some games.

There are some monitors that have a sharpness control that I used to employ to do this but I nolonger have that option on my current display. In Oblivion, I used to drop the hardware sharpness manually on my monitor.

Consoles do this trick all the time on big screen TVs. It actually isn't that bad doing it on the PC for certain games.
 
Its always been about Native Resolution of your LCD or highest resolution of your CRT.

with LCD's you have much less of a choice, its either native resolution or a subtely blurry picture.


another option you can look at though with LCDs is to not scale the image, do 1:1 mapping.. sure you'll get black bars on the side and top but you'll still be at a native resolution.
 
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