Native Resolution Vs 1080

Agricola

Reading the eurogamer piece today on the £300 gaming PC and the notion of building a system with a baseline ability of running games at 720p (probably on HDTV) at 60fps, it go me thinking about reducing resolution for gaming on my own PC.
I always run everything at 1920*1200 as this is the native res for the screen. It looks great, but since my card is getting on a bit now and I would like to get a little free boost, what do people think of dropping it down to a lower 16:10 resolution? Is it almost always crap, does it depend on the game, the screen etc.


This might be more for the tech forum, but since there are alot of knowledgeable PC gamers here and Im looking for more of general debate in relation to gaming rather than a tech analysis, I think I might put it here.

ShiverinEskimo

You'll get used to the lower res in no time and the performance boost is considerable. 1680 x 1050 is what I normally select on my 1920x1200 monitor so I can put the power into textures or effects which IMO add more than higher resolutions do.

K.O.Kiki

Playable frame rates should always take priority over graphical goodness, TBH.

Nothing worse than stuttering game play.

Completionist

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Playable frame rates should always take priority over graphical goodness, TBH.

Nothing worse than stuttering game play.

But stuttering gameplay means you can really take your time to appreciate the graphics:pac:

Retr0gamer

If you drop to below native resolution you'll get some blurring but really it depends on what you want to get out of your games. I'd much rather more effects and detail than a boost in resolution and tbh something like 1680 x 1050 is more than enough.

Duggy747

What you lose in resolution you can sometimes make up for in AA and other graphical effects.

I normally run games at 1920x1080, the odd game comes along which makes me drop it down to 720 so I can have consistently smooth fps.

Smooth fps means alot more to me than purty, crisp graphics, personally.

ShadowHearth

I might sound like a dick, but I haven't once droped my resolution lower then 1080p.
Crap is that modern monitors work well only on native resolution. Old CRTs could display any resolution and did not suffered image quality drop. ( the bluriness Iean )
If you know that your pc can't play games at nice frame rate at 1080p, then better off to downgrade your monitor or upgrade your pc.
I have my old 16x10 monitor and it worked fine. Then my old second monitor fudged up so I bought cheap 1080p. Unfortunately my old pc was crap at that resolution so I used my 16x10 as main monitor and 1080p one as secondary.

By the way, 1650x1050 resolution monitors still look great, it will put less stress on system too. You could get those cheap second hand.

Agricola

Yeah I might have to give it a try. Playing Arkham City maxed out, my HD 5850 isnt really at the races.

Overheal

Dropping res and amping AA is one of the better ways to get a tweak out of your performance. Depending on the game it can look pants because of The Fuzz but for most titles its perfectly alright.