24' running at 1600?

[Dieb11]

Im buying a 24' monitor this week, and I am looking to testing out my brandnew system on crysis. I dont think my 8800 GT will be able to handle playing the game at the native resolution of the monitor, so if I have to, can I set the resolution down? Will it look like crap? I obviously dont know much about this stuff, so any help or explanation will be much apreciated.

 

[CJP]

I know you said you were interested in a 24' but Dell's new 30' LCD is supposed to have a chip in it that helps with scaling resoluitions. Maybe they'll have a 24' that does the same.

 

[Dieb11]

Im actually getting the Soyo 24' on black friday for $250. Believe me, I had a hard enough time convincing my wife that we need a 24' monitor... a 30' would certainly put my ass on the couch for a few nights!

 

[BernardP]

You have an NVidia videocard, so you can enable NVidia Scaling, create any custom resolution, enable this resolution and have the videocard do the proper scaling before sending the video signal to the monitor.

All this to say that you can play at 1680x1050 or 1440x900 and it will still look very good on your monitor.

With NVidia Scaling , the monitor is still getting a video signal at the native 1920x1200 resolution and doesn't "know" it is displaying a lower visible resolution. However, the amount of 3-D work the videocard has to do is reduced because it is dependent on the visible lower resolution.

 

[Dieb11]

Thx for the help. How would I do all this? does the video card come with a program that makes this easy

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Originally posted by: BernardP
You have an NVidia videocard, so you can enable NVidia Scaling, create any custom resolution, enable this resolution and have the videocard do the proper scaling before sending the video signal to the monitor.

All this to say that you can play at 1680x1050 or 1440x900 and it will still look very good on your monitor.

With NVidia Scaling , the monitor is still getting a video signal at the native 1920x1200 resolution and doesn't "know" it is displaying a lower visible resolution. However, the amount of 3-D work the videocard has to do is reduced because it is dependent on the visible lower resolution.

That's not the same as the monitor just taking a 1024x768 and stretching it out to 1680x1050?

 

[BernardP]

Originally posted by: Dieb11
Thx for the help. How would I do all this? does the video card come with a program that makes this easy

It's done in the NVidia Control panel (accessed through that thingy in Systray at the bottom right of your screen). Just go to the Change Flat Panel Scaling section and poke around.

Have a look at this. Taken from an old thread, with thanks to Equinox:

http://img464.imageshack.us/im...46/8600gtsvistanz9.jpg

http://img62.imageshack.us/img...127/assinineboxma4.jpg

You must use a DVI connection for NVidia Scaling to work

 

[Dieb11]

I might sound stupid, but this all seems a bit complicated What would be the effect of just changing the resolution on the game and not messing with the video setting on my gpu?

 

[BernardP]

Originally posted by: Dieb11
I might sound stupid, but this all seems a bit complicated What would be the effect of just changing the resolution on the game and not messing with the video setting on my gpu?

It is rather something new to learn if we want to be positive about this

You can do that if you want. If you have a suitable available 16:10 widescreen resolution in your game options, it could work properly. However, if the monitor is not compatible with the lower resolution you have selected (likely), picture quality will suffer horribly or, even worse, the image will not display or be truncated vertically/horizontally.

On the other hand, your game might offer, for example, a standard 1280x1024 non-widescreen resolution and a widescreen option to compensate for the non-widescreen aspect ratio. Tom Raider Legend has this.

You can try the in-game method first. But at some point, you are probably going to meet a game that requires the use of NVidia Scaling to display properly at lower resolution.

And I have not said anything yet about the other options of NVidia Scaling that allow to keep proper aspect ratio in non-widescreen games.