Originally posted by: xboxist
Originally posted by: xtknight
Originally posted by: xboxist
xtknight,
The following is what you said in your article about the 24" BenQ on lcdresource.com:
"It does lack one feature: 1:1 pixel mapping. That means, if you have an ATI card (ATIs don't offer these options) and want to run in centered mode, you're doomed."
Could you explain exactly how this will impact the average user? I'm new to LCDs, and I don't know what centered mode is. My graphics card is an ATI x1900xt. Can I still consider the BenQ, or would it be the worst choice ever?
Thanks again.
If you want to play at lower resolutions on the LCD, you will have to deal with them being scaled. You can't center the smaller resolution into the larger, native resolution (centered mode). Check out the benchmarks for the x1900xt @ 1920x1200 if you want to know how it'll perform on the BenQ. I doubt you'll be happy with the scaling quality of an LCD for gaming.
So let me just make sure I understand this right...
If I use an app or a game that doesn't have a resolution option to fit up to 1920x1200, then the monitor doesn't have a way to "best fit it"? What will it look like?
Correct. You can't just take 1680x1050, for example, and 'make it' 1920x1200. That just doesn't happen. It will either have to be scaled (digitally stretched and middled image quality), or centered (1:1 mode, pixel perfect but black borders).
I can't tell if this is something that will look clearly unusable, or if it's just a minor gripe. Are you really saying that anyone with an ATI card can't reasonably use this monitor? That's a lot of people!
/stabs ATI
In my opinion, any type of digital scaling is clearly unusable. It just looks awful for gaming with the huge jagged and chunky lines, and enabling antialiasing on the source image just makes it worse. For the Windows desktop it may look usable at first but even the slightest discontinuity in the scaling algorithm kills your eyes and makes it unusable. You can't make something out of nothing, which explains why it looks so blurry and jagged. Of course, I don't know exactly how the FP241W's scaling is. Games suffer particularly because of their geometric nature (as in, diagonal lines everywhere).
EnTech PowerStrip apparently has some 'resolution designer' option that allows you to do 1:1 on ATI cards. Other than that, no one with ATI can do 1:1 centering mode. They must either have it stretched by the graphics card or monitor, if the monitor doesn't have 1:1. The ATI 'centered timings' option just sends a low-res image to the monitor, causing it to do whatever with it (stretch, if there's no 1:1 option). NVIDIA actually sends a full res image to the monitor and instead centers the lower res picture inside that full res, and borders it with black borders. That way the monitor doesn't touch it, but it's still centered from the user's point of view.
Edit: I'll have to change my stance on the scaling thing. I just tried 1440x900 on my 1680x1050 LCD using my 7800GT's scaler and I could barely even tell. My experience described above was with using a 1280x1024 LCD at 1024x768 (off-aspect) resolution, and not to mention at a big dot pitch. The smaller the dot pitch, the more bearable scaling will become, and the FP241W has a pretty small dot pitch. I still can't stand the scaling for desktop usage, however, and I have only tried it with a primitive game so far (Tux Racer, yeah, yeah). I'll report my thoughts on the scaling with Wolfenstein in a little while.