19" vs 20" LCD Question

[bagman]

Ok, so this could well prove an embarrassing question for me to ask but....

A 19" LCD has a native resolution of 1280x1024 and a 20" 1600x1200.
I appreciate that by moving up to the higher screen resolution you are going to drop some FPS in gaming. Apart from the obvious extra coverage you get from the 1600x1200 screen size, why would you increase resolution to drop FPS ?
If a game looks and plays well at 1280x1024 what argument could be made to go to 1600x1200 at the expense of FPS ?
In some games today, every extra FPS you can squeeze out of your hardware is needed.
Hope I have explained myself fully and apologies for possibly asking a stupid quesion
I currently have a 19" LCD and am considering moving to a 20" to get more out of my gaming.

cheers

 

[supernova9]

Some people are more concerned about screen size than frames per second in shooters. It all comes down to what you want and need. People buy bigger screens for all sorts of reasons. If your graphics card can handle it, why not? What GFX are you running by the way? And what games do you want to play? I mean, if you're getting 300+FPS on a 19" monitor, and going to a 20" gives you 200FPS, you will barely if at all notice the difference, so in that respect, FPS is a silly measure.

Say you had a choice, something that looks ok and plays well on a 19", or something that plays just as well, but looks better due to higher res on a 20", what would you choose?

 

[bagman]

Some people are more concerned about screen size than frames per second in shooters. It all comes down to what you want and need. People buy bigger screens for all sorts of reasons. If your graphics card can handle it, why not? What GFX are you running by the way? And what games do you want to play? I mean, if you're getting 300+FPS on a 19" monitor, and going to a 20" gives you 200FPS, you will barely if at all notice the difference, so in that respect, FPS is a silly measure.

Say you had a choice, something that looks ok and plays well on a 19", or something that plays just as well, but looks better due to higher res on a 20", what would you choose?

I guess that last point you made sums up what I'll be looking for.
Games that play well and look ok on a 19" but hopefully will look better and feel more immersive on a 20".
I'm running a 7950GX2 on an AMD FX-60 with 2gb of RAM.
FYI in FEAR ( using the in-built Performance measure ) I get min 43 av 110 and max 269 with 2xAA and 16AF with in-game display resolution 1024x768

 

[Clarkey]

because scaling on tft monitors is awful, besides which 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 are different aspect ratio's, so it would end up stretched too.