WesleyBurns said:
If you want to drive a display that big at high resolutions (they look horrible at lower resolutions)
you will need 2 things: 8800 and a C2D.
Possibly throw in some more ram for ultra textures, esp. if using vista.
basically , this advice, is entirely wrong ,all of it. you don't need a better cpu for higher res, cpu's make no impact on resolution, if you can get 200fps at 640x480 your cpu is still capable of providing the info for 200fps at 1920x1200 aswell. the only thing that changes is how detailed it draws everything the cpu tells it too. the cpu just sends a message saying model x is at position Y, draw in res x. the only difference at different resolutions is that gfx draws the model in more detail the info on physics, and everything else is exactly the same.
vista, you don't need more mem cos of vista, vista uses basically no more memory that XP, its footprint is around the same size, the rest is just system cache which is instantly released to applications when asked. you don't need a 8800gtx just to run high res. you're running at a higher resolution which is asking more of the gpu, and if you run 4xaa, it doesn't take the same amount of power to run 4xaa at 1024x768 and 1920x1200, its a LOT more detail and there for a lot more info to process aswell. so its physically doing a lot more work and a lot more detail its adding at the same aa level. drop aa a little, maybe. i can't remember what 7900 gtx's were, 512mb? or only some, or none, if you have a 256mb card thats probo the issue, whack it down to high textures, ultra makes little to no difference. from what i remember it really just uses the same textures but uncompressed, but compression is extremely efficient in modern gfx cards and you aren't losing really any detail with compression. on a 256mb card this can be very bad for performance. depends on the game. i don't know how much mem quake 4 needs with/without compressed textures so dunno if it hurts a 256mb card, or a 512mb card aswell.
its fairly clear that nvidia texture compression is much less efficient though, which would infact mean that there should be a smaller difference between uncompressed and compressed textures compared to ati cards. this is why in some high end games a x1900 with 256mb series card can beat a 8800gts 320mb card at 1920x1200, because the textures are too big to fit in the 320mb, but not the 256mb of the ati card.
basically just drop the aa level a little, it will be barely noticeable, as you up the resolution you get diminishing and far less noticable improvements from same levels of AA. play around, actually first just drop from ultra to high and see what happens, might be able to keep aa/af levels very high. then drop aa 1-2 levels. a 7800gtx is more than capable of more than playable frame rate at 1920x1440 with 4xaa and high af according to anandtech review.
Phase?