Resolution versus perfomance..

Goldfingers · 9 Feb 2009 at 16:07

First off I'm not going to upgrade my rig untill there is a card available for under £100 that offers a sizeable perfomance advantage..

Now at the moment I play on a non-widescreen 19 inch, which I find perfect for my needs. However due to widescreen becoming the new norm, and me wanting to use a 360 on the moniter it seems a good time to upgrade to a 22inch.

However while this means higher resolution, are my games going to end up looking worse due to the lower settings I will have to use to get the same perfomance?

Typhoon · 9 Feb 2009 at 16:11

Yes.
Not by much though.

FrenchTart · 9 Feb 2009 at 16:13

Wouldn't an overclocked 4850 or 4830 offer quite a jump in performance for you?

Generally speaking you'll have to drop AA and perhaps a little AF with the jump in res you're talking about. I'm sure the big increase in screen size will more than offset the loss in quality though..at least at first...

krooton · 9 Feb 2009 at 16:19

Well a 4850 can handle pretty much anything at 1680x1050 with 2xAA, bar the obvious few

domthecondom · 9 Feb 2009 at 17:03

yeah the 4850 i got mine for £100 and i can play almost everything on full at 1680x1050 on my 22 inch

Goldfingers · 9 Feb 2009 at 18:21

Aekeron said:
Wouldn't an overclocked 4850 or 4830 offer quite a jump in performance for you?

Generally speaking you'll have to drop AA and perhaps a little AF with the jump in res you're talking about. I'm sure the big increase in screen size will more than offset the loss in quality though..at least at first...

I think the part bolded was kinda what i was thinking.

I just remember someone saying "resolution makes the most impact on image quality", therefore the arguement being that a higher resolution will make up for lower texture settings etc. Seems they were wrong

Oh and thanks on the heads up for the 4850, but it's really not enough of a jump i.m.o to be worth shelling out for especially in the current climate..

HangTime · 9 Feb 2009 at 23:26

Well, it doesn't matter what resolution you are using if the textures are low quality or there isn't much in the way of sfx and postprocessing. You could play in 3200x2400 and 10 year old games still wouldn't look that great.

1680x1050 isn't vastly larger than 1280x1024 (around 30%) so it should be OK with a £100 card.

petemyster · 9 Feb 2009 at 23:59

I'd rather have desktop resolution with low textures, than medium textures on low res. I would look horrible

snowdog · 10 Feb 2009 at 00:06

I jumped from 1280x1024 to 1920x1080 and most games coped well and still play on the same settings with acceptable framerates bar the few exceptions ( far cry 2 was noticeably slower, gta iv too), just had to drop from using 16xQCSAA in most games (grid, burnout paradise, etc...) but 8x CSAA seems fine still...

and perhaps a little AF

No need really in my experience, AF barely takes 1 frame away ( or well I have yet to see any noticeable difference when using af or no af). Stick with 16x in most games

.

Sinny · 10 Feb 2009 at 00:13

I use an 8800gt and it can practically run crysis with 2xAA @ 1680x1050 at around 25fps which is pretty good and isn't really a problem for me. Been quite a few months since I played crysis on any new drivers though.

also I use my 360 with VGA and the audio running through an amp and the resolution is perfectly fine and feels good.

It doesn't fit full screen though as it's set to 16:10 it put's the bars at the top/bottom. I've gotten used to it though and it looks a while lot better when using a native res than using the 4:3 res.