Thinking about upgrading my screen before my grx card?

Phil2008 · 2 Sep 2010 at 23:19

I want to buy a 26 -27" 1920x1200 screen sometime soon. I was thinking if I bought a screen first, how would games look at 1440x900 on a 26 -27" screen, as my 3870 starts to struggle at 1680x1080 and its sweet spot is the next lowest 1440x900?

wapcatlet · 2 Sep 2010 at 23:27

Phil2008 said:
I was thinking if I bought a screen first, how would games look at 1440x900 on a 26 -27" screen?

In two words... Not good.
As soon as you run a panel in anything other than its native resolution then the picture quality starts to suffer.
You could probably put up with it for a few weeks but if I were you, I would get a new graphics card first and then save up for a new screen. You will get absolutely no benefit from buying a 1920x1200 screen first if you intend running it at 1440x900.

cmndr_andi · 2 Sep 2010 at 23:31

Hi there, unfortunately you will likely need to get a new graphics card if you want to play modern games on a new 26-27in monitor.

It is possible to play games at non-native resolution on an LCD monitor, but it looks aweful because there are only a certain number of physical pixels, stretching a smaller resolution image over this larger number of pixels almost always looks horrid (unless there is a clever scaler like in certain high-end monitors).

Therefore, you always want to play games at native resolution - even if you have to reduce graphics quality in other areas. As you suspect the 3870 will have trouble with this, so a GPU upgrade along with a new monitor would be a good upgrade plan. I would suggest a 5770 or GTX 460 as some good options.

Phil2008 · 2 Sep 2010 at 23:31

Ok thanks, back to plan A then,, to buy a gfx card first. Ive got my eye on the msi cyclone gtx460. it was just my 1280x1024 lcd screen dont look too bad in 640x480,, so I thought I might get away with it

ThomasTheTankEngine · 3 Sep 2010 at 00:53

What do you mostly use your pc for? If you watch loads of videos and stuff, then there's no reason not to upgrade the monitor first. You already know what LCD's look like in non-native resolutions, it's just up to you whether you can put up with it for a while.

mattyfez · 3 Sep 2010 at 01:23

Back when I had a NVIDIA 7800 I upgraded my screen to a 22" 1680x1050, and remember running a lower res for certain games, it obviously didn't look as good as the higher res but I don't recall it being an issue.

Dervious · 3 Sep 2010 at 09:21

cmndr_andi said:
It is possible to play games at non-native resolution on an LCD monitor, but it looks aweful because there are only a certain number of physical pixels, stretching a smaller resolution image over this larger number of pixels almost always looks horrid (unless there is a clever scaler like in certain high-end monitors).

I must say that my new Samsung P2450 does a pretty good job of scaling. I`ve only done a few quick tests, but I was suprised how decent the picture looks at lower resolutions. Yes, text does look a bit "soft", but games don`t look too bad at all.