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1280x1024 vs 1280x960

J

junkerman123

Golden Member
I always thought that 1280x1024 was in the same default proportion ratio as 640x480, 800x600, etc...but lately I've come to realize that in fact 1280x960 is in that proportion, and not 1280x1024. I've used 1280x1024 on my 19 inch CRT and with my games for years now, but suddenly after using my laptop a lot stuff is starting to look more stretched. Should 1280x1024 only be used on LCD monitors? Should I really be using 1280x960 on my CRT?
 
what's your laptop's native resolution because you normally use that for best image quality. 1280x960 is proportional to 1024x768 but I guess a lot of lcd's uses 1280x1024...like mine.
 
actually 1280x1024 can be considered as widescreen in a way.Thats one of the widescreen resolutions in newegg anyway.
And use whatever resolution u feel comfortable with.
 
Originally posted by: beserker15
what's your laptop's native resolution because you normally use that for best image quality. 1280x960 is proportional to 1024x768 but I guess a lot of lcd's uses 1280x1024...like mine.
Click to expand...

I believe it is 1280x1024, where can I check this? My laptop always looks fine, it's my CRT that seems stretched out. It seems to me like a lot of games still don't offer a 1280x960 resultion option?
 
Most (probably all, actually) 17" and 19" LCDs are 5:4, so 1280x1024 is the correct resolution there. On the other hand, almost all CRTs are 4:3, so you should use 1280x960 for those. For some strange reason, all the CRTs I have seen list 1280x1024 instead of 1280x960 in their "standard resolutions" list, even though that's the wrong aspect ratio.
 
Originally posted by: CP5670
Most (probably all, actually) 17" and 19" LCDs are 5:4, so 1280x1024 is the correct resolution there. On the other hand, almost all CRTs are 4:3, so you should use 1280x960 for those. For some strange reason, all the CRTs I have seen list 1280x1024 instead of 1280x960 in their "standard resolutions" list, even though that's the wrong aspect ratio.
Click to expand...

I am quite sure this is my problem! I use a Dell M990 monitor at home, and I am quite sure that I could not even select 1280x960...I am not at home right now, but I will look into this and maybe try to grab some new drivers or change to default monitor drivers.
 
Yea, Dell 19" CRT's, and likely any 19" CRT, default to 1280x1024 vice 960 for some reason. I have always thought that CRT's are 4:3, so I don't really understand this.
 
Doesn't the option to select resolutions also depend on the video card drivers? Using modded drivers for my video card, my normal crt monitor can even display widescreen resolutions like 1440x768 or something like that...eventhough it doesn't really fit the screen and looks odd.
 
1280x1024 is actually LESS wide than 1024x768 or any other 4:3 resolution for that matter (its 5:4 i think). Widescreen 16:9 would have been 1280x720. So Newegg are most deffinately wrong if they consider 1290x1024 widescreen!
 
Originally posted by: hardwareking
actually 1280x1024 can be considered as widescreen in a way.Thats one of the widescreen resolutions in newegg anyway.
And use whatever resolution u feel comfortable with.
Click to expand...

actually it's more square, which means that it's LESS widescreen.


anyway, 1280x1024 is a standard VESA resolution, so for some reason it is supported by basically everything, even though people usually have 4:3 monitors (not 5:4). desktop LCDs with native resolutions of 1280x1024 are physically 5:4 so there isn't any distortion running a 5:4 resolution on them. but running a wider resolution like 1024x768 woudl result in distortion (if it fills the screen instead of blackbaring it)

1280x960 is almost never included as a monitor resolution for some reason, probably because it wasn't an official VESA standard (i'm not even sure that it's now a standard). changing monitor drivers probably won't help. the problem is usually the video driver (a CRT can pretty much accept anything up to it's maximum). you can add custom resolutions with a tool like powerstrip. you used to be able to edit the resolutions into nvidia's detonators by hand.
 
I remember someone here saying that 1280x1024 gained acceptance over 1280x960 many years ago because it was the largest resolution that would fit in the framebuffer on 4MB video cards. It seems like there were lots of weird resolutions in those days even though all the monitors were 4:3 (almost all old DOS games for example run in 320x200, even though that's really a widescreen resolution), but 1280x1024 is still used everywhere.

The 17" and 19" LCDs were most likely made 5:4 to support the 1280x1024 resolution (that had become standard for whatever reason), not the other way around.


I am quite sure this is my problem! I use a Dell M990 monitor at home, and I am quite sure that I could not even select 1280x960...I am not at home right now, but I will look into this and maybe try to grab some new drivers or change to default monitor drivers.
Click to expand...

If you have an Nvidia card, the drivers let you add in your own resolution modes. I think you should also be able to add 1280x960 manually in the monitor inf driver file.
 
Originally posted by: CP5670
If you have an Nvidia card, the drivers let you add in your own resolution modes. I think you should also be able to add 1280x960 manually in the monitor inf driver file.
Click to expand...

I will attempt this. Thanks a lot guys, this has actually been bugging me for a while now. 🙂
 
1280x1024 is 5:4 and is more square than the 4:3 on most CRT's. If you have a 17in or a 19in LCD than you most likely have a 5:4 1280x1024 panel.

If it's a CRT display, you want the aspec ratio to be 4:3, or 1280x960 and etc. for the different resolutions.

Since your is a CRT display, 1280x960 (4:3) is probably the correct aspect ratio.
 
although i have a CRT monitor (well, one of my monitors is CRT), i rather like the extra 64 pixels.

Anyway, 2560x1024 is much easier to deal with than having one 1280x960 and one 1280x1024, espicially when the screens htemslves are almost absolutely identical in size.
 
Only idiots use 1280x1024 on a 4:3 display, how can the stretched and squished image not drive them crazy?

Is fine on an LCD, for obvious reasons.
 
Originally posted by: Exsomnis
Only idiots use 1280x1024 on a 4:3 display, how can the stretched and squished image not drive them crazy?

Is fine on an LCD, for obvious reasons.
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That's a little harsh. I mean I've used both and the difference isn't THAT noticeable for me. It's very objective and sides, most people won't know there's a 1280x960. I mean the monitors at my school are all 1280x1024 and even games like doom3 and quake 4 doesn't have 1280x960. It's been a much more used resolution and I didn't even know 1280x960 was more proper for crt's until I saw a thread about it here a while ago.
 
Originally posted by: The Sly Syl
although i have a CRT monitor (well, one of my monitors is CRT), i rather like the extra 64 pixels.
Click to expand...

1280x960 makes full use of the display area. 1280x1024 either has black bars on the sides or if incorrectly adjusted to fill creates horizontal Stretch-O-Vision. So, there's nothing extra.

Games often only provide the same resolution choices as the desktop, which depends upon the graphics and monitor drivers. If a resolution is not available even after the installation of the correct monitor INF, it may require being added manually via the graphics driver. I have never heard of a game that does not support 4:3 resolutions so guess that Doom3 does allow 1280x960 with the correct setup. But some, including BF2, do not support anything other than 4:3.
 
Originally posted by: Auric
Originally posted by: The Sly Syl
although i have a CRT monitor (well, one of my monitors is CRT), i rather like the extra 64 pixels.
Click to expand...

1280x960 makes full use of the display area. 1280x1024 either has black bars on the sides or if incorrectly adjusted to fill creates horizontal Stretch-O-Vision. So, there's nothing extra.

Games often only provide the same resolution choices as the desktop, which depends upon the graphics and monitor drivers. If a resolution is not available even after the installation of the correct monitor INF, it may require being added manually via the graphics driver. I have never heard of a game that does not support 4:3 resolutions so guess that Doom3 does allow 1280x960 with the correct setup. But some, including BF2, do not support anything other than 4:3.
Click to expand...


CRTs have as many pixels as it can support, so u would not get black bars, and anyways for CRTs the extra small diff between 1280 *960 and 1280 *1024 is not noticible (for me anyways) I use 1280 * 960 cause i can have higher refresh rate.

Anyways what ever u do dont use 1152 * 864 in games (i use this reso for my desktop) resolution with nvidia cards, the performance is awful, in fact they will run quicker if u use the 1280 *960 reso.
Oblivion on my card at 1280 *960 with 2*AA runs quicker than 1152 *864 with no AA.
 
I can't stand 1280x1024 on my CRT due to the way it distorts geometry slightly. I avoid using 1280x1024 whenever I can.

1280x960 makes full use of the display area. 1280x1024 either has black bars on the sides or if incorrectly adjusted to fill creates horizontal Stretch-O-Vision. So, there's nothing extra.

Games often only provide the same resolution choices as the desktop, which depends upon the graphics and monitor drivers. If a resolution is not available even after the installation of the correct monitor INF, it may require being added manually via the graphics driver. I have never heard of a game that does not support 4:3 resolutions so guess that Doom3 does allow 1280x960 with the correct setup. But some, including BF2, do not support anything other than 4:3.
Click to expand...

Actually, I think he's right. Doom 3 and Quake 4 don't have 1280x960 in their list of standard resolutions, only 1280x1024. It's a trivial matter to make them use 1280x960 though with the custom resolution console commands.
 
I made the switch to 1280x960 yesterday, no problem. My monitor seemed to support it and I didn't have to mess around with any drivers or anything. The game I was actually referring to was Quake 3, I am pretty sure it doesn't support 1280x960 resolution, but since I don't play it anymore, that's not a problem. I think I recall seeing some other games that didn't support it as well, but can't remember them at the moment. Anyways, my screen doesn't look stretcehd anymore, and actually a few of my games automatically switched from 1280x1024 to 1280x960 (Oblivion and LOTR: WotR2).

:thumbsup:
 
Good choice on making the switch, junkerman123. Some people claim that they can't see a difference, probably because they have been using 1280x1024 so long that they've become conditioned to it. It definitely bothers me, but I use Photoshop and other graphics programs, working with pictures of people and other things that are clearly not natural when stretched. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: Dark Cupcake
Anyways what ever u do dont use 1152 * 864 in games (i use this reso for my desktop) resolution with nvidia cards, the performance is awful, in fact they will run quicker if u use the 1280 *960 reso.
Oblivion on my card at 1280 *960 with 2*AA runs quicker than 1152 *864 with no AA.
Click to expand...

really? im gunna have to test this.

edit: im not getting the same results as you. i tested CSS stress test with 2xAA and got:
1024x768: 97fps
1152x864: 89fps
1280x960: 72fps
seems like it's where it should be
 
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