Are LCD's pushing GPU's to the limit?

[Magnulus]

What do you think? It seems ever since I got an LCD 2 1/2 years ago, I've been upgrading my graphics card alot more often. Turning down the resolution, especially on my older LCD, just sucked. 1280x1024 now days is pretty demanding. Used to be you played games at 800x600.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Maybe I'm not understanding, but LCD's are no more demanding on a video card than a CRT is. Or are you just saying that they are more demanding because they basically make you play at whatever the native resolution is? In that case, yes, you're probably right.

btw, are you Magnulus from Forumplanet?

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy


Maybe I'm not understanding, but LCD's are no more demanding on a video card than a CRT is. btw, are you Magnulus from Forumplanet?

Yeah, exactly. LCD's aren't more demanding on games, only resolution is.

In that sense, then yeah, I guess the fact that LCD's force you to play at native resolution (since they look like crap at anything else) is driving up video card sales. The #1 way to improve framerate (drop the resolution) isn't practical on LCD's.

But it's also the way games are being made these days with shaders. Shaders are making games look leaps and bounds better than ever before (and before ~GF3 cards, better than thought possible in this short of a time), but the drawback is that games put a heavier and heavier tax on the shader units, so that if you're more than a generation behind, you're sunk if you want to play the latest/greatest.

 

[Rage187]

/agree


my 2405 forced me to upgrade to a 7800gt since my 6800gt just couldnt keep it happy at 1920x1200.

 

[PrayForDeath]

Originally posted by: Rage187
/agree


my 2405 forced me to upgrade to a 7800gt since my 6800gt just couldnt keep it happy at 1920x1200.

Well if you paid the money for the 2405 then you should't mind paying more for a decent video card.
I haven't had an LCD yet so I can't comment on the title. But I assume an LCD does push your GPU since you're limited to one res.

 

[DeathReborn]

Originally posted by: Magnulus
What do you think? It seems ever since I got an LCD 2 1/2 years ago, I've been upgrading my graphics card alot more often. Turning down the resolution, especially on my older LCD, just sucked. 1280x1024 now days is pretty demanding. Used to be you played games at 800x600.

Only in how LCD's need to start getting higher resolutions to the masses (as in the sub £400 market) so the graphics card will actually break a sweat. That's part of the reason I still use CRT. Not only do they look great in most resolutions (LCD's only look great in native) but if I plug in my spare I can go to 20x15 and watch the GPU choke.

Screens tend to last longer than Graphics cards as there's a new gen of cards every year.

 

[aatf510]

Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy


Maybe I'm not understanding, but LCD's are no more demanding on a video card than a CRT is. Or are you just saying that they are more demanding because they basically make you play at whatever the native resolution is? In that case, yes, you're probably right.

btw, are you Magnulus from Forumplanet?

Simple enough.
because with a LCD you are force to use it's native resolution where is on a CRT you come down in resolutions when your video card ages.

 

[defiantsf]

I recently upgraded from a 19" LCD to 23" LCD with 1920x1200 native resolution, and my 6800 GT oc'ed got WTFPWNED. But I would never go back to non-widescreen gaming in WoW. Nvidia and ATI needs to seriously speed up their GPU innovations

 

[imported_Rampage]

have you guys seen nonnative resolutions on a lcd?

my 2005fpw looks really good out of native. i like lcds in the 1600x1200 range, thats a good baseline res for gaming/desktop ect
i dont mind paying for video cards to run 1600x1200, because thats my preferred resolution level.. for me theres a point when something makes you happy or its all you need. 2600x1800 doesnt really interest me. once you get to a certain point i want different innovations.

i honestly prefer using an LCD out of native, than I do using a CRT. Nonnative isnt the greatest, but the other aspects to lcds are things that i cant let go of anymore.

I tried Kings Quest on this LCD.. it looks better than a CRT to me, or at least as good.
And thats way low res (160x200)

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I don't know about the latest crop of panels, but I'm not at all impressed by non-native res on a couple of older Dell UltraSharps and my m6805's panel.
It's still CRTs for me though, since I managed to snag 2x gray Sun 19's for free

 

[locutus12]

LCD`s havent pushed your cards anymore than a standard Cathode ray tube monitor. if you buy a normal LCD monitor say 19" and under, its perfectly capable of playing at any resolution under 1280X1024, your not locked down to just 1280X1024...

in contrast when cathode ray tubes went SVGA things got interesting as you could have huge resolutions but to see anything properly you usually needed a bigger screen, plus cathode ray tubes have tumbled in price making it very cheap to buy a 19" or 21" as opposed to the relatively expensive cost of an LCD monitor.

i think the better question would be,

"have larger monitor sizes overall, pushed your cards more"

for the most part probably yes but its all down to personal choice. i have a 19" Sharp TFT LCD monitor running on an X800GTO2 modded to X850XTPE and i run most things at 1024X768 with Anti Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering. its what im used to and its what i like but if i had a standard CRT 21" monitor i would be tempted to go higher...

 

[sodcha0s]

I have a ViewSonic 17" LCD, 1280x1024 native. I can play games at any resolution I choose and image quality looks as just good (relatively speasking, of course) at 8x6, 10x7 or even 6x4. In windows yeah it's a different story, but games look fine.

 

[BFG10K]

I'm not really sure how a low resolution like 1280x1024 constitutes pushing any limits except those of the LCD.

 

[carage]

I guess so, but when you are running 1920x1200, AA just seems to be a waste of resources.

 

[natto fire]

Ummm, are some people forgetting that resolution is good? I know this is supposed to be a complaint, at least I hope not. My take on the situation is any kind of bleeding edge hardware. (a.k.a. the stuff I cannont afford) is good to be out, because the rich people can buy up all that stuff. When it starts to become obsolete I will pay less for it. After next more powerful card, higher res monitor, processor, etc, sets the price point, wait for cycle to repeat.

I wish I could buy the newest stuff, but I have been able to budget much money to the old computer fund.
I have a 9600XT with 17" CRT, and I have to play many games at 800x600 to get decent frame rates, talk about sucky gaming

 

[Markbnj]

[my 2405 forced me to upgrade to a 7800gt since my 6800gt just couldnt keep it happy at 1920x1200.]

I'm running a stock 6800GT from PNY, and it keeps up fine at native res on the 2405. There is a little more tearing when I move windows than I would like to see, but nothing debilitating.

I play BF2 at 1600 x 1200, with all settings maxed, and it's smooth enough at 30-40 fps.

Does upgrading to the 7800 make moving windows around the screen at 1920x1200 smoother? Or is that just an artifact of the panel's 60hz refresh?

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: carage
I guess so, but when you are running 1920x1200, AA just seems to be a waste of resources.

lol yeah right. AA is still very much needed at that resolution.

 

[carage]

Originally posted by: JBT

Originally posted by: carage
I guess so, but when you are running 1920x1200, AA just seems to be a waste of resources.

lol yeah right. AA is still very much needed at that resolution.

I'm running Half Life 2 and AOE III at 1920x1200 on a 7800 GTX.
I would be surprised if you could still see the benefits of AA at that type of resolution.
Give it a try.

 

[CP5670]

That resolution on a 2405 or similar monitor has the same pixel size as 1600x1200 on a 20" 4:3 monitor and AA would still make a big difference at that resolution. Even 2048x1536 on a 20" screen benefits from AA considerably, although differences beyond 4x MSAA are hard to notice.

I would find it difficult to keep up on the video card front if I had a 20" or higher LCD. 17/19" ones are easier to work with in this respect, but 1280x1024 is a fairly low resolution to be using for older games. Most newer games do not run fast enough above 1280x960 without AA on my overclocked 6800 GT, but resolutions higher than that are great for older games.

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: carage

Originally posted by: JBT

Originally posted by: carage
I guess so, but when you are running 1920x1200, AA just seems to be a waste of resources.

lol yeah right. AA is still very much needed at that resolution.

I'm running Half Life 2 and AOE III at 1920x1200 on a 7800 GTX.
I would be surprised if you could still see the benefits of AA at that type of resolution.
Give it a try.

I don't play AoE III but in HL2, CSS,and BF2 if I enabled AA I can see a difference. Esspecially in the telephone lines. Without it they crawl like no tomorrow. Same with any other object in game that is thin.

 

[Magnulus]

I have a newer LCD, a Samsung 930. I used to have an NEC LCD 1712 VGA LCD. Either way, the native res thing is more demanding on games. There's a huge difference between 1024x68 and 1280x1024 in terms of the amount of power you need to run the games.

AA is nice but alot of newer games aren't supporting AA, at least with NVidia hardware. HDR is throwing a socket in the works. I have a 6600 GT right now and I'm not upgrading until NVidia gives me a card with antialiasing and HDR. The GeForce 7800 is just pointless as more games are going to HDR rendering.

I really miss my CRT and Radoen 9700 Pro setup. Of course that was years ago and the most demanding game was Medal of Honor, but hell, you were getting an absolutely smooth picture at 1024x768. Now everything is broken down and I just don't feel the high end cards are worth it- my 6600GT plays 1280x1024 fine, but antialiasing is pointless. Yet if I got a GeForce 7800, I'd have nothing really to show for it- I really couldn't increase the visual quality because of the HDR issue.

 

[defiantsf]

The only long term solutions to ever increasing LCD native resolution challenge are:

(i) When they perfect the LCD res downscaling...not likely.
(ii) GPUs that can stay one step ahead of the game requirements...again not likely.
(iii) Supersized 2560x1600 30" panel or larger, and gaming at lower resolution with no scaling (plain pixel-to-pixel mapping). That way, at least you still see an effective 21-24" while keeping the game resolution at manageable levels for the GPU.