How bad is it going to look at less that native resolution?

[MBrown]

How bad is my 19inch LCD going to look at less that native resolution when playing games?

 

[ArchAngel777]

Depends on the monitor and also depends on the resolution and how far it is away from the the native resolution. Basically, each LCD MFG has their own method for scaling. Sometimes they do a better job than others, but it will always result in a more blurry image if not using native.

You really just need to test the monitor and see for yourself, as there is no way to answer this question spot on.

 

[McArra]

My 1280x1024 native 17" LCD looks quite good in general @1024x768, except text, that looks a little blurry. For games it is OK.

 

[SynthDude2001]

LCD scaling these days is pretty good. For games it's very acceptable. It's even pretty good for Windows/text too, but I don't see any reason not to run at native resolution for that (and just adjust font sizes) for the most part.

 

[leebaldock]

Personally I think it will look fine. I play a whole lot of games - FPS, RTS, RPG - games like Far Cry, Half Life 2, Doom 3, UT 2004, Dungeon Siege, Act of War, Wacraft 3, HOMMIV and a whole host of others on my 2001FP (native 1600x1200) at all sorts of resolutions (mainly 1280x1024 or simliar) and it always looks really good.

It's only in 2D desktop work that I find running anything other than the native res looks horrible. I have a 2001FP (native 1600x1200), 1905 (native 1280x1024) and an LG 17inch (native 1280x1024) plus have worked with heaps of different monitors at work and can say that in the most part for 2D you want to run your LCD/TFT at native but for games pretty much any resolution the LCD/TFT can support will look fine.

The only exception to the games was Starcraft on my 2001FP which looked really blocky (I think it was trying to run at 640x480 or something) so really low res on high res LCD/TFT probably looks not so good.

 

[MBrown]

How about a 19inch running at 800 x 600?

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: MBrown
How about a 19inch running at 800 x 600?

Dude, you need to see for yourself. Your asking a subjective question. I am not sure how picky of a person you are, only you know that. That is why you need to head up to your local best buy, go up to a 19" and change the resolution to the 800 X 600. If you do this with a mid-grade LCD, you should get a pretty good perspective on what the affect scaling does and if you can tolerate it or not.

I have a native 1280 X 1024 LCD at work and when I run 1024 X 768 it looks pretty good, there is some blur, but nothing too terrible. But when I turn my LCD To 800 X 600, it is *unbearably* bad. But, that is just my opinion of it. Go look for yourself.

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777

I have a native 1280 X 1024 LCD at work and when I run 1024 X 768 it looks pretty good, there is some blur, but nothing too terrible. But when I turn my LCD To 800 X 600, it is *unbearably* bad. But, that is just my opinion of it. Go look for yourself.

I have a 17" with 1280x1024 native res. 640x480 is awful but 800x600 is ok.

1024x768 and higher up to native res looks good enough.

 

[JRW]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777

Originally posted by: MBrown
How about a 19inch running at 800 x 600?

Dude, you need to see for yourself. Your asking a subjective question. I am not sure how picky of a person you are, only you know that. That is why you need to head up to your local best buy, go up to a 19" and change the resolution to the 800 X 600. If you do this with a mid-grade LCD, you should get a pretty good perspective on what the affect scaling does and if you can tolerate it or not.

True , I had a 2001FP and although it looked pretty good at lower resolutions the motion blur effect became noticably worse when it was out of its native res ,it was very noticable whenever I'd play Half life 2 online @ 1280x1024.

 

[kmmatney]

In general - for games, changing to lower resolutions generally looks fine, but you have a few options with the scaling. I personally use DVI connection, and have my video card handle the scaling. I use fixed aspect ratio scaling - this gives black bars around the screen but keeps everything in proportion.

I usually use native resolition, or 1280 x 960 resolution, which puts very thin black bars at the top and bottom, but otherwide looks perfect.

You can also choose "Centered Outout" which will perform no scaling at all, and center the image on the screen with black bars. The image is perfect, but smaller.