Huge resolutions, a few questions

[Dorkenstein]

I'm in the process of trying to get a new display. I am waffling between wanting to get a 100 pound monstrosity of a CRT and waiting and saving up for a high end IPS panel lcd. My chief question is, if the 30" LCD has a native res of 25**x16**, will older games that obviously can't hit that res look like garbage?

If the answer is yes, can I keep an older display hooked up at the same time so I can run older games on it without having to switch my pc off, go get the older monitor and replace the primary one on my desk? I've never had this problem to solve before, so I'm a little lost.

Thanks for reading and also for any advice.

 

[Powermoloch]

if the games can't support the solution, yes it's gonna be blurred out and look like garbage.In the other hand, if your games can be played in windowed mode, it shouldn't be a problem then.

 

[Dorkenstein]

Hmm, don't games perform poorly in windowed mode? I heard something about the game not getting full advantage of your video resources when in windowed mode.

 

[NoQuarter]

Hmm, don't games perform poorly in windowed mode? I heard something about the game not getting full advantage of your video resources when in windowed mode.

Not the case these days, though windowed mode still breaks SLI/Crossfire.

 

[Lonyo]

If it's old enough that it doesn't support such a high resolution, then the impact on performance from running windowed shouldn't be big enough to stop it being playable.

 

[Dorkenstein]

That's true. I guess the notion of my games not performing at full is bothersome, but probably doesn't matter.

 

[MarcVenice]

What older games? Pre dx9 ?

 

[Dorkenstein]

Starcraft, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Diablo etc. I don't even think the monitor I want to get has a scaler, so 1:1 mapping is probably out.

 

[MarcVenice]

I see. I know there are widescreen-mods for BG and probably Icewind Dale and Diablo too, but running at native res will probably not be possible ... Windowed should do the trick though ...

On a sidenote, you've got me craving for Baldur's Gate and/or Baldur's Gate two. I've got a few long plainflights ahead of me, and instead of watching movies, I just might try and install BG

 

[Dorkenstein]

I have the same plan, incidentally. Hopefully the game doesn't have any issues in windowed. Would the ATI drivers' built-in scaling features help?

 

[Voo]

Most old games have working widescreen mods, so that shouldn't be such a big problem. Incidentally I also got that urge to play BG once more.. sigh

http://www.gibberlings3.net/widescreen/ - works at least perfectly fine for 1680x1050

 

[Dorkenstein]

Yeah, I've used that mod and it works. I don't know how it'd look at, say, 1680x1050 when the monitor's native resolution is much higher than that.

 

[Idontcare]

I see. I know there are widescreen-mods for BG and probably Icewind Dale and Diablo too, but running at native res will probably not be possible ... Windowed should do the trick though ...

On a sidenote, you've got me craving for Baldur's Gate and/or Baldur's Gate two. I've got a few long plainflights ahead of me, and instead of watching movies, I just might try and install BG

If it weren't for Baldur's Gate I probably would have actually completed a few of my side projects in grad school lol, fond memories of me and my buddy Jason hooking up our "research" computers to play Baldur's gate all day long, day after day, while we were "deep in thought over quantum chemistry and spectroscopy". lol.

If I had to do it over again I'd play more Baldur's Gate! The time I wasted worrying about inconsequential science crap...