Is widescreen a horrible blow to performance?

[Sonikku]

Specs:
Sempron 2400+
1 gig Corsair Value Ram
9600XT

I've been playing World of Warcraft on my Sony FW900 and I've found performance to be irregular... I get anywhere from 40-60 fps in 1024x768 with max settings and 30-40 fps with 1280x960 with the same settings. Yet when I run the game in 1280x768 (Widescreen) performance goes down to about 15-20fps! Also, if I try to push it to 1920x1200, it goes down to about 10-15. Doing widescreen at all vs. 4x3 aspect ratios KILLS performance, but cranking up the resolution to a crazy level hardly dents it. Any idea of what causes this? Poor programing for widescreen support perhaps?

 

[Redefined]

did you try the new drivers? try another res to.

 

[Sonikku]

Drivers ver. 5.9

 

[imported_ST]

1024*768 - 786432 pixels
1280*960 - 1228800 pixels
1920*1200 - 294912000 pixels

Time to upgrade the video card.

 

[monster64]

Originally posted by: ST
1024*768 - 786432 pixels
1280*960 - 1228800 pixels
1920*1200 - 294912000 pixels

Time to upgrade the video card.

Please read what the OP said before making statements like that.
1024*768 - 786,432 pixels
1280*960 - 1,228,800 pixels
1280*768 - 983,040 pixels

Widescreen at that resolution uses less pixels than a standard 4:3 resolution. It seems to me if your monitor can do normal resolutions fine, but widescreen is bad, it's because your monitor does not do a good job of supporting widescreen.

1280*768 is an odd widescreen resolution, as a normal widescreen res is 16:9 but that specific resolution is around 16:10 ...etc. Could be a bad resolution in general.

 

[Mojoed]

Originally posted by: monster64

Originally posted by: ST
1024*768 - 786432 pixels
1280*960 - 1228800 pixels
1920*1200 - 294912000 pixels

Time to upgrade the video card.

Please read what the OP said before making statements like that.
1024*768 - 786,432 pixels
1280*960 - 1,228,800 pixels
1280*768 - 983,040 pixels

Widescreen at that resolution uses less pixels than a standard 4:3 resolution. It seems to me if your monitor can do normal resolutions fine, but widescreen is bad, it's because your monitor does not do a good job of supporting widescreen.

1280*768 is an odd widescreen resolution, as a normal widescreen res is 16:9 but that specific resolution is around 16:10 ...etc. Could be a bad resolution in general.

It's not the monitor. The Sony FW900 the king of all CRT's, is an awesome widescreen monitor.

Sounds like a game/driver issue.

 

[Sonikku]

The monitor has nothing to do with performance. I've just been stating the numbers I'm getting in the FPS readouts at various resolutions. The Sony FW900 is a 24" monitor in a 16x10 aspect ratio BTW. (I would be using 1280x720 if it were in a 16x9 shape) It supporst resolutions up to 2304x1440 @ 80 hz, of course my video card could never push that number. I've just been gaming in widescreen since I got it, but it has unusual performance hits. I just ran another test and WoW runs better in 1600x1200 (4x3) then it does in 1280x768(16x10) I doubt it's the number of pixels it's pushing. I just don't know what is causing it.

 

[imported_ST]

Originally posted by: monster64

Originally posted by: ST
1024*768 - 786432 pixels
1280*960 - 1228800 pixels
1920*1200 - 294912000 pixels

Time to upgrade the video card.

Please read what the OP said before making statements like that.
1024*768 - 786,432 pixels
1280*960 - 1,228,800 pixels
1280*768 - 983,040 pixels

Widescreen at that resolution uses less pixels than a standard 4:3 resolution. It seems to me if your monitor can do normal resolutions fine, but widescreen is bad, it's because your monitor does not do a good job of supporting widescreen.

1280*768 is an odd widescreen resolution, as a normal widescreen res is 16:9 but that specific resolution is around 16:10 ...etc. Could be a bad resolution in general.

Maybe you misunderstand...WoW's FOV actually changes when you go to widescreen mode to process more of the image. See below:

Original 4:3

http://nicolas.boinot.free.fr//widescreen.jpg

Widescreen vesrion:

http://nicolas.boinot.free.fr//widescreen.jpg


Again after upgrading from 6600GTs, to 6800GTs, and now a 7800GTX, I can assure frankly you need quite a bit of horsepower to play 1920x1200 with "max settings". WoW is a graphically intense game....