LCD Native resolutions

[kuqdew]

Is it true that if I play a game on a LCD outside of the native resolution, the game will be blurry?

 

[DaveSimmons]

It depends. It's true that the LCD needs to upscale lower resolutions to the higher resolution by filling in the missing pixels.

With a 20" 1600x1200 4:3 monitor, other 4:3 resolutions like 1024x768, 800x600 and 640x480 look good.

With a 16:9 or 16:10 widescreen monitor, those resolutions will look streched out unless your card or monitor supports adding black bars at the sides of the image.

 

[kuqdew]

My friend has a 17 inch LCD and I wonder why he can play counter strike 1.6 at 640x480 Perfectly without any bars

 

[acegazda]

depends. Some lcds have the ability to put bars in the place of unfilled space instead of stretching the image to fit. To me, this is preferable to distorting the image. In general. 4:3 lcds will play 1600x1200,1024x768, etc. any res with a 4:3 ratio perfectly, without any distortion or bars. 5:4 lcd's will play 1280x1024, etc without any distortion or bars. I believe the widescreen standard for most if not all current pc monitors is 16:10, that means it will play 1440x900 (19" lcd), 1680x1050 (20-22" lcd), 1920x1200 (24" lcd) and 2560x1600 (30" lcd)
To sum it up I guess, it is ideal to stay in your native res, however, it is not required.

 

[0roo0roo]

yup, stretching the image. but the pixels don't divide equally for most resolution changes so there has to be some fudging to pull it off, which is why the image isn't as good. how well it pulls off the scaling trick depends on the monitor.

kinda weird to play cs 1.6 at 640x480, you do need a few more pixels to see better detail for long range quick identification/sniping. i guess his video card must suck pretty hard lol🙂

 

[lxskllr]

My old Dell 2001fp had a resolution of 1600*1200, but when I tried to use 800*600 it looked like crap. I thought it would work great since it was exactly 1/2 of native resolution, but it didn't.

 

[Dulanic]

And even if the LCD doesnt add the bars, I know ATI drivers give you the option, dunno about Nvidia.

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: Dulanic
And even if the LCD doesnt add the bars, I know ATI drivers give you the option, dunno about Nvidia.

You've got that backwards.

ATI has the option for the driver to fill the display regardless of aspect ratio thus often resulting in Stretch-O-Vision, or else to disable that and output as set in the application and thus likewise resulting in SOV depending upon how the FPD is set or programmed in lieu of being equipped with user scaling options.

Nvidia, on the other hand, additionally offers two options which ensure the aspect ratio is maintained, whether displayed as set in the app or scaled up by the driver to maximize one axis. In both cases the output is matted with black as necessary to the FPD's maximum resolution, thus precluding alteration/distortion.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
My old Dell 2001fp had a resolution of 1600*1200, but when I tried to use 800*600 it looked like crap. I thought it would work great since it was exactly 1/2 of native resolution, but it didn't.

guess its scaler was just retarded and filtered everything anyways lol🙂

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: kuqdew
Is it true that if I play a game on a LCD outside of the native resolution, the game will be blurry?

Not necessarily. But - they will not be as sharp as N/R. OTH, they may be acceptable depending on your objective in gaming.

Try it and see. It won't cost you anything. If you like it - you're golden. If you don't, then don't do it.

 

[Zepper]

Resoludions that are the native divided by an even number can look decent. Divisors that result in a fractional quotient won't look so good. IOW, native res will always be best.

That's why I still like CRT over LCD - any res the monitor/vid card combo is capable of will look good.

.bh.