Monitors and Gaming Performance?

[Phant0m444]

I'm thinking about getting a new monitor soon, but I've had some lingering questions. I know that running just about any computer game at higher resolutions on your monitor will be more demanding on the hardware... and generally tends to lower framerates.

1.) What I'm unsure about is.... does the size of your monitor screen have any effect on gaming performance/framerates? In other words... is it more demanding on the hardware to use larger monitors?

2.) Assuming the same computer hardware and the same quality settings are used for a computer game.... would running the game at 1024x768 on a 17" monitor result in different gaming performance/framerates than running the same game at 1024x768 on a 21" monitor?

3.) Assuming similar specifications/quality in general(apart from the size difference)... will a 17" monitor running at a given resolution look better or worse than a 21" monitor running at the same resolution?

4.) I've heard the term native resolution used in reference to monitors.... what's the significance of this resolution? Is it supposed to be the sharpest/clearest?

5.) Lastly, why are video game consoles like the XBOX 360 able to run games at large resolutions on big screen TVs? Or perhaps I'm mistaken about this... maybe the resolutions on large TVs aren't really that high/demanding? Could a PC run games on a big screen TV also?

 

[ViRGE]

1) Yes and no. The physical size doesn't matter, the resolution does. The higher the resolution the more pixels that need to be rendered.

2) No

3) Assuming both monitors have the same native resolution (see #4), then the only difference in quality will be that everything will be bigger and less sharp on the 21" monitor since it's the same number of pixels over a larger area. If they don't have the same native resolution, then it's hard to say without more details.

4) LCD monitors have a fixed number of pixels, and are designed to be run at a specific resolution (e.g. 1920x1080). When you run at this resolution the game/application matches the pixels 1:1 and everything is sharp & clear. If you use a different resolution, it has to be scaled to the native resolution of the monitor, making the resulting image blurrier.

5) Without getting too complex, video game consoles often cheat. Many games are rendered at a lower resolution and then scaled up for display purposes. There are a few games that run at native HD resolutions, but as a result quality is cut elsewhere to keep the framerate up.

And yes, PCs can run games on big screen TVs. These days TVs are nothing more than a computer monitor with speakers; a "big screen" TV is almost assuredly a 1080P (1920x1080) device, which is also a common monitor resolution.

 

[Phant0m444]

Thanks for the reply.... that cleared up a lot for me. :thumbsup:

I thought the part about video game consoles cheating was rather amusing... if not really surprising. I kind of suspected something along those lines was taking place since they use increasingly obsolete hardware. I guess I'm something of a PC snob though....