Question About Widescreen Monitors & Resolution

[Frankie]

I'm in the market for a new LCD, a Wide Screen LCD. While reading some reviews on Newegg I noticed some people said that you needed to make sure your computer can handle it.

I just built a new computer a month ago, Athlon X2 4800 Duel Core and have a EVGA 7900 GT 256mb video card. I'm sure that's more than pleanty to handle it, but I'm wondering something.

How much performance hit does a computer take running in 1680x1055 vs running a regular LCD like the one I have now in 1280x1024? I guess I'm just wondering if it's going to be a big hit or will my computer just laugh and keep on coming.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

1 7900 GT should do you fine except in the newest of games -- like oblivion and GRAW. If you find performance inadequate, SLI 7900 GT will do a great job @ that res. I use crossfire for my 1680x1050 Widescreen LCD (NEC 20wmgx2) cos I love to turn up the eye candy. I noticed that not using AA @ this res is not really a bother. Like GRAW doesn't look THAT bad without AA, for example -- I say it cos that will help with faster performance. Or @ least 2x does a great job.

HL2, Far Cry, Doom 3, Quake 4, BF2, and COD2 should do great.

 

[Frankie]

Originally posted by: gersson
1 7900 GT should do you fine except in the newest of games -- like oblivion and GRAW. If you find performance inadequate, SLI 7900 GT will do a great job @ that res. I use crossfire for my 1680x1050 Widescreen LCD (NEC 20wmgx2) cos I love to turn up the eye candy. I noticed that not using AA @ this res is not really a bother. Like GRAW doesn't look THAT bad without AA, for example -- I say it cos that will help with faster performance. Or @ least 2x does a great job.

HL2, Far Cry, Doom 3, Quake 4, BF2, and COD2 should do great.

I have HL2 and Far Cry along with Oblivion. I know that with older games you can run it windowed if the game doesn't support the bigger resolution, I might try that as well.

I'm thinking I can also use this for my 360, when I get one which will be a while off I'm thinking.

 

[Ackmed]

In my expierence (and only with HL2) 1680x1050 is more demanding than 1280x1024. It wasnt more than 3-5fps though if I remember correctly. Get the LCD, and then decide for yourself if you need another card.

Also, more new games (and lots of older) work fine in WS. There are a few notables, such as BF2 that do not work correctly. Which is annoying, but most do support WS.

 

[akugami]

Keep in mind with the higher resolutions, you can get away with the game still looking great at lower AA settings. For instance, turning off all AA, there are still jaggies but it's much more smooth at 1680x1050 than 1280x1024.

So I'd say get the monitor, play around with some of the game settings and see if you like it. I play some games at 2x or 4x AA modes to get higher frame rates when I had an X800. It smooths out most of the more noticeable and horrid jaggies but allows me to turn up the eye candy. Your 7900GT is more powerful than an X800 so it should do fine so long as you're not expecting anything unrealstic like 8x AA with all the eye candy on high at 1680x1050.