Would you sacrifice resolution for graphical quality?

[chronodekar]

I've been spending a LOT of time tweaking "The Last Remnant" to play on my PC. At first, I tried my monitors native resolution (1440x900) but with high details, the game felt chuggy. It was really smooth with the settings tuned low, but what's the point then? (I like eye-candy ^_^ ) I even tried windowed mode and that felt ... weird. :\

In the end I decided to go for 800x600 with every other graphic setting at Max. (In the nVidia control panel, I think I left it for 8x anisotropic filtering and either 2x or no anti-aliasing)

The game is really smooth now and I like what I see (and experience). It was my brother's idea - keep the resolution low, all other settings maxed out (forget anti-aliasing) and just sit about >1 meter (3 feet) away from the PC monitor while gaming (I usually sit about 55 cms, measured with scale). At this point, I can't tell the difference between the resolutions, but can read the text on-screen just fine. (keyboard & mouse cables are long enough)

Anyone else here play like this? Low resolutions, but high graphic quality settings ?

My specs are - 1.8Ghz Dual Core, Windows XP, 2GB RAM, 8600GT 512MB DDR2, 19" LCD (1440x900).

-chronodekar

EDIT: my question is general and not specific to "TLR".

 

[shortylickens]

Well, I've never played The Last Remnant so I cant discuss its performance. And I have a Radeon 4890 so I havent yet been able to max out a game. Crysis runs beautifully. Shame I dont like it that much.
My monitor goes all the way up to 2048x1536 and any game which lets me go that high generally runs pretty well, unless its an older game, poorly coded for higher resolutions. I am at the point where I dont need extra resolution and would generally take it down for a boost in image quality. And just for fun I will occasionally play a game at 640x480 with max AA.

As for you: I like your idea of taking the settings down and sitting just a little further from the screen. I used to do that before I could afford high-end hardware and truthfully my gaming experience was just fine.

 

[chronodekar]

Well, I've never played The Last Remnant so I cant discuss its performance.
As for you: I like your idea of taking the settings down and sitting just a little further from the screen. I used to do that before I could afford high-end hardware and truthfully my gaming experience was just fine.

It's not specific to The Last Remnant, I was asking in general. Nice to see someone else agreeing with me. Though, I meant to take resolution down, but push everything else UP. It looks really nice at my 'adjusted' viewing distance.

-chronodekar

 

[Borealis7]

well you are using a very weak GPU (8600). TLR is a console port and ran smoothly on my previous card (8800GTS 512). console ports usually dont require many resources.

great game BTW i'm looking forward to the sequel due this year i think.

as for your question, my monitor can do 1600x1200 so i always choose that. then AA is not always necessary so i see if i can hit vSynch at that resolution, i would up the AA if the game still doesn't look good..
AF on the other hand i always set to x16.

 

[theevilsharpie]

No. The image quality drop from a LCD running at a non-native resolution provides much worse image quality than just dropping AA or some shader settings.

 

[exar333]

No. The image quality drop from a LCD running at a non-native resolution provides much worse image quality than just dropping AA or some shader settings.

+1.

Unless you are running a CRT, and can bump the resolution down a step or two from maximum while adding some eye-candy features (AA, etc.) this isn't worth it.

 

[dguy6789]

On an LCD, no. On a CRT, yes.

 

[Barfo]

On an LCD, no. On a CRT, yes.

This. But OP's scenario of 800x600 and no AA seems a tad low for my liking.

I'd rather wait until I have proper hardware to run a demanding game than playing it half-assed, and I usually only play through games once. I play other games in the meantime, there are so many.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

No. Resolution is visual quality. It's like cutting off your arm to save your hand.

 

[PingSpike]

On an LCD, no. On a CRT, yes.

This.

 

[Imp]

Yes, and I'll keep doing it. I got a 24" monitor for sheer size and primarily desktop use, but also game on it. I refuse to pay for top of the line hardware every cycle, so I run 99% of my games at 1680x1050 on a 1920x1200 native monitor.

I'll be getting a 5850 soon, and just got an i5 750, so I'll give 1920 a go, but a year or so down the line, if something isn't smooth at 1920, I'll drop it down to 1680 after some crying then forget about it.

 

[kalrith]

I try to play at my monitor's native resolution even it means turning down some of the graphics.

 

[BladeVenom]

No. The image quality drop from a LCD running at a non-native resolution provides much worse image quality than just dropping AA or some shader settings.

+2, Dropping resolution is a last resort.

 

[Liet]

And this is why to this day I still prefer CRTs.

 

[ShawnD1]

No. The image quality drop from a LCD running at a non-native resolution provides much worse image quality than just dropping AA or some shader settings.

The quality will look good if you keep the same aspect ratio. My 1680x1050 monitor looks great at 1440x900 or 1280x960 (I think those are the resolutions, I don't remember them exactly)

 

[mb]

Let's see...
i7 920 @ 3.6Ghz
6GB DDR3
1GB 4870

I just play at 1920x1200 with the highest settings If games start getting slow I'll upgrade to a 5870.

 

[dguy6789]

This. But OP's scenario of 800x600 and no AA seems a tad low for my liking.

I'd rather wait until I have proper hardware to run a demanding game than playing it half-assed, and I usually only play through games once. I play other games in the meantime, there are so many.

Yeah that's a lower res than I'd prefer to play on. I mean something like I'd rather run a game on a 17 inch screen at max details at 1024x768 than 1280x960 at medium(or 1600x1200 vs 2048x1536 on a 21 inch).

 

[desolate]

I game at 1280x1024 on my 17" CRT and I don't mind it at all...not to mention all my games play flawlessly at this resolution with my rig.

 

[Throckmorton]

Not on an LCD, NEVER. The muddy image is totally not acceptable.
Even worse is the stretched image like you are getting by using a 4:3 res on a 16:10 screen.

Also, there's no point in using anti aliasing. The screen is muddying up the image by stretching/scaling it anyway.

 

[soccerballtux]

For the most case we don't need to with cards like the 5850 and 5870 out now.

 

[fatpat268]

I'd rather play with eye candy on a lower resolution as opposed to no eye candy on a higher resolution.

That said, on my monitor (1920x1200), the lowest I'll consider going to is 1280x800. Why? Because this is essentially 720p, and I display a lot of 720p content on my monitor (360, TV, etc) and if it looks adequate there, it'll look adequate at 1280x800.

That said, I'll fiddle around with some graphics settings first, but in the end, eye candy + lower resolution will look better to me. To be fair though, I've only had to do this with 3 games: Crysis, Arma II, and GTA4.

 

[kylebisme]

Not on an LCD, NEVER. The muddy image is totally not acceptable.

It depends on the scaler, and you can set your video card to do the scaling though the driver options, which looks a lot better than the scaling done on most LCD monitors.

As for the OP, if you can't set the aspect ratio for the game separate from the resolution, then you might want to try 960x600 since that is the proper aspect ratio for your display and will likely still run reasonably well too.

And yeah, when setting up a game I crank the graphic settings and AF, and then adjust the resolution/AA to keep the framerate out of the 20s. Granted, in some games I will turn down particularly demanding options for the ability to enable some AA or run at a notably higher resolution, and occasionally turn down the AF to as low as x4 to squeeze out a few extra frames.

 

[pennylane]

On an LCD, no. On a CRT, yes.

Yeah. Getting native resolution on an LCD is just too important.

 

[KeithTalent]

I try to play at my monitor's native resolution even it means turning down some of the graphics.

This. I do everything I can, aside from upgrading my hardware, to play at 1920x1200. Fortunately I play mainly older or less demanding games right now, so it has not been much of a problem.

KT

 

[aclim]

only 1920x1200 native for me. anything lower doesnt look right