1920x1080 settings on a 720p monitor

[rovertkralc]

Hi this is my very 1st post in any forum so please bear with me

I'm just getting back into playing with computers as a hobby. I just built a new rig which i am pretty proud of

Cooler Master Haf x
Sabertooth Z77 with i7 3770k (just overclocked to 4.4 at 1.19volts) and cooler master hyper 212 cooler
16Gb Gskill ripshaw ram at 1866mhz
256 Samsung SSD (os and new games go on this)
Using the 1TB hdd that was on my crap compaq desktop for file storage (its only 5400RPM but it was free)
4GB Nvidia geforce gtx670 superclocked edition

The problem is I went a little over budget so as for now I am using a 720p 32" tv as a monitor.

When in Crysis 2 if i switch the settings to 1920x1080 my picture looks better. This is not a placebo as i have spent a lot of time switching back and forth. At first i noticed that my viewable area was smaller, so i turned the overscan on my tv off and it was great. It seems to me that the lighting is better not so much the resolution of objects(but i am a noob)

So my question is why does this look better?
Also come Christmas is when i will be getting a better monitor so any suggestions would be appreciated.

I'm sure this question might seem dumb to some but i am trying to learn.

 

[noidea_77]

Review the specs of your TV again. I'm pretty sure that the physical resolution is 1366*768 if it's a little older. How do you connect the TV? HDMI with the physical resolution of the screen should work best.

 

[rovertkralc]

Its hooked up w HDMI through the graphics card and i have the pc set to 1360x768. Ive been switching between the reolutions 1360x768 and 1920x1080 in Crysis 2 (i was curious bc i know that i can't get that on this tv). It just seems to look better at this setting and i was curious as to why. Also i haven't played an extensive amt on the 1920 setting but the frame rate is a little lower (using fraps) but never goes below 30. This is mostly a question of curiosity bc i am planning on getting a much nicer monitor when budget allows.

 

[noidea_77]

It might be the difference between 1360 and 1366. Sometimes the downsampling from from 1920 works better on those screens. Are you on XP? Win7 should support the real 1366.

 

[Sunius]

You've experiencing artificial super sampling by doing that. You can read about it here:

http://www.techreaction.net/2009/10/16/anti-aliasing-part-1-supersampling-if-it-was-a-perfect-world/