8800GT vs 19" screen

Hey all, im building a new system soon and its going to contain a 8800Gt and an LG 19" screen that supports 1280 x 1024

I was just wondering whats this going to result in. Will the smaller screen bottleneck the 8800GT, or will it just give a really good result?

O ok cool, im just concerned that the 8800gt would be a waste of money/overkill on a screen this size.

Ill be using the e6750 2.66ghz at stock speeds for now.
For complete system look here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] ment-build
Id love a bigger screen but just dont have the budget =(

As far as I know (please correct me if otherwise), using a lower res won't bottleneck anything. It just means the GPU doesn't have to work so hard which then means you can crank up other settings like AA and shadows/textures etc.
I'm running the same res and am looking to buy a 8800GT, albeit once ATI's offering comes out and the prices level out.

Yep, that's right.

As far as i know its wrong.
If you have lets say a 8800gt for the sake of it and you are running it at 800x600 you are forcing the load onto the cpu because you are not using the performance of the GPU to its fullest. The idea that the lower the res the faster the FPS is a comon misconception that makes a lot of sence but i in fact it works the exact oposite.if you increased the res the GPU would then be freed for want of a better term to do what it was meant to do and you would get better frame rates.
Of course this isnt limitless it has a top end so to speak but equally it has a point where it will start under performing also.
Hope that makes sence
Mactronix
Edit : What you are planning on running will be fine though

You'll be fine. I run an 8800GT with my 19" (1280x1024)
Only issue would be cpu which your's is fine (better than mine)
X2 5000 = 3D Mark 06 = 9169
Evga 8800GT SC (stock)

If you want to upgrade to a bigger monitor a 20-22" would be good for people with mid-end to high-end systems and a 24" would be good for a uber high-end system running 8800's in SLI for Crysis. If I were to upgrade to a bigger monitor it would be a 20" cause I don't like the dot pitch of 22" inchers.

8800gt = at any resolution.

The thing is when you go to a 24" monitor you never know what new games will bring as far as playability at that resolution. The 20-22" monitors are a good compromise for future gaming, Crysis excluded.

Running a LCD screen at anything other than native resolution will result in very poor image quality as the monitor tries to fit the incoming picture to the fixed existing pixels resulting in generally horrible image quality. If you want to run at lower resolutions to get better performance you need to hope your game will run in window mode then run in it in window mode at lower resolution. This can provide a usefull speed boost, whilst maintaining image quality albeit in a smaller picture.

got it. thanks for the explination. it clarified many things.

i tried my 8800GT at various resolutions from 800x600 to 1680x1050 and various quality settings

at lower resolutions, the fps maxed out (60 in this case) and as I turned it up, the fps dropped as you would expect

on my older system with a 6800GS 800x600 has the highest fps and 1680x1050 has barely 10fps

->mactronix I dont even know where to start googling that at 800x600 cpu usage would be higher compared to say 1680x1050... because that is quite backwards

Sorry Ghostwalker i mixed up Jags quote of your post with his post you asked if you were correct and not him i realise that now and again appologise for mixing up the threads.
As i said in my original post what you say is correct it will work fine with that card at that res.
What i am saying still stands but it wont be an issue in this case i was just trying to correct a common misconception,you know being helpfull but it seems to not be apreciated,
Mactronix

Just a note for those of us with large monitors, nvidia's drivers allow someone to basically run a game in a windowed mode. You can choose to have the graphics card run at a lower resolution, and it'll letterbox the image with black around the edges. This would let you play at 1680x1050 on a 24" monitor with no weird upsampling artifacts.


As for low resolution and speed, in the benchmarks I've seen you basically hit a wall which is the maximum fps the CPU can help generate. I've never seen the max fps drop a statistically important amount as the resolution is lowered. This of it like this, a bottleneck is basically the thing which is slowest on the system. Maybe the CPU has enough horsepower to run a game at 75 fps. At high resolutions, the video card can maybe run at 50fps, so it is the bottleneck. I get 50 fps. As you lower the resolution, the fps the video card can produce increases. If at 800x600, however, the video card can produce 100 fps, the CPU is now the bottleneck, and I'll only get 75fps.