Why bother playing in ultra high resolutions?

So here is the deal:
I have HP 30” LCD and also just bought NVIDIA 8800GT 512MB.
I have tried to play some games in deferent resolutions and did not see much deference.
Why everyone wants to play their games in high resolutions? What are the advantages?
The only disadvantage I see is that you have to keep buying high end video cards just to be able to keep up with new games on high resolutions.
My understanding is this (please correct me if I am wrong) If I buy say a new game say in 6 months and my card can not play it on high I will just lower a bit the resolution and all the problem is gone so this way I can keep my card for much much longer.
Obviously I would not want to play any lower then 1024 X 720 but above that I do not see deference. My new video card does very good scaling in all resolutions so what am I missing?
Please enlighten me!
Thank you very much all!

Native resolution. Full stop.

Because you want to play at the native resolution of the monitor.

If you play at lower than native resolution of your monitor, you start to degrade the picture quality since you are stretching a 1024x768 picture to a 1900x1200 picture. You'll start to notice more flaws. Also, some people prefer higher resolutions because they say that they no longer need AA. I, on the other hand, prefer a moderate resolution with some moderate AA.

You can do this if you'd like, but this is caused by the game becoming more demanding graphically. Your card has to render more space as you increase resolution, therefore increasing the texture quality, polygons, etc. and having that increased rendering space, you will see a drop in frame-rates.

If you're happy with 1024x768 or somewhere about there on a 30" monitor, great. I think some individuals will scoff at you for doing so though. Kinda like buying a hi-def TV to watch only standard-def channels.

yvn, what is the native resolution of the 30" LCD? In other words, what is the highest resolution the monitor will display?

I ask because I play all my games on a 40" LCD...but the higest resolution it will play is 1680 x 720

Edit: Or is it 1380 x 720....I cant remember. Whatever a 720p HDTV resolution is.

Native resolution on most 30" monitor LCDs is 2560x1600.

What is the resolution of your 30"?

the thing i noticed with upgrading your settings is that you see no difference, but when you revert to your old settings you see a difference. I usto play all games with AA off, when i turned it on i noticed no difference...but when i turned it off again i did see the difference.

higher res is just better, don't ask me why but a nice large screen with a high res is great, i can't go back to anything less.

however, those that say you don't need AA are unfortunately lying.

could the op provide a link to his monitor please.

I could tell the difference but it's really minimal between AA and no AA. But once you get used to having AA and turn it off it makes more dramatic difference.

But what are we really playing games for? AA? AF? It all boils down to the game play and the story that entertain us.

Yeah, for 2560x1600 he'll definitely want more than 512MB of VRAM to run it most games at high settings.

This may sound like a newb question but Im not a bigtime gammer.

How can you tell what your native resolution is on your monitor ?

I have an old 19" Viewsonic CRT

Thnks

Cool.. Thanks.. I am so behind the times. I really want to get a new monitor when I build my next PC..

BTW. I can run games at low res anyway.. My PC is to slow!

I run an ATI HD3870 with 512MB of ram on my 22" at full native of 1680x1050 with full effects on all games. CoD4 is sooo amazing that it almost looks real in some areas. its does 24x AA and 16x AF which does make a difference. But in my opinion its not needed to go nearly that high for the performance loss you suffer on most systems.

Like everyone else says. It all comes down to the user and what you find to your liking. I also find it true the closer you are to your native resolution the less AA and AF you need or notice.

PS I'm also itching to get a 30" LCD. Its the next toy on my list. So in short, I'm jealous !

you bastards im on 15" 1024 x 768......and its 48ms gray to gray.


=[

Why higher resolutions? It's simple; if you want a larger image (bigger monitor) you need a higher resolution to maintane image quality. It's not marketing or the big evil corporations trying to swindle you. Need proof? Right click on somebody's avatar and save it. Open it and zoom in to 150%. If you don't see image degredation you should get your eyes checked. My 22" monitor has a 1680x1050 native resoltion. Anything lower becomes very obviously degraded. Any larger becomes distorted in order to fit what is essentially a large image on a screen thats too small for it.

am i the only one loosing my marbles readin this? why are people quoting 1080i as a good thing? 1080i is a waste of time if your screen will not accept 1080p thats 1900x1080 progressive, then why bother trying to force 1080 onto it. it will only display 1366x720pixels (or something like that) and so you will lose image quality.


i would recommend to all people to get a high end card at least once in their life. Play a game on full specification and you will never go back. the quality is generally amazing. imagine on low res, a person in the distance is a black square due to the pixel being massive as it has been stretched. try getting a headshot. now imagine on high res, the person is detailed, you can see what is a head a body and legs... you will find it easier to shoot them in the head. because you will be able to see it. i realise its not always that bad but thats the basics of it.

I agree interlaced video is crap.Spend the extra money and get 1080 progressive

I game at ultra high resolutions because not only do they look better, they also allow for more viewable content to be displayed on the screen while playing the game. The reason why framerates suffer so horribly from higher resolutions is because at every interval the amount of pixels the card has to process grows exponentially...the high end cards are generally up to the task, but high resolutions on todays latest games generally require a multi-card setup.

So, they look better and you can see more...but I can only speak for myself.

cheers mate will get the 22 widescreen might have somthing that might put up a challenge to my gts lol

it'd be nice if the OP read is own thread and answered a few questions.

Or maybe im just to sensitive.

If you are playing any FPS games then quality makes a HUGE difference esp. when you are sniping ppl.

1920x1200 & 4xAA is enough for me in games. I can use more res in windows apps, but for games I don't notice any difference.
As another poster pointed out, interlace sucks. Don't bother.
Also forget about CRT, this is the 21st centry already!

Also, get a 28" or larger wide-screen @ 1900x1200+ if you can afford it. I see a HUGE difference over a 20" 1600x1200. Night and day! That extra few inches makes all the difference in games and movies!
Maybe it helps the new monitor is like 2 generations newer and brighter, but WOW.

If you hook up to your monitor using a High def cable such as HDMI or component and your video card supports HD outputs you can get better resolutions. I am currently hooked up to a 50" in 1080i, btw, that means you still run in 1920 x 1080, but you are capped at 30 mhz for a refresh rate, where as 1080p is 60mhz.

Ahh!! Low res + AA = one giant blur! Drop the AA and go for 1024x768.

I still run a couple of old high end 19"CRT's that go up to 2048x1536, The nice thing is that at higher resolutions the pixels themselves shrink unlike LCD's, where the increase in resolution is just a bigger screen size not a pixel shrink. Pixels Shrinking automatically reduce jaggies significantly as well as making the image look sharper in general. The way that CRT's work to draw the image can lead to far smoother performance in games.

If you are using a LCD as your display for everything then I can understand you wanting a big monitor, I use a projector for movies, and a 19"CRT is plenty big enough for gaming use, when you crank up the resolution you can fit a huge amount on the screen and not have to divert your eyes as far to monitor stats etc (high resolution for games with lots of menus and sub displays is a godsend), for gaming purposes more of the screen is in your central field of vision on a smaller screen with higher resolution as opposed to a larger screen with the same number of pixels.

A really nice feature of good old CRT's is flexibility, I find an ideal resolution for windows, and play games in totally different resolutions without any negative side effects. I can play different games in different resolutions, my monitor which lets me play at 2048x136 in some games can turn down to 1280x1024 to improve performance in crysis without suffering from any native resolution issues.

The only issues with old high end CRT's are availability and ageing. Sadly they arent getting any younger...

Sure its the 21st century but compare a 200 year old oak table to something you get flat packed from MFI, old doesnt mean lower quality or less practicality, Its probably heavier and bulkier though

CRT's may be old, they may be near enough out of production but they are still the display of choice for many serious image professionals and some of the gamers who were in a position to own high end CRT's rather than cheapys before cheap LCD's flooded the market.

If your CRT cost £400+ 5 years ago the chances are theres little in the way of LCD's now that you would swap it for.