Can I play in 1680x1050 with a 2560x1440 monitor?

[kaisellgren]

Hi,

I am planning on getting a 27" 2560x1440 monitor. I mostly do graphics designing, programming, web surfing and watching movies/TV shows.

However, I play maybe 30-60mins a day, usually Battlefield 3 or Command & Conquer. I am wondering if it's a bad choice buying that 27" monitor because I won't be able to play games well with my 5870. I wouldn't like to buy a second card, nor upgrade because I just did one year ago.

Can I set the game to use 1680x1050 resolution, and configure the monitor not to stretch the picture, but instead center it on the screen and leave black borders. That should be possible, at least technically and it should not technically make me lose image quality.

Has anyone experience with this?

 

[gnomio]

Yes you can but with degraded image quality. LCDs are good when upscaling image but when downscaling a image they do it poorly as they drop pixels by guessing. But you can use less AA when doing it because a LCD do that sort of AA effect when downscaling a image. Not as good as the cards AA by not too bad just have a look

 

[kaisellgren]

Down scaling? What do you mean? I am not talking about stretching the image.

Imagine you have 2560x1440 pixels available. If you fill the middle 1680x1050 pixels leaving the rest black, you have got yourself a 1680x1050 screen inside a 2560x1440 screen with black borders.

 

[kaisellgren]

I just tried playing BF3 on 1440x900 on my 1680x1050 screen and it worked fine. No degrade on image quality, however, I need to change my desktop resolution and set AMD Catalyst to use "centered" mode every time before I go to play :/

Maybe I could program a batch script or something that swaps this for me.

 

[kaisellgren]

Actually. Never mind, I made a C++ app that changes my screen resolution and everything works perfectly! Now I just assign a macro on my keyboard extra keys that run the program to set and revert changes before I go gaming!

 

[gnomio]

You can use rivatuner as well to make a profile for you with a shortcut on your desktop. So everytime you click on the shortcut for the game it will switch resolution for you automatically with selected refresh rate

 

[gmkos]

I'm glad you found a solution to center the image at 1650x1080, but have you tried gaming full screen at 1280x720?

2560x1440/2 = 1280x720

Because you'll just be spreading each displayed pixel across 4 screen pixels, you can game with your underpowered hardware on full screen without losing that native resolution magic.

 

[kaisellgren]

I have not tried 1280x720 because I don't yet own a 27". The choice of displays is limited and I'm researching.

I will give 1280x720 a try, but 1680x1050 would be better for gaming due to more pixels, right? I can run 1680 fine on BF3, but 1920 half medium half high and 2560 very bad...

 

[gnomio]

I think he's talking about 2 monitors on 720p not 1.

 

[gnomio]

Down scaling? What do you mean? I am not talking about stretching the image.

Imagine you have 2560x1440 pixels available. If you fill the middle 1680x1050 pixels leaving the rest black, you have got yourself a 1680x1050 screen inside a 2560x1440 screen with black borders.

no when you drop a LCD below its native you start to downscale with it. That means it got to remove pixels from the image to make it fit. So what pixels will be removed? So it guesses which ones to remove. That's why it a bit blurry when you downscale

 

[bystander]

As long as you center and not stretch the image, you could even choose 1080p, or just about any resolution you like that is smaller than 2560x1440.

If you stretch the image to the full screen, then you'll need to pick resolutions that are of the same aspect ratio (16:9). This is what the original replies thought you were doing, which is when things start to look a little less crisp.

 

[kaisellgren]

As long as you center and not stretch the image, you could even choose 1080p, or just about any resolution you like that is smaller than 2560x1440.

If you stretch the image to the full screen, then you'll need to pick resolutions that are of the same aspect ratio (16:9). This is what the original replies thought you were doing, which is when things start to look a little less crisp.

Exactly.

So whether downscaling and blurry pictures occur, that depends on what you do. If you stretch the image, it probably looks worse even on same aspect ratio.

I will be playing it on 1680x1050 and have the black borders, it will look just like on a 24" monitor