Is Widescreen good for gaming?

[Buzzkraft]

Hello,

I have a 19' Samsung LCD 4:3 today but I´m thinking about going for a 19' widescreen with DVI.

Does it really make a difference for gaming, like Oblivion or Call for Heroes? Should I go for it?

My GPU is a 8800GTS 320mb.

 

[strangestranger]

a widescreen is certainly not bad for gaming and can, depending on the game be better as you getter a wider view.

please note though that not all games change how wide the view is just stretch the image sideways. some games will increase how much to the left and right you can see though.

best check a site like www.widescreengamingforums.com to check out if the game does it correctly or not

 

[Buzzkraft]

Hey Stranger,

Thanks a lot for the information. The website answered a lot of my questions.

But what I found at reading is that some games are not widescreen native, and so the image can stretch bad. Do you have this experience?

Do you also think that widescreen will become a standard for new games?

 

[strangestranger]

widescreen is becoming alot more common. new games AFAIK that don't support it are in the minority.

i have to say though that i have played games at 12 x 10 res on my screen and they look fine IMO. turn on a little AA and you don't really notice that much.

 

[Buzzkraft]

Ok, thanks. Just one more question!

I´m worried now about performance. I want to run games like OBlivion in max quality with no problems in outdoor scenes. Do u think it´s possible using 1440x900 with a 320mb VGA?

 

[strangestranger]

i would say so yes. obviously it is oblivion but i can run it max with 4 AA and HDR at 19 x 12 with my setup and still get 25FPS plus outdoors. that is all i need IMO.

it really depends on what you call playable.

 

[Traveller]

Do u think it´s possible using 1440x900 with a 320mb VGA?

According to your original post, you are currently working with a 19" LCD, which in other words means, you're running Oblivion at 1280x1024.

1280x1024 = 1.3MP and 1440x900 = 1.296MP (heck, lets round it off to 1.3, shall we).

So, unless they use some special chaos theory to render in 16:10 what they already render in 5:4, I seriously doubt that there will be much impact to your exisitng performance average. Note that resolution and VGA local Memory are not necessarily a 1to1 relation. Higher texture quality will have a much grater impact on local memory than a slight res increase, imho.

Of course, my whole argument is moot if you are running Oblivion at 800x600 and then allowing the Graphics Card drivers or Monitor to expand it to the panel's native resolution via interpolation...

 

[Buzzkraft]

Hey Traveller,

Thanks a lot for the help.

I didn´t know that texture quality had so much impact on VGA local memory..

But, as you said, I don´t think I´m gonna see a huge difference on performance using widescreen though.

 

[RichPLS]

I much prefer widescream gaming...