What do you prefer?

When it comes to playing new games, and you don't have an nvidia 8800 gtx, you usualy have a choise to make:

do you prefer to scale games to a lower resolution and play with all settings high
or
do you prefer playing in native resolution (ie 1920 x 1200) with low-med settings.

I have a 24'' external monitor with a 1920 x 1200 resolution and I prefer playing things in native resolution without special effects. How about you?

 

That's a giant resolution, and if it was me I would just scale it down and have higher settings.

But if you prefer the native resolution and that is what you are most comfortable with, I would choose just to scale down game settings.

 

lower resolution and higher settings.

i ran assassin's creed max settings at 960x600 just to experiment with the visual affect of the "low" resolution and to get a very high framerate. it looked a lot like assassin's creed at 1280x800 but it ran about 2x the framerate...

depends on the game though.

platformer type game like assassin's creed is one thing. super accuracy based fps is another.

 

lower res. higher detail for me.

 

With a laptop, unless you have a monster video card, lower res, higher detail FTW. My Vostro 1500 has a 1680x1050 native resolution, which is great for desktop work. But for gaming, 1280x800 is the way to go with the 8600m GT for newer games (like 2006 and later).

For my desktop, I have a 24" 1920x1200 resolution with an 8800 GT 512MB video card.

I think people are too anal about scaling down. While it may not look great for desktop work, most low end video cards run fine for 2D stuff even at very high resolution like 1920x1200. But for gaming, newer LCD monitors usually scale down VERY well to 1280x800.

So desktop, 1920x1200, gaming 1280x800 on my laptop, and desktop, 1920x1200 if it'll run but no big deal to scale down to 1680x1050 or 1280x800.

 

i usually try both and see which one i like

 

Ultra high details, lower res. This also keeps temps lower.

 

Are you sure?

 

Very. The lower the resolution, the lower the temps since the GPUs work less.

 

Lower res. Can never hope to run modern games at native res on a 17" screen anyway. Not lower than ????x700 though, since then it becomes too pixelated.

 

1280x800 should be the lowest you go. From 1920x1200 to 1280x800 is a long road, but not totally destructive , image quality wise.

 

1280x1024 is the sweet spot for me for most games. i play RTS games 1280x1024 since i hate slow downs with tons of units on screen. i can usually play max unless it's something like crysis. there's no sense in playing 1920x1200 with everything on low-med when the game looks half life 1 lol.

 

I will only lower from native resolution if I have everything turned as low as it goes and I'm still lagging. I don't mind missing some eye candy as long as its smooth and not pixelated (thats why I love Nintendo games, always smooth and always look good without all the eye candy). Otherwise I run native res and if need be drop all AA, then dynamic lighting, then shadows (unless they are really necessary like in FEAR), special effects, etc...

 

I prefer lower resolution, higher detail settings.

 

Like just about everyone else on this thread, lower resolution (normally 1280 widescreen for the latest games) and highest details possible without compromising stable framerates.