game option

what is better?
lower resolution with higher settings or higher resolution with lower settings? what You chose if Your computer can't do both at max settings?

how to find out what is better for Your computer and which looks better ?

 

To find out which looks better just test it yourself and see what looks better to you. Naturally, native resolution will look the best. I'd go somewhere in the middle of the two options

 

I like sticking to native res, even at the expense of poor textures. For me, native res still looks better then lower res at higher quality.

 

Comparatively speaking, rendering in a higher resolution draws some parallels to supersampling or FS/MSAA. So you can use those effects as a rough guide.

 

@DaBunBun: how would i know native res for a game? (eg. for crysis warhead)

 

The native res isn't native to the game, its native for your monitor.

Like my desktop monitor is a 4:3 1280x1024 resolution, so thats what ill select.

 

@DaBunBun: ahhh, i see. hmm, my native res is 1920x1080, and i know theres no chance of that. 3-4 fps was not really playable

 

I'm a fan of going with a lower resolution and cranking up graphics, AA, and texture filtering. Simply stated, it looks better to me.

 

Try to at least maintain the ratio, thats 16:9 for you.

 

I really prefer native resolution over settings. For me, native resolution always comes first in every game. Sharper quality and more clarity is more important to me than Shaders and Textures, although some of them are quite nice.

And with a native resolution like mine, you can actually turn quite a few settings up. I'm running COD:MW2 max without AA. I run Crysis with some settings on Very High and others on Medium and Low.

 

If I have to choose, I will usually drop the resolution a bit, but keep it in the same aspect ratio, and turn up textures and other settings... to me, that looks better, as the extra goodness and effects make up for the slightly lower res. And, as long as I stay around the same aspect ratio (16x9 in my case), all looks good.

As a side note however, that is why I like gaming notebooks with slightly lower res screens. They are still plenty good for daily stuff, but gives you much more options in games without having to make resolution compromises.

But honestly, lower res really isn't that bad, back in my HD3200 gaming days, I got quite used to it ha! Great for a IGP, but still no powerhouse.

 

At a high resolution display like 1920x1080, the pixel density is considerably higher than on a lower resolution display, so playing at lower resolutions doesn't look nearly as bad.

For instance, my girlfriend has a Studio 1555 with a 256MB ATi 4570 (64 bit) graphics card and a 1920x1080 display. The 4570 is a pretty good card, but it really struggles at resolutions that high. So, she plays Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 at 1280x720 (they're both 16:9 aspect ratios), and to be honest, it looks great. 1280x720 on her 1920x1080 display looks infinitely better than 1280x720 on my 1366x768 display.

And I'm with be77solo on this one...I prefer a slightly lower native res on a gaming laptop. 1600x900 is ideal for me; it's a good amount of usable screen space for actual work, and it's not too taxing on graphics cards. Even on my desktop, I went with a 22" 1680x1050 instead of 1920x1200 just to take things a little easier on my 8800GT (and because it was $80 cheaper at the time )

 

I reduce the resolution and try to maintain the options on Medium or High...

My laptop has a native resolution of 1920x1200 (16:10), and my 7950 GTX can't run newer games at that resolution (Dragon Age, Prototype, etc) so I step the resolution down to 1280x800 (16:10).

I think 1280x800 scales to 1920x1200 better than 1680x1050 since it's a factor of 1.5x. 1680x1050 uses a scaling factor of 1.1428...x

If that still doesn't get me 30+ fps on an RTS or FPS, then dynamic lighting is the first option to go (huge performance hit) followed by post-processing effects.

But as has been mentioned, when you cram 1920x1200 pixels onto a 17" screen, scaling doesn't look too bad even when I play my old 640x480 (4:3) DOS games...scaling routines have come a long way since 1997...(taking a 640x800 game, Mechwarrior 2, and scaling it to the native resolution of my first Dell laptop, 800x600, made the HUD unreadable, and there was no option to turn off scaling on the laptop...of course, there was no dedicated graphics chip either)...

 

Depends...

On my laptop I definitely lower the resolution so I can add more details and effects. The dot pitch is quite small on a 15.5" 1680x1050 screen.

However on my desktop if I encountered a game too taxing for my old 8800GT I would lower graphic settings and keep the native resolution, as my screen is a 22" 1680x1050. And I usually didn't have to sacrifice much with the 8800GT, just on a few games like Crysis or ETW.

 

Our eyes must be really different. I think that 1280 x 800 on my 24" 1920 x 1200 looks very fuzzy and blurry. 1920 x 1200 on the other looks amazing.

 

It really depends on the game - some of them look terrible with lower grade textures and low details (Oblivion comes to mind) and I can sacrifice some of the details for better resolutions in others.

I mostly play RPGs, though, and they don't need the high framerates that shooters need.