Resolution question.

I just have a simple question about screen resolution. If I got say a 1600 x 1050 screen, would scaling the screen down while gaming make me lose performance compared to a native screen resolution at the scale (e.x. playing a game at 1280 x 800 with a 1600 x 1050 screen or playing a game at 1280 x 800 with a 1280 x 800 screen?), and what exactly else does scaling the resolution for games down do?

 

You won't lose any FPS performance, but it will get ghosty..i.e. blurry. You need to have your screen closely matched to what resolution you plan to game at, i.e. at decent FPS on games at that resolution. Give me some more info on the Sager 2090 notebook your looking at getting and I'll try to help.

 

For gaming, there really is not an issue as most games are designed to work well with non-native resolutions. I regularly play at 1280x800 on my 1920x1200 screen, and have NO issues doing so.

For regular desktop use, text/images/windows would be 'blurry' as Wu Jen said...so you do need to consider screen resolution there. But for gaming, you should be fine. Obviously, it is nice to play at native resolution but there is not a significant enough of a difference (and definitely not a difference that I ever notice) to justify getting a lower res screen just because you game as well.

 

yeah definitely do NOT get a lower res screen because you want to play games. you will find the benefits of having a larger screen to be very evident outside of gaming.

while gaming in 1280x800 on your 1680x1050, you will not lose any performance compared to a 1280x800 screen, nor will the image be stretched or squished. just set the game's aspect ratio to widescreen, 16:10. most all modern games support this (and you would have to do it if you were gaming in 1680x1050 also)

you will notice some blurring though, because multiple pixels have to act as individual pixels, and there is no even way to set them up. however, if you had a 1600x1200 monitor and were running in 800x600, you would not see any blurring. i think you can deduce why.

depending on the resolutions you are working with, you probably will not mind interpolation. generally, the higher res you start with, the better off you are going to be. 1680x1050 is a pretty high resolution to begin with, so, again, you probably will not mind interpolation in games. you WILL mind it in desktop work though, where you need to read text and the like.

 

well I plan on using the greater resolution for desktop use that is why I'm getting it, but I was asking about games because I want better performance in the games so I plan on dropping the res of the screen while gaming.