If I were to run a game at 1600x900 FS on a 1900x1080 monitor, would it look bad?

[MCMXCIX]

I have an i3-3225 and HD 7850 2gb OC. They're not the best, but they're great for the price. I plan on getting a new monitor, hopefully 23", maybe a little smaller. I want my games to run well, but also look good. So if I were to lower the resolution for the really tasking games, would it be that noticeable/ugly?

[Deleted]

Your computer seems decent. You dont need to run a game at 1600x900 for the sake of your CPU and GPU. Run it at 1080p and maybe lower the graphic settings a bit if you think its stuttering or something.

[Deleted]

In my opinion running any game at the non-native display resolution is the best way to make it look bad. You'd do better running it at native resolution and adjusting video settings accordingly to ensure smooth execution.

[MCMXCIX]

In my opinion running any game at the non-native display resolution is the best way to make it look bad. You'd do better running it at native resolution and adjusting video settings accordingly to ensure smooth execution.

Alright, that's what I'll do. I saw some benchmarks and I wasn't sure which route I should go with when the FPS starts to drop.

[loki504]

In my opinion running any game at the non-native display resolution is the best way to make it look bad. You'd do better running it at native resolution and adjusting video settings accordingly to ensure smooth execution.

yep this a 100%. and most fps problems from from aa and that kind of stuff. just lowering them will do.

[Deleted]

I would certainly not recommend downscaling from your monitors resolution.

Rendered pixels should be kept at 1:1 ratio to displayed pixels or the image will become extremely muddy. In case of downscaling, the ratio would become 1:1.2 which would mean that rendered pixels would span (on average) 1,2 displayed pixels.

Perhaps this image illustrates it better. I downscaled from 1440p to 1680x1050 to exaggerate the effect.

[Zalamander]

I dont think your videocard is the bottelneck in your system, this means you wont gain any FPS at all by lowering the resolution or even change the graphic settings for most part.
What you can mainly save performance on is avoid heavy combatlog parsing addons that use a lot of CPU power. Like damage meters as recount for example.

[MCMXCIX]

It... it burns! Yet... it's eerily mesmerizing...

OT: Thanks to the same PC I've had since ~2003, I've had to play most recent games in windowed mode at lower resolutions, so when it comes to fullscreen I'm a novice.

I dont think your videocard is the bottelneck in your system, this means you wont gain any FPS at all by lowering the resolution or even change the graphic settings for most part.
What you can mainly save performance on is avoid heavy combatlog parsing addons that use a lot of CPU power. Like damage meters as recount for example.

I'm not gonna use the computer for WoW. Until I get bored of every game that I want to play, which is a lot. And I'll probably get GW2 before I go back to WoW. That being said, I never really had a problem with Recount on my crappy PC, but then again I cleared it fairly often.

[Deleted]

Perhaps this image illustrates it better. I downscaled from 1440p to 1680x1050 to exaggerate the effect.

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but you're downscaling from 16:9 to 16:10 resolution, doesn't that make it that blurry?

[Deleted]

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but you're downscaling from 16:9 to 16:10 resolution, doesn't that make it that blurry?

It impacts, but not much. I can scale it down even further to exaggerate the effect. At 1280x720 it will make each rendered pixel display as four pixels on the monitor and not look that horrible (compared to say 1920x1080 or 1600x900).

(The real result of the different ratios is noted by the object being a bit squished together on the second/blurry shot.)

Try it on your own monitor. Take any game, and lower the resolution. Make sure you force your monitor to not letterbox.

[llDemonll]

If you run it at that resolution in windowed mode it would be fine, but running at a non-native resolution, as others have said, will blur everything and make it look weird

[Libram]

I've never had much of a problem with lowering the screen resolution before. I have no need to now, but used to on my older GPU I would have to do it frequently for most modern games. It wasn't bad, just looked a little jagged on the edges and the hud (if there was no UI scaling option) would also look a little blown up.
I guess for some it's hard to live with though, especially if you were to have put $1000+ in a new computer that should run any game.