Dropping res = performance in Games

[bushwickbill]

Not sure if this post should be in this area.
The question I have is this. Currently at my Native 1920*1200 Res some of the Newer Games coming out are very hard for me to run at Max settings with Good FPS. So I am wondering If I drop my res to say 1920*1080 Will I give my self some extra performance, Being that my GPU doesn't have to render as many Pixels as before.
Now, Normally when I drop the res right now the image just gets stretched to fit my 24 inch screen. So If I drop the res to 1920*1080 but the image is now being stretched to fit my 24 inch screen, Is my GPU still rendering the same amount of pixels as if my Res was at my native 1920*1200 Res.
I know that dropping my res only that much wont free up power, But i am thinking of dropping it even more and just except some black bars at top and bottom for certain GPU intensive games. Now do the black bars count as pixels for you GPU to render like my native res
Anyone have any suggestions about this.

[LarkStarr]

no, it's stretched to your screen. the pixels rendered will be as you set it in the game. (black bars are not 'rendered') and as such, performance will increase, yes.

you could also dabble into overclocking of your GPU as well (which it looks like you already have, as I read your specs)

[xilocient]

If you don't want the stretched screen, you can usually go into the video card configuration (CCC or NCP) to make the video card scale the images. You get the black bars that don't count as pixels, but the whole image is smaller.

You could also try gaming at fullscreen with a resolution of 960 x 600 and enable more of the visual effects. Using this resolution will use 4 pixels on the monitor to represent one rendered pixel, so you don't get funny edges when the video card stretches an image to fit the LCD.

[LarkStarr]

960 x 540 , not 600

[xilocient]

960 x 540 , not 600

No, i mean 960x600. The monitor's native resolution is 1920x1200.

[LarkStarr]

oh my bad, I read 1920x1080

shwoop!

960x600 indeed!

[DRZDuke]

Running at lower resolutions will definately give you a slight performance gain but in my experience downscaling on most monitors is terrible. For example, I have a very expensive LG 30" IPS panel, it's native resoultion is 2560X1600, I have at times tried to run it at 1920X1200 I it looks terrible, I mean terrible :(
If at all possible it's better to adjust the in game graphics such as turning off shadows, bloom etc ... or reducing overall quality to medium or even low in some cases or at least that's what I found in my experience.

[YukonTrooper]

Going down from 1200 to 1080 vertically won't give you near the performance gain you're looking for. Depending on your monitor, the image will be stretched to fit the screen or you'll get real small black barks on the top and bottom of the screen. Some 24" monitors will even let you choose what method you'd like to use.

The best thing to do would be to drop the res down to 1680X1050. Then you'll stay within the native aspect ratio of your screen and you'll definitely see a performance increase.

[TheWanderer]

I actually play UT3 at 800x600 on my 1280x800 laptop screen.

Frame rates went from 15 average to 35.
Not that I can see anything more the 10 meters away...

[Patriote]

Try 1680x1050 that's the one i chose on newer games when i can't run them max settings. It's not as good looking as my native res (Like you, 1920,1200) but still, it's boosting the FPS quite a bit.

EDIT: Like YoukonTrooper said...