LCD Monitor Screen Resolutions

I`m thinking of buying a flat screen (WideScreen) LCD monitor but I would like to know what sort of resolutions these things handle. For example will I still be able to play 320x240 games through emulation and such even though the monitors res is something like 1440x900? Is this sort of thing dictated by my graphics card or does the monitor have some influence over the resolutions I can use?

Any advice would be great.

Jason.

You shouldn't have too much trouble. Obviously, non-native resolutions won't look crystal-clear like thhey do on a CRT. However, in my experience, the pro's of using an LCD far outweight the cons of having stretched resolutions.

You might surprise yourself by finding that it's not often an issue. There's a lot of stuff you can either run in a window, or run at the native resolution of your LCD.

I often run emulators (SNES mostly) on my 1920x1200 and it looks proper fabulous :)

That sounds fine then, thanks for your help.

One other small question that I wanted to ask was about paint packages. As I do lots of graphics work and my graphics card is quite old now will I be able to keep resolutions like 1024x768 and still keep circles etc... looking like circles and not ovals on a widescreen monitor? Do they compensate for this sort of thing, I assume they do as you say you use SNES emulators and all looks fine.

Really I want to stay at the resoultion that my card seems to handle the best 1024x768 but have the added benefit of using a nice crisp LCD display. Is that possible?

Finally, is a widescreen option going to cause me more problems in the long run for what I want to do and should I just go for a standard size?

Jason.

Depends -- if you are using 1024x768 and have it fill the entire screen (default behaviour on most cards), it will be stretched on a wide screen and your circles will look like ovals. Some cards have the option of displaying the exact resolution without stretching, but in that case you'd end up with black bars at the left and right side of the screen.

But more importantly: *most* cards will query the monitor and find out what resolutions it supports, and you might find that a bunch of new resolutions pop up in your selection list as being available.

You might see a 1200x768 or so that has the correct aspect ratio and appear similar as the old 1024x768... but without knowing exactly what card you have, it's iompossible to say what resolutions it will support.

Bottom line: if you have to use 1024x768 and need circles to look round, then you really don't want to get a widescreen panel, but should get a 'normal' one instead.

The other thing to consider: images look significantly better in the native resolution of a panel (which is 1280x1024 for the majority of non-widescreen LCD's) than they do in a scaled down 1024x768 -- that one tends to look quite muddy and blurry around the edges since it's all scaled up, and it's not an even division either.

I used to always run my CRT's at 1024x768 (or lower, my old Voodoo3 had one resolution right in between 800x600 and 1024x768) but finally broke down and set up my resolution to 1280x1024 on my LCd simply because it looked like crap on 1024x768. Especially if you do a lot of graphics work, you're probably going into that.

(I did have to tweak a bunch of system settings like the font sizes, icon sizes, DPI, etc. for me to comfortable read everything at the 1280x1024, but the quality of the display is *much* better than scaling it down to 1024x768.)

20"-22" widescreen is quite cheap these days, under £250.

I`m a sucker for old games that seem to almost always be in a very low resolution of 320,240. Will these games still work? They currently do on my graphics card so will a widescreen monitor like this be able to go down to that lowres too?

Jason.

Man I've still got a 19" CRT under the illusion that I *might* play some FPS games on it, but I haven't played that sort of game for ages. I could probably get away with a TFT now for development and Indie games. Would free up a lot of desk space!

i was a 17" Crt fan until i got a LCD. thoe playing SNES is out of the question on the LCD.. it gets verry blurry.

on the bright side playing al mordern 3d games is greate. crisp and good. just not think of playing snes on a LCD.. use CRT for that.. than again.. depends also of witch SNES game you play :)

Got a 2nd Samsung LCD monitor for my lesser computer a while ago and I've never looked back. Portrait mode is fun :)

Unfortunately, they usually have native screen resolutions and look increasingly less attractive on any other resolution. Some screens seem to do strange resolutions better than others, so it's maybe worth playing about with display models in stores if you get the chance. Usually, though, you will want to run that kind of low resolution stuff in windowed mode.

Speaking of screen resolution, does anyone else get driven crazy by the myth that lower screen resolution = more readable text? It makes the text look jagged and blurry; the bigger size is practically a side-effect. The horrible looking text balances out any improvement made by its increased size; it is still an eye-sore, just in a different way.
On any decent operating system that puts an effort into usability, the more commonly used (native GUI) applications will be using the system-wide fonts, whose sizes should be configurable the right way.

Yeah I tried my Macbook in a non native res to read it better but the blurring did my head in.

You might want to change your habit of working in 1024x768. That resolution won't scale quite as nicely as some others. You will honestly be best served sticking with the LCD's native resolution.

As regards the circle/oval thing, I have the option of controlling that using the controls on my monitor, or the nVidia desktop utility. Whether you will have either of these options really depends on your hardware. I would love to think that all widescreen TFT's have a 4:3 aspect ratio option (which is what you'd need).

Of course, if you actually work with a 1440x900 resolution, circles will be circles ;)

QuickSilva - regarding 320x240 resolutions - my laptop which has a native resolution of 1280x800 can do all sorts of strange resolutions like 320x240, 400x300, 512x384 - which I've tested with blitz3d/plus and it works fine.

Thanks for letting me know. I`m going to take the plunge and hope for the best.

Thanks again everyone for the advice, it helped a lot :)

Jason.

OK, I`ve got my new monitor and it is great. My only problem, which probably cannot be solved but I`ll try anyway, is that when I display a lowres mode such as 320x240 the image is blurred slightly. This I expected as it is streched to fit the display. I have the latest NVidia drivers installed, my question is where may I find an option that stops this display mode from being stretched. Can I create a custom one for a pixel perfect image? Is it even possible?

Hopefully someone can help me out, fingers crossed.

Jason.

use anothe emulator if you still talking snes buisnies.

there is emulators that strech and smears out pixels like a crt do :)

Depends on the monitor and/or display adapter...

anyway, you do realize that even if you could do it, it means that the 320x240 image would take up just a quarter of your screen? The individual pixels are a whole lot smaller than they were back in the day...

I actually play lots of retro 2D games, like Cave Story and it is sad to see the lovely sharp pixel art get blurred as it looks so great in screenshots on my new monitor. I don`t mind playing in a window but it`s not quite the same. I also don`t mind playing on a smaller screen (but still fullscreen) if I could get that sharpness back. New games look great though as expected. Surely there must be a way?

Can these sorts of things be set up in the NVidia display settings, custom modes and the like? Can you set the aspect ratio? I need a 4:3 mode as suggested earlier I think. Can this be done through drivers or does it need to be inbuilt into the monitor?

Jason.

With nVidia cards, you have the option of using the driver to do the stretching, rather than leaving the task to your monitor. This means that monitors with good scaling hardware can be left to do their thing and monitors with cheap scaling hardware (sadly, this is most monitors) can be 'bypassed'.

Using a newish nVidia driver, go in to nVidia Control Panel, click on Display. There should be an option (assuming you are connecting via DVI) called "Change flat panel scaling". Options therein should be self-explanatory.

Unfortunately, you will still get blurring even if you use nVidia's scaling. Potentially though, you will see a slight increase in image quality unless you bought an expensive LCD!

Some LCD's will give you the option of displaying a different resolutions as a 1:1 representation. This means that you'll end up with black borders all around, but as sharp an image as if you were using the monitor's native res.


**stop press**

I just downloaded Cave Story, patched to English version, ran it and it displayed *perfectly* on my monitor. No blur at all. Perhaps it is selecting a 1600x1200 resolution and pixel-quintupling (320x240 is exactly 5 times smaller than 1600x1200) the graphics.

If you can manage to get your monitor to display a 960x720 resolution without stretching the image (i.e., you'll have black borders all around), you might be able to get rid of the blur.


**edit**

As for emulators, I have zSnes configured so that it opens a 1920x1200 screen and performs some high quality image processing to stretch games to the higher res, whilst maintaining a fairly cartoony quality (great for Yoshi's Island!).

MAME, I put up with blurriness. I'm usually sat far enough away from the monitor that I don't really notice it so much. Other than that, I have a few games configured to use software stretching, which maintains the 'blockiness' of the original graphics.

Thanks for taking the time to type all of that for me :)I`m not connecting via DVI so I guess I do not have that option as I cannot find it :(

For home made stuff I can live with it but it`s just for the oldies really. Bit of a pain.

Jason.

Ah, DVI is fairly essential for pixel-perfectness ;)

What monitor did you get, BTW?

I went for a HP 19inch WideScreen one in the end after going into town and being impressed with the image quality over the other models they had instore. I`m very happy with it.

I have also just noticed that my graphics card does infact have a DVI connection so now I`m wondering whether I should grab a cable and use that instead. Will there be much difference in picture quality? Also after having a quick browse the cable I need seems to be very expensive. How much should I be paying for a DVI-D (I think...) cable. Are there any cheap options? Shame I didn`t get one free :(

Jason.

Yes. Also any sufficiently advanced monitor will use the digital signal for providing more than a clearer picture.

You will certainly notice a difference in quality. Slightly shocking that your monitor was not supplied with a DVI cable. Have you checked that there's not one in the box?

Have you checked there's a DVI input on the back of the monitor ;) ?

At first I didn't think DVI was that big a deal (after all, VGA had always been good enough for the many years prior, right?) but after seeing a dual-screen setup run side-by-side on VGA + DVI, I can definitely attest that there is a major difference, especially at the higher resoutions.

I'm running DVI myself now, and there's no way I'm going back to VGa...

There's a lot to be said for having a geometrically perfect, colour calibrated (sorta), flicker-free and stable display to look at when you're in front of your PC for long hours.

My old Iiyama 19" CRT looks positively hideous in comparison and that was a good CRT.

OK, well after thorough investigation I have found out that my monitor has no DVI socket but the one in store on display did. I have now found out that there are two revisions of my monitor one with DVI the other without so I have taken the monitor back and swapped it for the better version. I`ll let you know how I get on once I have a play with it.

On a side note, extra options are added to the NVidia display settings then when using DVI?

Jason.

.

..

...

....

.....

Sorry for the multiple posts in a row, not sure what happened there?

Jason.

I just switched from a very nice 17 inch monitor to a 15 inch LCD and have no plans of going back. The LCD may be smaller but it is also far easier to look at for long periods of time (and taking up less desk space is a plus too)

There should be some more options in the nVidia control centre. Most of what I was waffling about in previous posts will now become clear ;)

See you've bought the screen already. Was going to suggest to you test some gradients, and line patterns on it before you bought it. Most LCD screens are sharp, but a few of them handle colors badly. With a basic gradient you would see visible banding on the screen. This becomes kind of important when working a lot with graphics. :P

I did have a good play around in the store and choose the monitor based on lots of different things. It easily stood out as the best for the price in my eyes. I have no complaints :)

Jason.

Many of the cheap screens (as well as the really fast ones) use 6-bit panels instead of proper 8-bit ones. One giveaway is if it's marketed as having 16.2 million colors instead of 16.7. Sounds insignificant, but it's just artificially increased through hardware dithering, and is of a noticable lower quality.

My monitor has 16.2 million colours but I can safely say that to me it`s not a visble problem.

Using the DVI connection did improve the picture quality so now I`m very happy :) Still get slight blurring on very low res images such as 320,240 when viewing at screen size but I guess this is largely unavoidable when using lcd.

Jason.

"If you can manage to get your monitor to display a 960x720 resolution without stretching the image (i.e., you'll have black borders all around), you might be able to get rid of the blur."

Is it safe to create custom modes like this? I would like to give it a go but don`t want to damage my monitor. My monitor can go up to 1440x900 so I`m guessing it would be ok?

I can now get pixel perfect 320x240 in the center of the screen but I guess I thought if I made a new custom mode like 960x720 it would get scaled up 3 times as big but not be blurry. Is this possible somehow? Any advice would be most welcome.

Jason.

I gave it a try myself on my monitor and it still blurred the image a bit. That may be a quirk of my monitor, or it may just be the way things have to be!

Settings I used: -

Custom timings: -

Horizontal desktop pixels = 960
Vertical desktop lines = 720
GDI Refresh Rate = 60
Bits Per Pixel = 8

(advanced)...

Timing Standard = Auto
Scaling Type = Centred
Active Horizontal Pixels = 960
Active Vertical Lines = 720

Play around with the 'Scaling Type' setting.

BTW, the only reason I say this may not blur is because it seems that Cave Story is clever enough to open a screen at a resolution exactly divisible by 320x240 and do it's own (blocky) scaling. It does it on a 1920x1200 display, so I surmised that it may do it on a 960x720 one as well.

The bit per pixel setting, what is that? As I am using a 16.2 million colour monitor would I set this to 6 or 8? (I assume you have a 16.7)

I`ll give it a try and let you know how I get on.

Thanks for the help.

Jason.

Good question. Even though your panel is 6 bit, it most likely accept 8 bit input and do some fancy dithering to prevent banding effects... So telling it to use 6 bit might look worse than when you give it 8 bits.

Bummer, when trying to add this custom mode it says, "This custom mode cannot be added."

Jason.

Hmm, if you copy my settings exactly, it doesn't work?

Strange. Very strange.


BTW: Bits Per Pixel can (likely, I'm not trying it) only be 8, 10 or 16 (I'm hazarding that Quadro cards can do 16bpp??).

After further testing it works with the VGA cable but not DVI one. Strange!

Jason.

You might find that even if it fails, you can still select the resolution in your display settings.

vinylpusher, could you take a look at my other thread, "Blitz Problem" and see if you can shed any light on that for me as you seem to have good knowledge about the problem that I am having.

Thanks for all your help up until now and everyone else who has offered me advice.

Jason.