Does anyone play their games at a lower resolution?

Gamer Bhoy 89

...Instead of the max resolution your monitor can withstand? I play my games at 1920x1080, but sometimes it can stress the frame-rate out and cutting down to a lower resolution - while improving the fps - makes the game look rather blurry.

This has been a dilemma of mine for quite a while now and only with graphically-intense games do I find it hard to decide which to sacrifice.

Does anyone here sacrifice quality for performance?

Skerries

no, I just buy a new card
not what you want to hear but your card must be fairly old if you need to drop resolution these days

blatantrereg

You can usually tweak other settings as well as resolution. I think I remember the level of anti-aliasing making a significant difference when I played TF2 on an older laptop.

Yeti Beast

I'd lower the resolution all the time back in the good old CRT days, but it just looks crap on most modern LCDs. You're better off turning off AA, AF, shadows etc. I'd rather a decent framerate with little to no eye candy than vice versa.

Gamer Bhoy 89

Skerries wrote: »

no, I just buy a new card
not what you want to hear but your card must be fairly old if you need to drop resolution these days

It's an Nvidia Geforce GTS 250. So yes, it is a bit old. But it does what I want it to do, just the resolution can be a bit problematic on one or two games

Shiminay

You need a new card man Pop onto Adverts, you'd be amazed at what you'd pick up for a song.

Kiith

I've had to in the past, but it's always a sign that i need an upgrade.

ShadowHearth

Shiminay wrote: »

You need a new card man Pop onto Adverts, you'd be amazed at what you'd pick up for a song.

What he said.

That card is ancient m8, and you can pick some very nice older cards for pennies. Last few gens mid range gpus are pretty much in same band of performance. You can buy old gen card with same performance as mid range modern card for a lot less.

I have not dropped resolution on any of my games since I gone off crt monitors. It's a bit bizarre for me even go to resolution settings. Some games even piss me off when they launch as default for the first time on some retarded resolution.

Robert ninja

I considered it recently for the first time when I really wanted to get 120fps on Far Cry 3 without dropping the specific graphic settings I really value.

dreamers75

I use my monitor to control my gaming pcs upgrades, its 1920 last few years and no intention of changing.

Tbh 1920 in pc terms is low resolution, i will hold onto it a while longer maybe 18 months to 2 years. Then move to higher.

Potential-Monke

My PC is hooked up to a relatively old Bravia, so the max i can go is 1920x1080. I usually don't go with that setting though, as usually when i do i can't read text on the screen because it goes so small. So i've been sticking to 1360x768. Never had higher resolution than that before so i don't notice any downfall to it.

New tv is next on the books though.

TerrorFirmer

Sell the GTS250 for about 30 euro, then buy a GTX750, unbelievable performance for a 100 euro card.

2nd hand market is a joke these days, I've looked at so many 2nd hands cards and ended up buying brand new became the prices people are asking for cards like 6850, 6870, GTX670, GTX680 etc are taking the piss, can actually buy faster new cards for the same money.

ShadowHearth

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Sell the GTS250 for about 30 euro, then buy a GTX750, unbelievable performance for a 100 euro card.

2nd hand market is a joke these days, I've looked at so many 2nd hands cards and ended up buying brand new became the prices people are asking for cards like 6850, 6870, GTX670, GTX680 etc are taking the piss, can actually buy faster new cards for the same money.

That too. Adverts.ie is amazing place. Some people expect to get the price adjusted to how much they paid for parts, not how much performance is worth at the moment of sale.

edit: I just checked gtx 680 prices on adverts.... Some people still trying to get 300eu for it... oh lord...

..Brian..

I had to drop the resolution down on my monitor to 1080p from 1440p in Total War: Shogun 2 cause everything was too small and I couldn't see anything! Lol

Kirby

..Brian.. wrote: »

I had to drop the resolution down on my monitor to 1080p from 1440p in Total War: Shogun 2 cause everything was too small and I couldn't see anything! Lol

This.

It's rare but occasionally it happens when you play a badly programmed game that doesn't include any UI scaling.

StarDrive and Sins of a solar empire are two games that suffer from this. At 1200p, the tooltips and text are quite simply too small to see so I had to play at 1680x1050.....which is a shame.

Every game should have UI scaling. Every single one.

Status Offline

I've turned down the resolution a few times on games like Crusader Kings just so I can read the bloody small text from the couch.Christ even some of it is still hard to read even with my nose touching the screen

nesf

On a regular monitor, not for a very long time. 7 or 8 years back at least (again, it was easier to get away with on a CRT monitor). Gaming on a 27" monitor at 1440p, yeah, I had to drop to 1080p occasionally as others have mentioned due to a poorly coded game.

Steviemoyne

:pac: There's a lower option for resolution? I never even noticed!

In short I don't anyway, the higher the better in my book.

lmimmfn

sometimes i have to play @ 1680x1050 instead of 5040x1050 to keep the settings on ultra lol

Raphael

Frequently, because I do my PC gaming on a laptop with an integrated graphics card. I also mainly just play older and indie stuff on the PC, though, so it balances out.

TheDoc

In fairness my rig can play the games I play at max res and settings fine, but out of habbit I tend to play some games at a lower resolution, and lower graphical settings.

Since getting back into CSGO I've definitly lowered the resolution and details, did the same with SC2, and do the same with LoL.

Just a force of habbit, where I want as little distraction and sparkle as possible to focus the target etc.

I've got a Radeon R270x which is doing me grand, although of course there is always my annual summer temptation of a new GPU, but I don't feel a real need at the moment

Lukker-

TheDoc wrote: »

In fairness my rig can play the games I play at max res and settings fine, but out of habbit I tend to play some games at a lower resolution, and lower graphical settings.

Since getting back into CSGO I've definitly lowered the resolution and details, did the same with SC2, and do the same with LoL.

Just a force of habbit, where I want as little distraction and sparkle as possible to focus the target etc.

I've got a Radeon R270x which is doing me grand, although of course there is always my annual summer temptation of a new GPU, but I don't feel a real need at the moment

Understandable for competitive MP games. I do the same myself, especially if its an FPS. I'd never lower the resolution though, as I feel that actually takes away from the image quality and my ability to spot things, it muddies the image.

On my old build I'd occasionally have to lower the resolution in singel player games from 1080p to 1680x1050, which isn't a drastic change really. It also allowed me to turn all the other settings up to ultra.

nesf

TheDoc wrote: »

In fairness my rig can play the games I play at max res and settings fine, but out of habbit I tend to play some games at a lower resolution, and lower graphical settings.

Since getting back into CSGO I've definitly lowered the resolution and details, did the same with SC2, and do the same with LoL.

Just a force of habbit, where I want as little distraction and sparkle as possible to focus the target etc.

I've got a Radeon R270x which is doing me grand, although of course there is always my annual summer temptation of a new GPU, but I don't feel a real need at the moment

I'd never turn down resolution but I do and have turned down or off effects in competitive games.

breadbin

jeez i wouldnt want to lower my resolution anymore - i play games at 1024x768!! i still using my 17" sony trinitron. i do have a fairly decent 26" samsung lcd but imo the sony blows it out if the water. so nice to look at.

Glebee

Might be a silly question but how do you know the max res of your monitor

nesf

Glebee wrote: »

Might be a silly question but how do you know the max res of your monitor

Control Panel > Display > Change Resolution (with LCD screens the max res of the monitor will be marked as "Recommended")

You can make a guess based on the diagnonal width of a monitor, e.g. 24" monitors are usually 1080p or more rarely 1200p but can be 720p if they are older or budget models. 30" monitors have the same issue.

I play on an aging gaming laptop so yeah, I do this all the time. Framerate is absolute paramount for me. If its not above 70, it really grates on me. Fluid gameplay is far more important to me. These days it means I play most games on minimal settings. I'm not made of money but maybe soon I'll get a new rig.

EoinHef

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I play on an aging gaming laptop so yeah, I do this all the time. Framerate is absolute paramount for me. If its not above 70, it really grates on me. Fluid gameplay is far more important to me. These days it means I play most games on minimal settings. I'm not made of money but maybe soon I'll get a new rig.

A solid 60fps should be fine,your laptop screen is most likely 60Hz anyway so can only display 60 images a second so anything over 60 is a little pointless.

I agree though,framerate is paramount,id lower any setting if it meant 60fps

Skerries

but the human eye can't see above 30fps!

Skerries

Skerries wrote: »

but the human eye can't see above 30fps!

That cannot be true. I can see the difference easily.

nesf

Skerries wrote: »

but the human eye can't see above 30fps!

What do you mean by see? And, source?

Skerries

I was trolling console peasants who are all saying that the eye can only see 30fps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrfkX7J_LVs

nesf

Skerries wrote: »

I was trolling console peasants who are all saying that the eye can only see 30fps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrfkX7J_LVs

Wrong forum for that. :P