Monitor Size With A Gaming Computer

I see people saying that some of the higher end cards are a waste of power if your monitor is too small (mine is 1680X1050, a decent size).

In the past, big monitors were a liability when it came to gaming. They would slow down performance. Have modern video cards been designed so that their power blossoms when they are played at higher resolutions? Making it so that monitor size (and therefore higher resolutions) no longer have a great effect on performance. Does a smaller monitor with a lower resolution bottleneck a GPU?

Thanks.

The higher resoultuions only utilise the RAM available, 2-3 yrs ago, the best u could get was 512MB (They were expensive though), and 512MB is just not enough to run high-end resolutions and be able to max out games.

The 4890 and the GTX 295 both have enough RAM to be able to supply the huge resolutions.

Video cards now also have the power to easily utilise all the RAM and the width of the bus.

1680*1050 is a respectable resolution these days, higher end would be 1920*1200 and higher.

I have always wondered what the chip on GPU's could be compared to, could it be equivilant to a Pentium 1?

Let's look at a thing most people don't look into when purchasing monitors: ppi (Pixels per inch).

If this number is too high, you will waste money buying a 20" monitor with a native resolution of 1680x1050.

1680x1050 is 1,764,000 pixels.

So the ppi is 88,200.

So in every inch of the screen (diagonally), there are about 3,473 pixels in that inch. Try to imagine 3,473 little squares in that inch. Can't see all of them clearly, can you?

When the ppi is way too high, you don't see the complete quality that the true image has as there is a scaling problem.

For a good example of this, see here:http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b30/nicolasb/1366_scaling.png

The true quality of the image is the 59" with 1080p at 1920x1200.

What is happening with a 20" monitor with a native resolution at 1680x1050 is similar to the 1366x768 downscaling 1080p. Notice that the text seems to have a fuzz around it, like it's missing data.

The higher resoultuions only utilise the RAM available, 2-3 yrs ago, the best u could get was 512MB (They were expensive though), and 512MB is just not enough to run high-end resolutions and be able to max out games.

The 4890 and the GTX 295 both have enough RAM to be able to supply the huge resolutions.

Video cards now also have the power to easily utilise all the RAM and the width of the bus.

1680*1050 is a respectable resolution these days, higher end would be 1920*1200 and higher.

I have always wondered what the chip on GPU's could be compared to, could it be equivilant to a Pentium 1?

Amith12

I have always wondered what the chip on GPU's could be compared to, could it be equivilant to a Pentium 1?

Amith12

Are you serious? Modern GPU's are more complex that CPU's. A GTX 280 has twice as many transistors than a Core i7 chip.

[QUOTE="Amith12"]

I have always wondered what the chip on GPU's could be compared to, could it be equivilant to a Pentium 1?

Gog

Are you serious? Modern GPU's are more complex that CPU's. A GTX 280 has twice as many transistors than a Core i7 chip.

No I understand that GPU's are far more powerful, and I thought I saw somewhere it had more than the I7, u just confirmed this (thought I was dreaming, lol). But I know that GPU's are sort of "stream-lined" (They only use basic maths, or something like that), so I was wondering how the rest of chip faired to modern day CPU's.

people talking about a a powerful gpu being a waste on a 1680*1050 monitor are talking bs. Not every game will need the same amount of power at the same res. its all about what games you want to play and how long you want to go before upgrading.