fear and 2405 help

omegaferrari · Post by **omegaferrari** » 21 Dec 2005, 13:02

hi all, im thinking about buying a 2405 for gaming but so far all i have here is the money to just buy the monitor and not a new card( i have a x850xtpe)so i was just wondering if you could post a pick of how good does the 2405 scales the game in say a more playable framerate (lower resolutions than native 1920...) and that are still wide screen please help i just wanna know if it looks good to make my purchase.

thanx in advance

OmegaFerrari

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 21 Dec 2005, 16:30

If I use lower the res I still think it looks pretty good ... but there is no real way of showing you apart from taking an actual photo of the screen when running the game. A screenshot would not show how the screen scales up the lower res.

If you can wait a couple of days I'll take some photos for you ... I just a bit busy with the Christmas rush .... :roll:

BTW ... I play at 1920x1200 with everything set to max apart from soft shadows are turned off and AA is set at 2x. I get 100% above 40fps .... 8)

omegaferrari · Post by **omegaferrari** » 21 Dec 2005, 18:39

wow i relly need to get sli , i just dont have the money right now , can anybody please post some pics too any help apreciated , , and merry christmast to you all

i just want to know what to get.

omegaferrari · Post by **omegaferrari** » 21 Dec 2005, 18:48

:D and paddy please do send the pics , and res comparison would be nice to see i think a good shot with digicam , can show some difference if theres at all , what i want to know is if it handles well , but how well

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 21 Dec 2005, 19:06

I may have time tomorrow ... :shock: :D

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 22 Dec 2005, 11:55

Ok ... I took some photos ...
It is not easy to take good photos of your screen ...

... without using flash I was just getting blurry shots as the room where my computer is quite dark.
... with flash I keep getting the flash reflecting back off the screen ...

Anyway the shots below I took at a slight angle to the screen ... Without a tripod and some decent lighting this its the best I could do.
The little white spots are just bits of dust that are only showing up because of the flash (as you can see they are in the same places)
These aren't very good but I think you can see the 1920x1200 is a little sharper that the 1440x900 ... but it could be down to bad photos.

On the whole though in my opinion it looks fine at 1440x900 if you have to run it at a lower resolution.

My camera takes photos at 3264x2448 which is a bit large so I have scaled these photos down ...

Running the game at 1920x1200
http://www.paddywak.co.uk/Screenshots/Fear/DSC04341.JPG

Running the game at 1440x900
http://www.paddywak.co.uk/Screenshots/Fear/DSC04342.JPG

A cropped/cut-down view of those ... at the resolution my camera took the picture at.
Running the game at 1920x1200
http://www.paddywak.co.uk/Screenshots/Fear/DSC04341-C.JPG

Running the game at 1440x900
http://www.paddywak.co.uk/Screenshots/Fear/DSC04342%20-C.JPG

omegaferrari · Post by **omegaferrari** » 25 Dec 2005, 23:01

thanx alot

would you recommend anything lower , i only have an x850pe and think maybe 1280x 768 , or something else that is widescreen , would you reccomend another lower res that plays better and looks good ? , do You recommend the dell 2405? cause they are offering me a good price but i cant upgrade the gfx card , some lower res pics that are still ws ?
thanx in advance paddy.

The pics were really nice and explained a lot to me and i made some performance test on the low res , plays average , not too good but nice, just wondering if lower would still look good on the monitor ?

:wink:

Post by **skipclarke** » 27 Dec 2005, 15:39

How-To: Choose WS Resolutions & Aspect Ratios

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 27 Dec 2005, 15:50

@ omegaferrari ...
I would recommend the Dell ... but I have a really fast system ... as I don't have a x850pe ... it is difficult to say if it would be good enough for running games on the Dell.

I think that the Dell scales up low resolutions really well ... but they do look softer/fuzzy the lower the res that is scaled up.

May be someone with a similar set up to you will be able to advise .... anyone ?

Post by **skipclarke** » 27 Dec 2005, 16:03

Your x850xt pe is extremely close to my card.

It will run the newer games at 1920 X 1200 WS with just a small reduction on the GFX settings. Normal PC applications require no tweaking.

I would suggest the L2335 - but if you are planning on the Dell - 1st read the several threads found on this site, concerning the Dells & 2405fpw as there appear to be major issues about it - not found with the HP's.
(No offense to Dell owners intended).

If you can wait a few months, I would do so - until you can get a HDMI HDCP supported WS - unless your monitor is only for PC use & not for HD source viewing.

omegaferrari · Post by **omegaferrari** » 28 Dec 2005, 16:13

well then. based on the pics and recomendations and , well almost every review i could find , i paid dell for the monitor , they say they will be sending it in a few days , so i think i might as well get down to tweaking or something , he he , thanx both for your advice and help

:D now you will see me more often , cause im gonna need lots of feedback and help and friends since im gonna stay all day tweaking the monitor , so have a nice end of year and a better new year to you all (Duke nukem forever , Prey , UT2007,Oblivion!!,hell gate london ) well it should be better for gaming , upgrades coming soon.

can i do sli 7800gtx with a power supply of 450 watts ? just a question , or are you using 500 or 550 ?

:D

Post by **skipclarke** » 29 Dec 2005, 02:33

Hey Paddy - on those 1440x900 shots....does the game play in full screen once you get past the cut-scenes? If so, what output option are you using in your nvidia output settings?

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 29 Dec 2005, 10:35

Hey Paddy - on those 1440x900 shots....does the game play in full screen once you get past the cut-scenes?

Yes

If so, what output option are you using in your nvidia output settings?

Monitor scaling.

Post by **skipclarke** » 30 Dec 2005, 16:42

Also read

Tweaks: Ultimate Gamer Mother Lode ! ATI/nVidea/Win XP/Games

& the other monitor testing setup tweak tools in our Tweaks section...

They should help a lot.

Post by **skipclarke** » 30 Dec 2005, 20:31

[quote]Hey Paddy - on those 1440x900 shots....does the game play in full screen once you get past the cut-scenes?

Yes

If so, what output option are you using in your nvidia output settings?

Monitor scaling.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the info. So the image is stretched? How does it look in-game?

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 30 Dec 2005, 21:41

... So the image is stretched? How does it look in-game?

Stretched ... ?
No not what we usually call stretched on the forum ... just enlarged to fit the panel. 1440x900 is 16:10 and the Dell 2405 is 16:10.

I think it looks pretty good for non-native ... but I haven't played it very at if ... at all ... at that res ... I just did it to show omegaferrari what it looks like. I play at the native res of the screen 1920x1200.

Now you got me thinking ... :shock:
Games are often described as "stretched" here on the forum and sometimes it gets confusing ...
I'm not having a go ... :D ... your question just got me thinking ...

A 4:3 res shown on a 16:9 screen will look stretched because the sides are stretched out to fit the 16:9 ratio.
Some games that have available 16:9 resolutions sometimes do not have there FOV widened to accommodate the wider screen and so they can also look stretched.

or another way of looking at both of those is that the image is ... squashed down top and bottom to fit the widescreen.

and now ...
"Stretched" can be used to describe a lower non-native res scaled up to fit the screen.

Oooo my head hurts ... :mrgreen:

Post by **skipclarke** » 31 Dec 2005, 20:31

Oooo my head hurts ...

Hehe....I think I know what you mean. :wink:

I was curious about that myself, because before my Seagate HD's petered out on me, I was playing Fable: The Lost Chapters, and fiddling around with the the different output options. I noticed that if I used monitor scaling, the introduction movies and game menu would fill the whole screen. If I used aspect ratio scaling, the intro movies and game menu would letterbox. Visually, it looked like the monitor scaling was stretching out the intro movies and game menu's, so I switched to aspect ratio scaling in order to view everything more, as I believed, as the developer intended.

In fact, if I used monitor scaling in the past, I wasn't even sure that the 1920x1200 was rendering correctly, so i simply switched to aspect ratio scaling to make sure. That way, if I used 1920x1200, it would guarantee correct rendering, and any other resolution as well (as far as a non-native rez can be, that is :wink:), albeit with black bars on the side.

But in this case, you claim that you are using a 16:10 aspect ratio resolution, which is enlarged rather than stretched. That's actually pretty interesting to me, as I hadn't thought that other non-native resolutions would provide correct FOV (in so much as the game was tailored towards it) and proportions, irregardless of the output being set to monitor scaling.

But I think you're right here....

A 4:3 res shown on a 16:9 screen will look stretched because the sides are stretched out to fit the 16:9 ratio.
Some games that have available 16:9 resolutions sometimes do not have there FOV widened to accommodate the wider screen and so they can also look stretched.

or another way of looking at both of those is that the image is ... squashed down top and bottom to fit the widescreen.

and now ...
"Stretched" can be used to describe a lower non-native res scaled up to fit the screen.

Because in addition to 4:3 resolutions stretching out the sides to fill the screen, and 16:10 or 16:9 games w/out the widened FOV (although some of them have purported 'widescreen' options) we now have lower non-native resolutions, like 1440x900. In this case though - are we talking about the image being "stretched" as in forced to fit the whole screen by expanding, or are we talking about "enlarged" as in a perfectly acceptable 16:10 resolution 'scaling' to fit a larger viewable area? Because technically it is a correct 16:10 aspect ratio, but doesn't some visual quality have to be sacrificed, because the image has to be 'blown up' to a certain degree?

I ask b/c it would actually be pretty cool to be able to use lower resolutions like 1440x900 (as long as it looked good) in other games, sometime down the line, when the concept of diminishing graphical returns mandates lower visual quality in order to get acceptable framerates.

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 01 Jan 2006, 09:48

In this case though - are we talking about the image being "stretched" as in forced to fit the whole screen by expanding, or are we talking about "enlarged" as in a perfectly acceptable 16:10 resolution 'scaling' to fit a larger viewable area? Because technically it is a correct 16:10 aspect ratio, but doesn't some visual quality have to be sacrificed, because the image has to be 'blown up' to a certain degree?

In this case we talking about "enlarged" as in a perfectly acceptable 16:10 resolution 'scaling' to fit a larger viewable area

and yes ... some visual quality is sacrificed, because the image has to be 'blown up' to a certain degree.

I ask b/c it would actually be pretty cool to be able to use lower resolutions like 1440x900 (as long as it looked good) in other games, sometime down the line, when the concept of diminishing graphical returns mandates lower visual quality in order to get acceptable framerates.

Yeah ... that's it ... and in my opinion it doesn't look so bad using lower non-native resolutions scaled up in this way.

Post by **skipclarke** » 02 Jan 2006, 21:57

That's pretty cool. :) I definitely learned something new here. So perhaps in the case of a game like Gun, where the 16:10 resolution is stretched, we could say that using a resolution of 1440x900 on a 20+ 16:10 widescreen monitor both enlarges and stretches the game.

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13414&highlight=gun#13414

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 02 Jan 2006, 22:38

Yes ... :D

or to be more precise ... sorry ... it's just that my mind is rolling with the flow now ... :mrgreen:

So perhaps in the case of a game like Gun, where the 16:10 resolution has a stretched view, we could say that using a resolution of 1440x900 on a 20+ 16:10 widescreen monitor that has a greater native res than 1440x900 both enlarges the image and stretches the view ... assuming the graphics card and/or the monitor can scale the image.

ohooo ... that mess with my head ... :lol:

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