Widescreen Gaming Forum

I'm looking to help someone I know with a new LCD purchase, and am thinking of recommending some widescreen models.

Here's the problem: said person is a gamer, and while the games they like tend to support widescreen (at least the newer ones), I'm not aware of any 16:10 resolutions below 1280X800. This sounds problematic, as they will probably be keeping their current system for quite a while and may not be able to run this resolution in future games.

I know many games support 854X480, but that is 16:9. Are there any low 16:10 resolutions, and if so, how are they enabled and how many games support them?

Also, will the upscaling required to run these lower resolutions produce major artifacts?

If you have an nVidia card, you can add them in easily through the drivers. Furthermore, you can set the nVidia card to do the upscaling instead of the monitor, which should be a big improvement. Generally speaking, games that support widescreen resolutions will pull the list of available resolutions straight from your drivers, and maybe filter out a some (rules like nothing below a certain res, nothing above a certain res, nothing with an aspect ratio too high or low, and nothing with numbers not divisible by 4 are common). Only a few are hard-coded to support a fixed list of "standard" resolutions. I've gotten Half-Life 2 to work at 1280x545, for example.

Anyway, here are some ones to try. The typical 4:3 resolution is on the left, the 16:10 equivalent is on the right.

1024x768 -> 1228x768
800x600 -> 960x600
640x480 -> 768x480

Also, if you want to go even lower, 640x400 and 320x200 are "standard" 16:10 resolutions.

I'm looking to help someone I know with a new LCD purchase, and am thinking of recommending some widescreen models.

Here's the problem: said person is a gamer, and while the games they like tend to support widescreen (at least the newer ones), I'm not aware of any 16:10 resolutions below 1280X800. This sounds problematic, as they will probably be keeping their current system for quite a while and may not be able to run this resolution in future games.

I know many games support 854X480, but that is 16:9. Are there any low 16:10 resolutions, and if so, how are they enabled and how many games support them?

Also, will the upscaling required to run these lower resolutions produce major artifacts?

Maybe they should update the computer first before buying a new monitor.