- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Heyyo,
Buddy, letme explain to you the miracle of monitor resolution. :)
First off, YES, screen resolution affects framerates, in some cases, dramatically, here's why:
Now, when your comp renders anything, it has to take into account the dots per inches (DPI) on your screen resolution. 640x480 is obviously gonna have smaller amounts of DPI than 1024x768. Since they're dimensions, if tyou times them together you get the amount of DPI:
640x480 = 307200 DPI
1024x768 = 786432 DPI
As you can see, 1024x768 is over twice as much DPI than than 640x480. Since there's a higher DPI count, everything will look more crisp and smooth than on lower resolutions. If you wanna prime example, get HL, play it at a res of 1024x768, then crank it down to 512x420. you'll almost cry cause of how bad the game looks, lol.
Another advantage to higher Screen rez is the rendering lines, at higher resolutions, it seems to push them farther back than usual (or this could just be a figment of my imagination...)
So yeah, for newer games, since they have much more complex geometry and textures and special effects, you need a pretty big cpu to handle higher screen rez's. So the more visually stunning the game is, the more framerate killing it'll do. :p
Right now I have a smaller cpu than you, so I can't handle bigger resolutions without large losses of framerates. So right now, I play the game at a screen rez of 640x480, if I go higher the gameplay becomes unbarable during firefights.