F1 2010 F1 2010 Resolutions

[Paul Lock]

F1 2010 Monitor Resolutions

Currently I am playing F1 on a 20" monitor at 1680x1050 with everything running at maximum very nicely.

Im looking to get a 24" monitor, and notice there are 2 flavours available. Either 1920x1080 (16:9) or 1920x1200 (16:10)

Now I understand the benefits of extra desktop 'real estate' on a 1920x1200 (16:10) monitor, that helps with design, photoshop etc, but I will primarily be gaming so want it to be as native to games as possible. Also putting out 1200 can add a big overhead to your graphics cards, and I dont really want performance to drop due to having a lovely big screen, and ive also heard that you can encounter problems if downscaling to 1080 on a 1200, or at best you have the black bars.

Technically is there anyother advantages to a 1200 monitor or even downsides im not thinking of? 1080's will do nicely for games, movies, so should I even be considering a 1200?

I want to try and get it ordered today, so please feel free to add your opinions/experiences here, and I would be interested to hear if people run the game in 1920x1200 on full eye candy, or whether 1920x1080 is really the sweet spot.

Thanks
Paul.

 

[Jan-Olov Johansson]

If you will be using it mainly for games and movies then I should go for the 16:9 one, I would only consider a 16:10 if you were to do a lot of other things like graphics/image editing, were one wants as many pixels as possible so to speak. I.m using a 22" 16:10 @ 1680x1050 and are quite happy with it even though 16:9 movies and such in most cases will have black bars due to them often using 2.35 - 1 aspect ratios.

Here's a handy tool to check out how diffrent resolutions, aspect ratios and screen sizes would look.

http://tvcalculator.com/index.html?a2429231032ef711e143c4b97daf1273

Edit: And you will almost always get black bars no matter what, since most movies today use above mentioned 2.35 or even 2.40-1 aspect ratios.

 

[Paul Lock]

Cheers for the input Jan. I do use photoshop and music making software a fair bit, but not enough to really need or justify a bigger desktop. Movies I have on my PC generally go out the HDMI to my 42" plasma rather than watching on the monitor so its not gonna be used for films much either.

I dont even know if F1 can be run in 1920x1200 or whether it would letter box, which basically would point at a 1080 being the one to get.

 

[Furries]

I have a 24inch 1920x1200 screen which I got for work but obviously play games on. I've not had any games that have had problems - I have an i7 cpu with a budget gpu (nvidia 250GX) and I run with everying in ultra at around 40fps so performance is not a problem. I have seen the game running on 1920x1080 and it was fine but I could tell the difference.

If you remember about 10 years ago we used none-widescreen monitors running 1280x1024 as standard - so a 1080 vertical resolution is not really much of an upgrade from all that time ago (56 pixels). Do you want to spend lots of money for a screen with pretty much no upgrade in vertical quality?

Of course screen quality has improved alot in response time and colour reproduction so you'll probably be delighted whichever one you go for

Edit: I would not buy a 1920x1080!

 

[Paul Lock]

Hmm, my head may have been turned from 24" - looking at this one now... 27" Iiyama http://www.digitalversus.com/iiyama-prolite-b2712hds-p357_7265_50.html Although its 1920x1080.


@Furries, yes I hear what you are saying, im currently running 1050 so 1080 is an even smaller jump up. Primarily im simply after a larger screen, but want the resolution to be 'the sweet spot'. From what im reading many manufacturers seem to be shying away from 1200 in favour of 1080, as only really heavy desktop users benefit from the extra screen real estate.

You really think you could tell that much difference? From what im reading the chances are at 1920x1200 you are gonna loose some picture on the left and right, and when playing F1 thats exactly the places you want to see as much as possible.

 

[Jan-Olov Johansson]

Hmm, my head may have been turned from 24" - looking at this one now... 27" Iiyama http://www.digitalversus.com/iiyama-prolite-b2712hds-p357_7265_50.html Although its 1920x1080.


@Furries, yes I hear what you are saying, im currently running 1050 so 1080 is an even smaller jump up. Primarily im simply after a larger screen, but want the resolution to be 'the sweet spot'. From what im reading many manufacturers seem to be shying away from 1200 in favour of 1080, as only really heavy desktop users benefit from the extra screen real estate.

You really think you could tell that much difference? From what im reading the chances are at 1920x1200 you are gonna loose some picture on the left and right, and when playing F1 thats exactly the places you want to see as much as possible.

Yes, I have also heard that 16:10:s are disappearing more and more in favour of 16:9 ones. I have not checked what resolutions F1 can run in since my monitor has it's max at 1680x1050 but I don't think that's gonna be a problem as I belive there is on option of setting aspect ratio ?

Thinking about it I don't belive that at these sizes (22" or above) it makes any diffrence if it's a 16:9 or 16:10 go for the one with best picture that suits your wallet and 27" sure sounds nice

 

[Paul Lock]

I was having a hard enough time thinking 1080 or 1200 on a 24". Now this pesky Iiyama 27" has popped up to confuse matters. It also has vertical adjustment on the stand which is something none of the 24"s I have been looking at have, and its getting good reviews and IMO looks nicer than the Sammys.

Looking at Alienware as an example, the ones ive seen are pretty much 1920x1080.

 

[Andrew Bortz]

Multi screens are the way to go Paul take my word for it I have 3 x 21.5" running at 1920 x 1080

 

[Paul Lock]

Multi screens are the way to go Paul take my word for it I have 3 x 21.5" running at 1920 x 1080

In which case im probably better off going for the 24" over the 27", as adding a couple extra screens is my ultimate plan. Unless a 27" in the middle and a couple 24"s on either side wouldnt look a miss......

I currently have 1x 20" and 2x 17"s but no eyefinity card just yet, I mentioned that on another thread I am awaiting the top ATI cards just to drop off a bit in price so I can purchase 2 and crossfire them up, as only getting 1 would be a drop in performance over what i have now and I like to get components as close to the most bang for buck threshold as possible.

Fighting against the clock here, would like to get it delivered tomorrow, and I need to order in the next 3hrs with Ebuyer to make that happen

The thing putting me off the current 24" Sammys is the cheap(ish) looking gloss finish and the non-adjustable stand. My current 20" Sammy 205BW looks great and has the adjustments. Argh.

 

[Paul Lock]

UPDATE - Well, I made a decision and went to purchase the 27" Iiyama, with Saturday delivery, only turns out Sat delivery isnt available on it, despite being available for the 24"s and pretty much everything else they stock. Strange, but Im taking it as fate giving me a bit more thinking time.

The Iiyama is a quality monitor, but im concerned its too big (if there is such a thing). I do want to go 3 screen at some point, so is 3x 27" gonna be a bit impractical in the future? Would 3x 24" be the better option? There is still the 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 question.

Thanks for the input so far guys. Funny thing is I would have bought a 24" Sammy without even batting an eyelid, no douting the quality, just a bit too shiny and they dont have vertical adjustment.

Feel free to chip in anyone

 

[Jan-Olov Johansson]

I can't help thinking that having multiscreen setup is anyoing because of the gap that the frame around the screens create ?
Andrew could tell us if he feels that you will get used to it or not? I mean, it's at least 2-3 cm of frame between screens even when you apply image display corrections.

If it were me that were getting a new screen I would go for a 27", as for 16:9 or 16:10 hmmm, which ever, don't think that is a big issue in games, most games nowadays support all kind of resolutions and aspect ratios so I don't think you can go wrong there imho.

Or you can go for something like this...hehe. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/radeon-hd-antilles-cayman-eyefinity,12398.html

 

[Andrew Bortz]

Yeah I didnt do any screen corrections and already im back up to normal racing speeds, since its all running off 1 card the performance has dropped off but I dare say its probably still well above average.

 

[Furries]

I'd add that F1 2010 does support 16:10 and you don't loose any of the view angle at the side of the screen - seems alot of people hack the view in the cockpit to make life easier anyway (when I say easier I mean you can see more track both vertically and horizontally giving you more time to react to problems therefore making it easier to get the racing line/avoid contact - imo).

As others have mentioned - games these days support all sorts of resolutions and considering eyefinity or the like can support 3-6 screens at once you don't need to worry about support for good old 1920x1200. If you do add the extra screens then your horizontal res is going to be so high - you might want that extra vertical res to balance things a bit!

The only other point I would add is that you don't only play games on your computer - you are browsing this forum and that extra space can just make things a bit nicer/easier. I work to design and build websites and desktop applications so I find it invaluable... but I know thats no concern to you.

 

[Andrew Bortz]

This is the view I see, and do you mean hack the cockpit as in using a mod? If so I still havent got one

 

[Furries]

Nice view Andrew!

..and yes - I did mean mod (mod/hack/whatever). I've only raced you a couple of times but I do think we need to mod your view so you can't see over the wheel - might even things up a bit

 

[Andrew Bortz]

well thats not actually the car I use thats the Mclaren ill go get a pic done now of the HRT as I race that online.

 

[glight]

Paul, if you have the space and the cash for 3 27 inchers, go for it but even if you go for the 24's you will still be overwhelmed. My 3 Samsung BX2350's are more than enough for me though. If you do go triple make sure they are all the same size and resolution, preferably all the same model.

I am very happy with my Sammy's since they have a lot of settings to play with; most notably the "magic angle" feature that has modes like side view and lean back mode (which really do help a lot). Only drawback is that they are not vesa mountable so they will need a desk to stand on.

Make sure that your PC can handle the added work of triple the resolution though. I put a 6950 in mine and it handles well at 5020x900 and medium settings. Sometimes I can go high if I'm lucky, but F1 2010 doesn't seem to be optimized very well since I get better fps in other games at 6024x1080.

For those wondering about the bezels getting in the way: the drivers prompt you to compensate for them with a test pattern first so everything lines up proper. My monitors end up blocking about 2" inbetween screens but this is a small price to pay for the field of view that I get from this setup (Samsung makes a monitor with an extra thin bezel (about 0.5") for triple screens). I can actually see around hairpins which gets me a better line into the corners, it also helps to actually see where the other drivers when you're side by side.

 

[Paul Lock]

Or you can go for something like this...hehe. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/radeon-hd-antilles-cayman-eyefinity,12398.html

Yeah purchase made here -

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/23-s...-eyefinity-six-screen-setup-!#ProductFeatures

 

[glight]

Holy shi--------I think my eyeballs might melt in front of that screen!