It is kinda silly indeed, especially with AA. Most people would game at 1024x768, perhaps 1280x1024 and AA wasn't really a thing, unless you had a very beefy machine. AA was mostly used to make older titles look better!

Heck, AA wasn't that big until about 3-4 years ago when FXAA started getting a lot of use and there was no reason to go without AA. I've even made remarks in the past (that I regret of course, I have long since seen the one true light of Anti-Aliasing! 🤣 ) right in this forum that I don't really see the point in AA.
FXAA and SMAA have basically given us free AA on every title. Such old cards generally use SSAA I think, which is uber demanding (even today). So, don't expect miracles! 6800GT would be pretty darn cool though, you could get an AGP one.

1600x1200 didn't become popular until 20 inch LCD screens became the norm (I bought mine in 2005). People normally played in 1024x768 in 2002-2003.

Thanks for the input. I will check out how much of an input AA has...

Ok AA was set to 4x 😊

Game ran smooth without AA. Though I will have to reserve judgement until I play some of the later, more demanding, levels.

GeForce FX Ultra should improve the situation even more. AF was also enabled instead of double and triple buffering but the floor still looks a bit blurry. Maybe that's just the old tech 😀

The other option is going with ATI. I believe they had quite a few AGP cards before they switched to PCIe. And DX games should be fine on both right?

Not period correct, but could work well?

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/New-256M-DDR-DVI-A … 8497c80e&_uhb=1

With old (maybe all) Radeons you always have 1 problem - the Catalyst.
Negative blending, table fog, OGL killed in 7.12 catalyst... You don't need to know anything of that. Believe me.
So - use Nvidia and burn all ATI products with fire.

Wow is it so bad?

With OpenGL Nvidia was always very strong. But what about stock standard DX games? But you're right, I never had issues with Nvidia. But curious to check out some of the ATI cards for some reason.

I have a Radeon 9800 lying around which I could use to check it out. I guess as long as you use period correct drivers you shouldn't have much of an issue.

BTW what are fog tables?

Table fog is a fogging technique from DirectX 5 that basically originated from 3dfx cards. Most companies supported/emulated it but compatibility faded as time went by. NV supported it to GF7. ATI only supported it to Rage 128.

ATI cards usually have performance problems with OpenGL games that aren't based on Quake 1/2/3. Bioware games in particular were touchy and often worked best with some specific driver version. This nonsense was caused by developers preferring NV for whatever reason. DirectX is less of an issue.

Thanks for the heads up guys! Will save me a lot of trouble 😀

That is a very nice resolution for a DFP monitor IMO! A real PC resolution. Not the usual HD TV labeled as a PC monitor type.

1600x1200 was certainly popular around the Geforce 2 GTS era (that's like the year 2000). 1600x1200 CRTs were plentiful for gamers as far back as 1999. That was the only time games started being playable at 1600x1200 (except DOS games hehe), and Quake III was usually benched at that resolution in reviews (Geforce 3-4 cards had no trouble with Quake 3 @ 1600x1200 with AA). If you had a lower resolution monitor (1280x1024 or 1024x768 e.g.), you could apply anti-aliasing to compensate the lower resolution (AA wasn't used normally until Radeon 9x00 and Geforce FX era IMO). 1024x768 was probably the lowest many gamers aimed for (I did unless I wanted 140HZ or higher framerate in a Quake 3 railgun unlagged fest; people thought I cheated when I capped better framerates on my dedicated server 🤣), and considered to be good, up until direct X 10 became normal IMO.

Geforce FX is one of the unique nvidia cards that do support paletted textures (up to forcware 77.x I think). Couldn't get them working properly, but there's plenty of drivers to fiddle around with it; and I've heard people say FFVII will work with full paletted textures using the right driver on an FX card. This makes Geforce FX some of the best legacy cards IMO. I'm using the PCX5750 and it works wonderfully inside Linux; it rapes gzdoom. The only card I've seen give me more trouble in Windows than Linux, but I haven't tried Vista, XP, or 2000 either (only 9x, and Windows 7 with a hacked inf driver and Vista 64-bit drivers). I think the nouveau drivers might even be worth using. Geforce FX cards will run Half Life 2 great with full directx 9, but needs proper tweaking (excessive tweaking BTW no joke!); there's a lot involved and you have to find out on your own hehe.

For the record, Windows 9x would probably love that monitor. Maybe try VBEMP drivers on a modern GPU and try some Blood @ 1600x1200 hehe.

There were Geforce 6800's that used AGP. In fact I just sold mine.

1600x1200 (1920x1200 FTW!) is great, but in some older games the GUI is too small.

I have good memories with Radeon 9550. Cheap and fast (it can run with 9600's clocks). 😀

Firtasik wrote:

1600x1200 (1920x1200 FTW!) is great, but in some older games the GUI is too small.

Yeah but what if he used 800x600 or 320x200 which is very common, and multiplies into 1920x1200? Can you say pefect scaling with Dosbox up to 1920x1200 with perfect aspect and perfect pixels? Would be interesting to know if DFP can avoid interpolation for nearest neighbor scaling.

Well, for 25 years all my monitors were 19" or less. 😀
20"/21" 1600x1200 monitors 1) have higher DPI (100/95.24, 19" 1280x1024 have 86.27), 2) are capable of 320x200 and 320x240 precire scaling.
So if you can get it - grab it without question.
The only troubles are dimensions for CRTs and (sometimes) low-res compatibility for LCDs. Many LCD vendors "forgot" about native 640x400/640x350 support.

I find that 1024 x 768 scales quite well on modern LCD monitors. Sure it's not as crisp as a native resolution but it's still quite good.

Just like there are 1920 x 1200 monitors for 1600 x 1200 resolutions, there are also 1366 x 768 monitors for 1024 x 768 resolutions. I have a Philips 18" like this:

But I found that 18" is simply too small. Remember it's 18.5" diagonal on a 16:9 aspect ratio, so the image is very small in terms of vertical size.

My new 24" Samsung on the other hand gives me a nice large image. It's also awesome in DOS

Another option are 19" 1280 x 1024 monitors. They are even available brand new!

However that resolution is 5:4. For newer games this is no issue as they will correct the aspect ratio. But most older games have HUD stretch or other issues.

DOS games will also stretch but it's very subtle. I used a 19" 5:4 for a long time and it was never very obvious or distracting.

4:3 monitors have vertical/diagonal ratio 0.6. 16:10 monitors - 0.53, 16:9 - 0.49.
In other words - you must have 13%/21% bigger diagonal to get the similar result. So - 20" 1600x1200 almost equivalent 23" 1920x1200.
Then again, many current LCDs don't know about 720x400/640x400/640x350 resolutions and automatically resize them to full screen. Even in text modes. The best method is - notebook+vgatest.exe when you go to a shop. 😀

I will check out this vgatest.exe

I used PCPBENCH and built a little iso image that boots for testing:

Widescreen monitors and 4:3 aspect ratio compatibility thread

Also beware of IPS panels, they can't display 70 hz and you will get non-smooth scrolling.

What about 1400 × 1050 (SXGA+) ? Lower than 1600x1200 but fits nicely on a 1080p HDTV. My HDTV will reject this resolution on its own, but it works fine through my DVDO Edge.