chinny22 wrote:5:4 it seems
http://www.prismo.ch/comparisons/desktop.php […]
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Tetrium wrote:
5:4 it seems
http://www.prismo.ch/comparisons/desktop.php
Where are they commonly used, I've never seen one?
I have a sample size of 1, but it's a Dell 1801FP which is a 1280x1024 IPS. So I'm just guessing that maybe 18" was a common size for IPS panels.
I've never tried it with any weird video modes in DOS or anything.
4:3 1600x1200 monitors are big and might be best for 320x200, 320x240, and 800x600.
800x600 would use exact 2x scaling so it would look good. This could be handy for Win9x with early 3D cards.
They can also perfectly scale 320x240, though most VGA DOS games use 320x200.
For 320x200, a 1600x1200 might be the closest you can get to ideal. No LCD will be perfect for that mode because it doesn't use square pixels and LCDs do. At least horizontal is integer 5x scaling.
On the vertical axis of 320x200, it's not going to scale perfectly but with such a high pixel count on the monitor, the distortion may be less noticeable (assuming the monitor is well programmed to handle the mode).
If it's for DOS, DOS as I experienced it was 320x200, occasionally 320x240, rarely 640x400 or 640x480. I never used 800x600 in DOS.
If optimizing for those resolutions, then maybe 1280x1024 could be better since it's more suitable for scaling the 640x modes (but it will be bad at 800x600).
For 320x modes, the 1280x1024 should be basically just as suitable as the 1600x1200 monitors are, but the inherently imperfect scaling of 320x200 (due to non-square pixels) might be a bit more noticeable.
All this assumes that the given monitors are correctly programmed to handle these old video modes in the best way possible, including letterboxing on the 1280x1024 monitors. Not all monitors actually handle old video modes well. Somewhere there's a thread where people posted test results with various monitors.
The biggest problem with LCDs is that some of these old modes typically run at 70Hz, and LCDs don't do 70Hz natively. I don't have much practical experience with using DOS on LCDs though.