Gaming displays 1080p vs 1200?

[themadhatta]

I dont know as much as id like about 1080p and monitor resolutions but i know enough. The one thing im not sure about is whether 1920X1080 means the monitor is 1080p or if thats just a coincidence that they both have 1080.

What i wanna ask about is if it seems thing are heading towards a 1920X1200 display for gaming and possibly tv. Im still running tons of 1920X1080 monitors and i came across a page from diablo 3 where they released some backgrounds for us. The problem is that the backgrounds dont have a 1920X1080 res option we get a lot of the lower ones people still use but i have to choose between 1680X1050 or 1920X1200.

Whats your opinion on this?
And can someone explain the connections between 1080p and the resolutions of 1680X1050, 1920X1080, and 1920X1200?
- Thanks

 

[Orenius]

My understanding is that 1920 x 1200 is more "computer" oriented, as it offers a higher resolution (120 more pixels vertically), and therefore more screen real estate to work with in word processing and graphical work. I believe things are going more in the 1080p direction -- for marketing purposes mostly, as the lay person tends to think of "1080p" as the Gold Standard.

I'm personally interested in getting a 1920x1200 monitor, as I'd love to have more vertical pixels. When it comes to gaming, from what I gather, it depends on if the game supports your monitor's resolution. I've heard (someone correct me if I'm wrong, as I'd like to know for certain myself) that many games today are now made with 1080p in mind, that if you play on a monitor with 1200 pixels, you may end up cutting off some of the lower part of the game screen.

 

[themadhatta]

That would make sense, but im sure considering, a lot of games do cut off at 1080p that we will run into either stretched or fixed screens for gaming. Hoping it will be the latter and that it wont affect performance at all, but thats all speculation. I dont know nearly enough about this topic as id like.

Are there a lot of games or a handful of big games out there supporting 1920X1200? From what i remember reading a few months back it seemed like a lot of the big games like BF3 and possibly SWTOR allow for resolutions higher than 1920X1200. Of course i may be wrong.

I remember being told that the reason i was reading recommendations of using 1 monitor per gpu in a multi gpu setup was if you were running monitors with higher resolutions than the standard sized 1080p monitors. Im figuring standard size is anywhere between 18" and 21" maybe 23"

 

[naf]

1080p is the same as 1920x1080, and its ratio is 16:9 (16 units wide to 9 units tall), which is media/movie-centric. Many people like it because you can watch a 16:9 widescreen movie without black bars at the top and bottom (aka "letterboxing"). Also, I believe many modern games have 16:9 in mind.

16:10 is a more productivity-centric widescreen ratio, as it provides more vertical resolution for vertical content such as web pages and text documents. A typical 16:9 widescreen movie will not fill a 16:10 screen. The 16:10 resolution hierarchy is:
1680x1050 -> 1920x1200 -> 2560x1600.

There is never a content compatibility issue between the ratios, it just comes down to whether black bars at the top and bottom annoy you more or less than losing vertical resolution for text. 1080p-designed games will not be stretched to fit a 1200p screen, they will either have some content chopped off or there will be letterboxing (but I have no experience with this so maybe someone else could weigh in).

You can run two 1080p or 1920x1200 screens on a single GPU, but two 2560x1600 (or it's 16:9 equivalent 2560x1440) panels would require two GPUs.