Q: I have a 17" Flatscreen CRT (HP Pavilion mx704) and play games on an nVidia 7600GS. I planned on buying a 22" LCD (Samsung 2253BW) until I realised that this could dramatically effect my graphics card. I play Call Of Duty 4 and Battlefield 2142 on the highest settings but only just make it. I want to keep the same video settings in the game and have the same experience. Would keeping the original settings (including the low screen resolution settings I used on my CRT) make the game run the same?
A: You can run the same resolution on the LCD as you did on the CRT, but you probably won't want to. First of all, the LCD is going to have a different aspect ratio (16:10) from the CRT (4:3), so everything is going to look stretched out on the LCD. Also, since the screen's native resolution (i.e. the number of pixels across the screen) will not match the graphics card's resolution, the picture won't be terribly clear. I was going to suggest testing the CRT with your future LCD's resolution (1680x1050), but I looked up the specs for your CRT and it won't handle that resolution with any refresh rates. What I would recommend is to search the web for some reviews of your video card to see what sort of performance they've found at that resolution (or the next higher, if they don't test that one). My guess is, though, that if you only "just make it" with your current settings, then you're going to want to upgrade your video card if you go for the larger monitor.