Computers: The Technical Thread [!OT]

**mrwiseman** · June 8th, 2003, 08:51 AM

I went for the Philips.

**Xellos** · June 8th, 2003, 01:41 PM

Cool. I remember you talking about it on AIM w/me.

**melfice** · June 9th, 2003, 02:32 PM

It is true, For some odd reason CRT monitors allows you those syncs and resolutions. For example, Windows doesn't give me 1280x1024x32bits but i can Run Quake 2 in that resolution, and completely stable. Why is that?

**mrwiseman** · June 9th, 2003, 06:42 PM

CRTs may sync almost any mode you can think of as long as it's within the scanning H and V frequencies.

For example, your monitor will probably sync the 666x555 @ 72 Hz mode if your card did it. This mode requires a vertical frequency of 72 Hz (the number of times the electron beam retraces vertically to draw a new screen) (99.9999% monitors support that), and an horizontal frequency of 40 KHz (555*72, the number of times the electron beam retraces horizontally to draw a new line) (99% of monitors support that). Bit depth (bpp) is a graphic card issue and it's unrelated to the monitor. The mode 1200x555 @ 72 Hz will be supported just as 666x555, because the number of pixels in an horizontal line is not important either. However, be aware that your monitor dot pitch might not be small enough to properly display pixels that small, and as a consequence, you might get a blurry image.

Windows will let you choose the video modes the Registry says the driver will support. I don't remember which key was it but you can hack it to add more modes; it all depends on your video card and drivers.

My suggestion is that you specify that you have a super monitor capable of 3200x2000 @ 120 Hz or something like that. You should be the one in control of what modes do you support, not Windows. Then go Display Properties, Configuration, Advanced, Monitor, and select an appropiate frequency prior to selecting a higher res mode or after selecting a lower res mode.

How to determine your optimal modes:

You should know the H and V frequency ranges of your monitor. It's on the manual. Let's suppose you have 30-70 KHz for H and 60-120 Hz for V (these are very common in today's monitors).

If you want to run 1024x768 at optimal refresh rate, you'll need to set your monitor to...

1. No more than 120 Hz (max vertical retrace frequency)
2. 768 * VFreq less than or equal to 70 KHz (max horizontal retrace frequency)

So the optimal would be around 90 Hz (768 * 90 = 69120). Try 90 Hz. If it doesn't work, hack the Registry and go for 89 Hz.

The reason why Windows doesn't let you select that mode but Quake does could be one of these:
- Windows doesn't have it in the Registry. Install new drivers or hack it.
- You have the wrong monitor definition. Update it, set for yourself a super monitor as I suggested.
- You have it set to a higher Hz than your monitor would support, and Windows knows this. Lower your vertical frequency and try again. In this case, Quake would support it because it's using a buggy DirectX driver which sets the vertical frequency to 60 Hz or something like that, or the game has requested a lower Hz mode.

And if you can run 1024x768 @ 90 Hz, you can also run 2048x768 @ 90 Hz, with the above mentioned implications.

However, you should keep in mind 3 things:

1. You shouldn't really work on a frequency under 72 Hz in a 14" monitor and under 85 Hz in 17" monitor, because it's bad for your eyes and you'll notice flickering.

2. Aspect ratio. Stuff will look bad if it's far from 4:3 (800/600 = 4/3 = nice; 1200/600 = 2 = ugly).

3. Image size. 1024x768 in 14" sucks. 1280x1024 in 17" sucks. 640x480 in 17" sucks. JMO. Although fonts can be adjusted so they always look good, if resolution is too low, images will be too big, and if it's too high, images will be too small. Also, a smaller desktop is useless for drawing, CADs, etc. and a bigger desktop is welcome, not tom mention the thousands of programs that waste your computer screen you paid for with toolbars. As a general rule, you can measure your DPI (dots per inch) like this:
Find your monitor H and V sizes with a 2 equation system like this:

H / V = 4 / 3;
H^2 + V^2 = D^2;

D is visible the diagonal size (found in your manual, it's usually 16 for a 17" monitor, and yes, they are cheating when they say it's a 17" monitor).
Once you have it, all you have to do is HPixels / HSize for the horizontal DPI and VPixels / VSize for the vetical DPI (if the mode is 4:3 they'll match, meaning that a pixel is square). This measures space-relative resolution, i.e. how big or small will things be, regardless of the size of your monitor.
For best results, you should work in no less than 65 DPI and no more than 90 DPI. My favorite range is around 72 DPI, so I use 800x600 on 14" monitors and 1024x768 on 17" monitors.

----

Phew. Sorry if I wasn't too clear in my explanations, I don't have the time for a better article, but I'll elaborate on whatever you need, so please don't hesitate to ask.

I hope this helped [img]smile.gif[/img] .

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 09, 2003 03:43 PM: Message edited by: -Wiseman- ]</font>

**melfice** · June 10th, 2003, 02:55 PM

Don't worry, you always can test the resolutions of they're stable or not, also, 640x480x32bits@60 HZ is ALWAYS a stable resolution.

The monitor says it supports 1024x768@60 HZ, it is not a very expensive monitor, anyways...

**mrwiseman** · June 10th, 2003, 08:04 PM

Of course you can try them, but this way you can predict the exact frequency rates and maximum resolutions for your monitor.

**melfice** · June 11th, 2003, 02:39 PM

I tried configuring my monitor to give me 1600x1200, but it seems that it is the very monitor who doesn't allow the resolutions, or at least i haven't found the way...