Snapshots Water,
water everywhere, but not a drop to
drink. It
took a stout Pick Axe to break
its way through the thick ice
cap. A
few minutes later, it was broken
up enough to let the livestock
get some badly needed
water. Nikon D3
photos, Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 zoom lens,
ISO 200, Programmed Auto
Exposure.
The big chill of January 2010 sealed off
the top of our watering tanks with solid
ice.
LCD Monitors - Get the best image quality with maximum native screen resolution.
LCD Flat Panel Monitors & Laptop Computer Screens need to be run at maximum native resolution to display images, text, and graphics at their best. In many cases, what people consider to be a poor quality LCD monitor or laptop screen is simply the result of using less than maximum (also called full) native resolution.
What is Native Resolution?
All LCD screens are built with a fixed quantity and size of display pixels. This fixed quantity & size of pixels is called native resolution. Different sizes of LCD screens have different native resolutions. Generally speaking, the larger the screen, the higher the native resolution.
Native resolution is the maximum resolution an LCD screen can display. In other words, a 1600 x 1200 resolution LCD monitor cannot display anything greater than 1600 x 1200 pixels.
How do you know what your LCD screen's native resolution is?
If you don't have the monitor's documentation available, you can run a system diagnostic program like Everest Ultimate Edition.
Free download / free trial version available at their site.
Important: The term "Native Resolution" applies only to LCD screens, it does not apply to CRT monitors.
There is no fixed resolution on CRT monitors. A CRT monitor can project a variety of different resolutions onto its blank display screen, similar to how a movie or slide projector works.
Your video card has the ability to display less than maximum native resolution on an LCD screen, but you really shouldn't do it.
Because video cards are not specifically designated for just LCD or just CRT use, they can work on either type of monitor. A video card can display a lower screen resolution than the LCD's built-in native resolution, but it's not a good idea. That's because lower screen resolutions degrade image quality when scaled to fill a screen using less than native resolution.
Example:
A grid representing
a 20" LCD panel's 1600 x 1200 pixel native
resolution screen. Let's say you
decide to reduce the screen resolution to 1280 x
960 pixels because you like the look of larger
images, text, and icons. 1280 x 960 pixels
actually cover an area like this. The LCD's
fixed-pixel display automatically scales up the
lower screen resolution it to fit onto its 1600 x
1200 native resolution screen. The enlarged 1280 x
960 pixels now cover the full screen. Yes, images, text,
and icons will look bigger. But the
scaled pixels are mismatched in size with
the actual screen pixels. Red
grid: Scaled display pixels. Black grid:
Actual screen pixels. The scaling
mismatch causes losses in image sharpness, poor
text quality, and / or edge color
fringing.
Below: An extreme example of blurred, broken, & artifacted text caused by resolution scaling.
The loss of display quality by running mismatched resolutions on an LCD screen can be minimal depending on your choice of settings, but it's definitely something you need to be aware of.
For example, I originally set up my wife's Dell 2007FP LCD monitor with her preferred display setting of 1280 x 960. She liked the way the text, fonts, and icon sizes looked at that resolution ... and everything seemed to be great. If I didn't know better, we both would have been satisfied with the display quality as it was.
But when I changed the display setting to match the screen's native resolution of 1600 x 1200 so I could show her what she was missing out on, the improvement was obvious. Text, fonts, and icons were smaller than she liked but the overall display quality became virtually perfect. So I bumped up the text, font, and icon sizes one notch and now we're both happy.
The Bottom Line:
Always match your screen output resolution with your LCD panel's maximum native resolution. A good MVA, PVA, or IPS panel LCD monitor set at full native resolution can deliver image and text quality that's equal to or better than a good CRT monitor. IPS panels are considered by professionals to be the best.
How do you match your video card's screen resolution with your LCD panel's native resolution?
Your video card's screen resolution can be easily set equal to your LCD panel's native resolution in the display properties section of your computer's control panel. (Windows XP screenshot shown)
To learn more about LCD screens, visit Lonestardigital's Links Page - there's a special section just for LCD monitors.
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