Hi, I assume that the high resolution of the 27 (2560x1440) will make 3D games practically unplayable? Ive seen posts where people said they game at lower resolutions on the 27, such as 1920x1200.
Im new to imacs, and only have experience on PCs. On a PC LCD, if you run a resolution lower than the native resolution, the result is slightly blurry and loses sharpness. Is that the same with the imac? Or is the sharpness retained but less of the screen is used? How does it work exactly?
Its simple. LCDs have a fixed number of pixels, that number define native resolution.
If the computer send a signal in a non-native resolution, then the screen still have to show it using its fixed number of physical pixels. So, the screen have to use some kind of algorithm to "create" some new pixels to fill the empty ones, and also since the ratio is not a "natural number" and that you can't divide physical pixels, it even have to change some of the color information of all pixels, just to try to be closer to what the original image represent. Its like i tell you to build a Lego model, and after that i ask you to build the same model but 1.2 time bigger. You will have to change all the structure of your model in order to keep a relatively similar aspect, but it will never be an EXACT copy of the original just 1.2 time bigger. It will look like it but will be just not really as precise as the original.
Its the same thing for LCD at non-native resolution, that apply to PC and Macs.
The only exception is if the ratio between native and non-native resolution is a "clean" fraction, like 1/2.
If i tell you to build a 2 time bigger copy of your lego model, it will be easy. Just double in all dimensions the number of bricks you used. The result will be the "same" as the original, and exactly 2 times bigger.
So, the 2560x1440 display on the iMac can also render "sharply" a 1280x720 (720p) resolution, since it is exactly half the number of pixels in both dimension. It will just use 4 pixels for every pixels.
