Tommy's · Jun 30, 2011, 03:08 PM // 15:08

Hey there

So this is the deal: I want to try and go play guildwars on my mac. I've got a few methods in mind for that and hopefully I will get to play it in full screen modus. The thing is, the reason I want to play it on my mac is for aesthetics. The screen is much sharper and brighter then my laptop screen, so I want to give this a go. This brings me towards my question for you people. I have a 27'' iMac with a screen resolution of 2560 x 1440 px. I've really got no knowledge on screenresolutions so my question to you is:

Will GuildWars still look good in such a big screensize or will it look even worse then on my laptop (1200x800, believe its 15') because I will be able to count every pixel?

Please share your thoughts

@Mods, I didn't really know any good searchhits, so my apologies if there is a similar thread. I placed this in Q&A because I figured it wasn't that technical and therefor not really suited for the Technicians Corner. Hope its ok here.

Pinkest One · Jun 30, 2011, 03:52 PM // 15:52

Not very familiar with the technical specifications on your iMac,but if you can enable and your hardware can handle it, turn the anti-aliasing up to 4x and it will still look smooth at such high resolutions.

At least it does on my 25" at 1920x1080.

Olle · Jun 30, 2011, 04:00 PM // 16:00

gw looks cool when upsized..but your eyes will melt. ^^

Urcscumug · Jun 30, 2011, 04:17 PM // 16:17

Yeah, my fear as well, that you'll go blind from squinting at the writing. It's the main reason that kept me from playing on larger screens, otherwise I would have loved the extra space.

Tommy's · Jun 30, 2011, 04:24 PM // 16:24

Thanks for the replies so far!

Humm, my eyes will melt, not something I'm looking forward to

Is it mostly because of the brightness, or is it really with reading text like chat log and such?

the one you love to hate · Jun 30, 2011, 04:31 PM // 16:31

you will be fine. i play gw on my 36" and i have no problems. it is great to be able to have that extra space.

gremlin · Jun 30, 2011, 04:37 PM // 16:37

Not only does it look great on bigger screens but your able to have minimap hero bars etc without them taking over the screen.

22 inch monitor 1920 by 1080

Nikhera · Jun 30, 2011, 05:19 PM // 17:19

Wanna hear something funny? I played Guild Wars once on a 55 inch LCD TV. (It's connected to the computer we have in the basement, so we can watch things we've downloaded.)

It was wonderful. XD So go for it.

Godrik Gandolfi · Jun 30, 2011, 06:02 PM // 18:02

Hi - you are in for a treat! I run GW on my mac pro with 30 inch cinema display. It runs very well in win 7 on parallels as a virtual machine. I allocated it a single processor and 4gb ram. The graphics handle the large display beautifully and you won't want to go back but you may want to rearrange the interface so that combat info is clustered around the skill bar. All heroes can have their interfaces open - I run mine along the top of the screen.

Accessories such as the Belkin game keypad work fine. One nice touch with this parallels set up is that just hitting F6 toggles you back and forth to OS X instantly, so it's easy to refer to the wiki or cut/paste templates etc. Also add-ons such as texmod and pwned work fine too.

Good luck - I think it's actually a better setup than running it in native windows.

Quaker · Jun 30, 2011, 06:28 PM // 18:28

GW should look good at that rez, if you can set the game to it. However, depending upon what the iMac has for a graphics card, it may struggle to play it at a decent frame rate. (If it's an HD6970m then you should be ok)

As a side note, I tried playing GW on my 46" HDTV. It played just fine (HD4850 @ 1920x1080), but from my normal seating position the text in the chat boxes, etc., was too small to read comfortably. Overall, I prefer to sit in front of my desktop with the 24" monitor.

Tommy's · Jun 30, 2011, 06:56 PM // 18:56

Sounds great all, thanks.

@Godrik. Hmm I was planning on a Wine-like program, but way seems very valid as well. Should have a good thought on that one

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quaker

GW should look good at that rez, if you can set the game to it. However, depending upon what the iMac has for a graphics card, it may struggle to play it at a descent frame rate. (If it's an HD6970m then you should be ok)

I've got a ATI Radeon HD 5750. No clue on graphics cards. Do you think it will suffice?

Chrisworld · Jul 01, 2011, 03:25 AM // 03:25

What kind of GPU is in your 27" iMac? My old 20" iMac had an x1600 and running at 1680x1050 it kinda touched the limits. The high resolution will be fine but if the GPU isn't too powerful you will notice a drop in frames due to such a high amount of pixels being displayed at once. But I think the newer macs are in the Radeon HD 5000 - 6500 range now so you're probably going to be fine.

EDIT- oh and the bigger you go, you will never be able to go back.

the more room you have on your screen the more you will drool.

David366 · Jul 01, 2011, 06:56 AM // 06:56

in the graphics tab, click on "large" or "larger" in the interface and the letters get bigger.

Urcscumug · Jul 01, 2011, 08:10 AM // 08:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tommy's

Humm, my eyes will melt, not something I'm looking forward to Is it mostly because of the brightness, or is it really with reading text like chat log and such?

It's because of the text size. It only has a few settings and the biggest one starts falling short already at "normal" screen resolutions (1280 or 1920).

It depends on how much you play and how good/young your eyes are, but eventually over long term you will feel the melt. :P

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chrisworld

EDIT- oh and the bigger you go, you will never be able to go back.
the more room you have on your screen the more you will drool.

Hmm I dunno about that. At some point having to look all over a big screen for important stuff (bars etc.) starts becoming inefficient. The human field of view is limited and the area you can reasonably focus on is even smaller.

Quaker · Jul 01, 2011, 03:40 PM // 15:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tommy's

I've got a ATI Radeon HD 5750. Do you think it will suffice?

An HD5750, will struggle with GW at that rez. However, it may work well enough with the graphics options turned down some. At that rez you don't need as much AA (Anti-Aliasing) to make it look good, so one of the first things you can do to boost fps (frame rate) is to set the AA to 2x, or even OFF.

RE screen size:
It is nice to have a large screen to play on, but you need to keep in mind your relative seating position and your field of vision. Earlier, when I mentioned playing on my 46" TV, the problem was that, given the distance that my Lazy-boy is from the TV, the computer monitor actually looks bigger (fills more of my field of vision) because of my closer seating position. Sure, I could sit on the floor in front of my TV, but that's not what I would call comfortable.

RE text size:
Yes, you can increase the interface size to make the text larger, but, since it increases the size of all of the interface, it somewhat negates the advantage of the larger screen. For me, the best settings are a 22-24" computer monitor with a "small" interface size. (1680x1050 or 1920x1080/1200)

Rob Roy The Divine · Jul 01, 2011, 03:47 PM // 15:47

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...b/DSC00296.jpg

this is playing with the HDMI on my old laptop that had integrated graphics on highest settings.

i doubt you'll have a problem with an HD 5750

Note: tv = 32inches

Haggis of Doom · Jul 01, 2011, 04:00 PM // 16:00

^Screen size does not necessarily mean high resolution. Judging by the size of the radar and party window, you are using a pretty low resolution.

Rob Roy The Divine · Jul 01, 2011, 05:06 PM // 17:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Haggis of Doom

^Screen size does not necessarily mean high resolution. Judging by the size of the radar and party window, you are using a pretty low resolution.

nope, i had all things on largest size, and my compass takes half the screen for pvp.

think the resolution i had in that was 1920x1200, so it was a decent size resolution ;3

Showtime · Jul 01, 2011, 07:21 PM // 19:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob Roy The Divine

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...b/DSC00296.jpg

this is playing with the HDMI on my old laptop that had integrated graphics on highest settings.

i doubt you'll have a problem with an HD 5750

Note: tv = 32inches

Nice. What cpu does it have? What rez is that monitor/tv...

Cuz what passes for playable for you, may not for others. The more stuff going on, the more your video has process. Since it's shared with your cpu, there's no way it's handling what discrete graphics and cpu can. Even an old game like GW will lag at times with any current onboard graphics.

I've played this game with 4 different grapic cards with 3 different cpus @ 1920x1080 or 1680x1050 or both. AMD@ 2.7ghz/ATI 9800/2 gigs couldn't do 1680x1050 with full eye candy at decent enuff clip for me. My current combo, a duo [email protected]/ATI 4850/4gigs can run GW w/full eye candy @1080 no problems 60 fps. It can handle one copy GW on each monitor, but not at full rez with all the eye candy on.

That being said, as long as it's acceptable for you...

Rob Roy The Divine · Jul 02, 2011, 01:42 AM // 01:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Showtime

Nice. What cpu does it have? What rez is that monitor/tv...

Cuz what passes for playable for you, may not for others. The more stuff going on, the more your video has process. Since it's shared with your cpu, there's no way it's handling what discrete graphics and cpu can. Even an old game like GW will lag at times with any current onboard graphics.

I've played this game with 4 different grapic cards with 3 different cpus @ 1920x1080 or 1680x1050 or both. AMD@ 2.7ghz/ATI 9800/2 gigs couldn't do 1680x1050 with full eye candy at decent enuff clip for me. My current combo, a duo [email protected]/ATI 4850/4gigs can run GW w/full eye candy @1080 no problems 60 fps. It can handle one copy GW on each monitor, but not at full rez with all the eye candy on.

That being said, as long as it's acceptable for you...

i've recently upgraded to:

core i7 @ 1.6ghz, nvidia 310m, 6gig ddr3, 125gig sshdd, 500gig sata hdd and other stuff, and it runs on the hdmi at full quality, averaging about 45 fps

my tv resolution is 1920x1200 btw

shame my ping wasn't that low...

Jun 30, 2011, 03:08 PM // 15:08	#1
Tommy's Furnace Stoker Join Date: Dec 2006 Guild: [Bone] Profession: Mo/	Guildwars on a large screen Hey there So this is the deal: I want to try and go play guildwars on my mac. I've got a few methods in mind for that and hopefully I will get to play it in full screen modus. The thing is, the reason I want to play it on my mac is for aesthetics. The screen is much sharper and brighter then my laptop screen, so I want to give this a go. This brings me towards my question for you people. I have a 27'' iMac with a screen resolution of 2560 x 1440 px. I've really got no knowledge on screenresolutions so my question to you is: Will GuildWars still look good in such a big screensize or will it look even worse then on my laptop (1200x800, believe its 15') because I will be able to count every pixel? Please share your thoughts @Mods, I didn't really know any good searchhits, so my apologies if there is a similar thread. I placed this in Q&A because I figured it wasn't that technical and therefor not really suited for the Technicians Corner. Hope its ok here.

Jun 30, 2011, 06:28 PM // 18:28	#10
Quaker Hell's Protector Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Canada Guild: Brothers Disgruntled	GW should look good at that rez, if you can set the game to it. However, depending upon what the iMac has for a graphics card, it may struggle to play it at a decent frame rate. (If it's an HD6970m then you should be ok) As a side note, I tried playing GW on my 46" HDTV. It played just fine (HD4850 @ 1920x1080), but from my normal seating position the text in the chat boxes, etc., was too small to read comfortably. Overall, I prefer to sit in front of my desktop with the 24" monitor. Last edited by Quaker; Jul 01, 2011 at 03:12 PM // 15:12..

Jun 30, 2011, 03:52 PM // 15:52	#2
Pinkest One Lion's Arch Merchant --> Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Ohio Guild: Amateur Pwnography [SeKz] Officer Profession: Mo/	Not very familiar with the technical specifications on your iMac,but if you can enable and your hardware can handle it, turn the anti-aliasing up to 4x and it will still look smooth at such high resolutions. At least it does on my 25" at 1920x1080.

Jun 30, 2011, 04:00 PM // 16:00	#3
Olle Furnace Stoker Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Ign: Miniature Julia Guild: Teh Academy[PhD] Profession: W/	gw looks cool when upsized..but your eyes will melt. ^^

Jun 30, 2011, 04:17 PM // 16:17	#4
Urcscumug Krytan Explorer Join Date: Jan 2011 Guild: UNO Profession: W/	Yeah, my fear as well, that you'll go blind from squinting at the writing. It's the main reason that kept me from playing on larger screens, otherwise I would have loved the extra space.

Jun 30, 2011, 04:24 PM // 16:24	#5
Tommy's Furnace Stoker Join Date: Dec 2006 Guild: [Bone] Profession: Mo/	Thanks for the replies so far! Humm, my eyes will melt, not something I'm looking forward to Is it mostly because of the brightness, or is it really with reading text like chat log and such?

Jun 30, 2011, 04:31 PM // 16:31	#6
the one you love to hate Krytan Explorer --> Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Houston, TX---U.S.A Guild: ??? We Luv Ectos ??? .... [?????????] IGN: Balths Knight Profession: D/	you will be fine. i play gw on my 36" and i have no problems. it is great to be able to have that extra space.

Jun 30, 2011, 04:37 PM // 16:37	#7
gremlin Furnace Stoker Join Date: Oct 2006 Guild: GWAR Profession: Me/Mo	Not only does it look great on bigger screens but your able to have minimap hero bars etc without them taking over the screen. 22 inch monitor 1920 by 1080

Jun 30, 2011, 05:19 PM // 17:19	#8
Nikhera Ascalonian Squire Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Canada Guild: Everlasting Sacred Path [ESP] Profession: E/	Wanna hear something funny? I played Guild Wars once on a 55 inch LCD TV. (It's connected to the computer we have in the basement, so we can watch things we've downloaded.) It was wonderful. XD So go for it.

Jun 30, 2011, 06:02 PM // 18:02	#9
Godrik Gandolfi Frost Gate Guardian Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: Canterbury, UK Guild: The Path Least Travelled Profession: W/	Hi - you are in for a treat! I run GW on my mac pro with 30 inch cinema display. It runs very well in win 7 on parallels as a virtual machine. I allocated it a single processor and 4gb ram. The graphics handle the large display beautifully and you won't want to go back but you may want to rearrange the interface so that combat info is clustered around the skill bar. All heroes can have their interfaces open - I run mine along the top of the screen. Accessories such as the Belkin game keypad work fine. One nice touch with this parallels set up is that just hitting F6 toggles you back and forth to OS X instantly, so it's easy to refer to the wiki or cut/paste templates etc. Also add-ons such as texmod and pwned work fine too. Good luck - I think it's actually a better setup than running it in native windows.

Jul 01, 2011, 03:25 AM // 03:25	#12
Chrisworld Krytan Explorer Join Date: Aug 2010 Guild: Gameamp Guides [AMP] Profession: W/	What kind of GPU is in your 27" iMac? My old 20" iMac had an x1600 and running at 1680x1050 it kinda touched the limits. The high resolution will be fine but if the GPU isn't too powerful you will notice a drop in frames due to such a high amount of pixels being displayed at once. But I think the newer macs are in the Radeon HD 5000 - 6500 range now so you're probably going to be fine. EDIT- oh and the bigger you go, you will never be able to go back. the more room you have on your screen the more you will drool.

Jul 01, 2011, 06:56 AM // 06:56	#13
David366 Ascalonian Squire Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Rogers, AR Guild: [GATE] Profession: R/	in the graphics tab, click on "large" or "larger" in the interface and the letters get bigger.

Jul 01, 2011, 03:47 PM // 15:47	#16
Rob Roy The Divine Academy Page Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Weegieville Guild: No Goats No Glory [BAAA] Profession: W/	http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...b/DSC00296.jpg this is playing with the HDMI on my old laptop that had integrated graphics on highest settings. i doubt you'll have a problem with an HD 5750 Note: tv = 32inches

Jul 01, 2011, 04:00 PM // 16:00	#17
Haggis of Doom Lion's Arch Merchant Join Date: May 2009 Guild: TGB Profession: W/	^Screen size does not necessarily mean high resolution. Judging by the size of the radar and party window, you are using a pretty low resolution.