question about resolution

[andythelandy]

I am looking at getting a 20" widescreen moniter that runs at 1680x1050. With a resolution this high i dont think I'm going to be able to play some of my games on the highest settings (specs in sig) what I'm wondering is will I be able to say use 1440x900 without it being streched and distorted?

thanks in advance

 

[TFT]

Quote from another site

All LCD screens can actually display only a single given resolution referred to as the native resolution. This is the physical number of horizontal and vertical pixels that make up the LCD matrix of the display. Setting a computer display to a resolution lower than this resolution will either cause the monitor to use a reduced visible area of the screen or it will have to do extrapolation. This extrapolation attempts to blend multiple pixels together to produce a similar image to what you would see if the monitor were to display it at the given resolution but it can result in fuzzy images

The aspect ratio is still quite close 16:10 against 16:9 so it should'nt distort but dependent on the monitor you could lose screen information and/or have a "fuzzy" picture.