Other hardware components can negatively impact the experience too, even though the video card plays a critical role. It happens if you have a video card that is not able to meet the demands of the games that you are playing.

First, if you increased the screen resolution, you may find that video-intensive displays (such as games) may be noticeably slower since the video takes more resources to render at higher resolutions.

Open Control Panel, and go to ' Appearance and Personalization -> Adjust Screen Resolution.' The link is found in the Display section, as highlighted below. You can get to Screen Resolution from the Control Panel. How to get to the screen resolution settings in Windows 7 and Windows 8.1Ĭhanging the screen's resolution or its orientation, in Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, is done from a window named Screen Resolution. It provides the context and explains the concepts you need to consider when changing screen resolution. That is great, and it means that you get the maximum screen space available as soon as you log into Windows for the first time.īefore you move forward, we recommend that you read: What is the screen resolution or the aspect ratio? What do 720p, 1080i & 1080p mean?. If all goes well, it automatically sets the resolution to the maximum supported by your display. In Windows, the operating system tries to correctly identify your monitor model, its aspect ratio and supported resolutions. Fortunately, Windows has always had a built-in safeguard. Even after that, not all resolutions were appropriate for all monitors, and you could (and often did) get garbage or a black screen if you tried to use them. Higher resolution displays were the job of the graphics cards manufacturers, and each card came with a disk full of drivers.

It was a 'lowest common denominator' approach that guaranteed that people installing Windows would at least be able to see what was on the screen from the get-go. In years gone by, the choice of screen resolution was almost always entirely up to a trial and error process led by the user, since Windows defaulted to one or two low-resolution screens. Setting the screen resolution is more automatic than it used to be

Windows 8 change resolution