Best Low Res Games For Mac

I have a 1280 x 1024 (4:3) resolution monitor. However, because my graphics card is absolutely horrible I have to play every game with the lowest possible settings. Even then games barely run at more than 10fps. To increase this, I always use a 800 x 600 full-screen resolution So the game is actually stretched to my screen. Assume now a player with a certain amount of skill in a first person shooter who has 2 setups: • game running at 1280 x 1024 resolution with a 1280 x 1024 resolution monitor • game running at 800 x 600 resolution with a 1280 x 1024 resolution monitor In what setup would the player achieve the best performance?

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I was thinking setup 2 because the same amount of content is stretched to a bigger surface, however reasoning further makes my brain hurt. Note: there are similar questions about stretching resolutions on Arqade but unlike those I'm not interested in the effects on the graphics card. Most first person shooter engines have a fixed FOV (Field Of View) angle. That means the screen from left to right always shows the same content regardless of screen resolution (usually about 90°). So a lower resolution on a screen of the same size means basically one thing: larger pixels.

Larger pixels mean less detail. That means on long range, a player with a higher resolution can perceive details which a player with a smaller resolution wouldn't. This gives him a distinct gameplay advantage on larger distances. Also note that running a screen on a different resolution than what it was designed for will result in interpolated pixels which further reduces image quality which can also affect the players performance negatively. An argument I read in a similar discussion several years ago is that bigger pixels means that you aim at larger targets and thus have an advantage. This is based on the wrong assumption that you hit what you see.

This is wrong because hit detection is usually done with invisible hitboxes which aren't affected by the screen resolution of the player. In online gaming it's double-wrong, because the hit detection is done on the server, and the server doesn't even know the resolution the players are playing with. As other said, mostly NO, BUT Some older singleplayer games used pixel precision aiming, it can be decided quickly by rendering everything black and only targets colored and ask color of pixel and its player friendly (if you see you should hit, you hit).

As sidenote: there can be benefit of using lesser graphical fidelity. Eg, no flare efects - you are not blinded by light, simple smoke in CS allowed to see through but better obscured much more. And there can be small advantage in smaller resolution - if some texts are sized in pixels, they can be easier to read when pixels are bigger (but thats beneficial only with smaller native resolution). But that is not something that should have impact on player's performance in FPS (only on comfort). If both resolutions run with the same FPS, then setup 1 would be more beneficial.