The "Chasing Pixels"'article has inspired me to ask a question that fear of being laughed at has prevented me from asking:

How can one play a game in full screen at a lower resolution and still get an acceptable look?

Yes "acceptable" is objective. But are there ratios that are better than others or tricks or tweaks to overcome the soft fuzzy appearance of a non native resolution? My situation is that I have an iMac with a 2560 x (something--not at my computer presently). This computer also uses a mobile ATI 6790 GPU. It runs most things suprizingly well. Rise of Flight is stunning at that resolution. Arma2 and Takeon Helicopters both struggle. I have tried lower resolutions with FXAA but the result was still disappointing, I will appreciate all answers including those disparaging my equipment choice .

My graphics driver has an option that runs the LCD monitor at native resolution, and resamples lower resolutions on the GPU.

It's been a while since I've looked at the features, but I think it was called "hardware scaling". For me, this looks pretty good. And I sometimes run resolutions as low as 320x240 (and even less) in DOSBox games.

Wow! That's very cool. Thanks.

(fingers crossed)

Don't ever be afraid to ask a question, even one you think is dumb, cause more than likely, someone else is looking for the same answer as you.

Will do.

No ATI hardware scaling options in CCC. There is "scaling" but it only forces full screen when using a non native aspect ratio.

hardware scaling is under the panel options in CCC i think.

From what I can find on the internets, it used to be. But there is no "Panel" properties in the current Advanced CCC. Information is thin but that's what I've managed to put together. If anyone has found otherwise I wounld appreciate the correction.

Correction. It would be there if my display's EDID allowed it. In that case it would be called "My Digital Flat-Panels" in CCC. Instead it is called "My Built in Displays". Its a Mac thing I believe.