The hidden flaw of widescreen monitors

I haven't played BioShock properly yet. Part of the issue has to do with a bug I've got which causes the sound to get the shits and cut out a lot. Seems to be a problem with BioShock's audio engine + Vista, according to other people's complaints with the same issue, but I guess that's what you get for a game branded "Games for Windows". This will probably end up getting fixed with an updated driver/patch for the game though, since it's the game's fault and not my hardware (don't have any sound issues elsewhere).

The major issue is frame rate. It fucking sucks, and because the game isn't particularly scalable like Source for example, it remains crap no matter what I do. I'm running an AMD64 3200+ (single core), 2GB RAM, 7600GT. This is enough for pretty much everything but BioShock, however I'm not going to upgrade just for a single game, particularly if everything else runs fine.

The purpose of this thread is to highlight something I didn't realize when I bought my widescreen monitor last year. At the time, everything ran fine. Now, things like BioShock and STALKER (with using the advanced lighting renderers) have issues. If this was a normal CRT monitor I could have easily pulled down the res to something like 1024x768, which I believe would have been low enough for a playable rate, then I could join in the threads here. However, being a widescreen LCD with a native res of 1680x1050, I simply can't do that. As far as I'm concerned, anything other than native is simply not worth playing, and since the hardware isn't enough to run the game properly, I can't play.

The flaw is therefore simply this: if you purchase a widescreen monitor, bare in mind that you've instantly reduced the usable lifespan of your gaming hardware by a fair amount. Unless you like stretched out/black-barred, blurry (due to pixel interpolation) pictures, you'll want to run at native or not at all, and this requires you to remain at the top of the hardware game. If you remain stubborn like me, you'll fail.

Since I'm trying to save my moneys for more important things at the moment, the state of the hardware's probably not gonna change much until something breaks and I HAVE to upgrade. Still, I provide this as a public service to anyone considering a widescreen display. If you are flush with cash and doing mind upgrading way too often, go ahead and enjoy. Otherwise, be wary.
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