Many people, nowadays, when they buy a new game for their computer to play, they normally check the system requirements first to make sure that their rig can handle it. This happened to me when I recently bought the new game, Call of Duty 4. Although it is not a graphically or CPU intense game, it is a new release based on many advanced shaders and models. I myself, have a Pentium 4(I know it’s aging, getting a dual core soon) 2.6 ghz with 1 gb of RAM, and a x1600 Pro 512 mb graphics card. When I installed the game and launched it, there was a button that said optimize graphics automatically, which means to test the cpu and graphic card speed and set configurations based on what the computer tells it. It gave me horrible results, 640×480, 2x antialiasing, and everything else on low. I thought to myself, my computer can’t be this bad can it? Many people think that if you put your game on the lowest resolution, then everything will run fine, but no, this is not the case for most games. So, I did the first few missions in Call of Duty 4 and realized, yes, its bad as it seems like it, 20 frames when looking at simple objects and that drops to 8-10 fps when doing those city missions. The quality of the graphics sucked because of the resolution i was playing in. After 20 minutes of choppy play, I couldn’t stand it. I quickly turned the resolution to 1280×900 (I have a 22in widescreen 1680×1050 native). Upon playing the mission, I noticed much better playability. I was getting around 40 to 50 frames per second during intense battles and 60 frames in simple environments. Turns out that if you have a slow CPU like me, and a moderate graphics card, you should set your resolution to the native res. of your monitor, or inbetween it somewhere. When you play a game on low resolution, it eats your CPU more than the graphics card and if you do it on higher resolution, the graphics card is taking more the load and the CPU less, therefore, making less of a bottleneck and higher game quality.