QUOTE(thax @ May 16 2006, 07:03 PM)
From my understanding all frames are rendered at 720p resolution (with the exception of PGR3) then the webtv chip scales the output to the configured resolution. This would make the performance the same across all settings and cables.
That's not entirely true...
MS requires all games be made to support 720p resolution (1280x720). The WebTV scaler chip can scale any game resolution to any other resolution supported by the console.
SOME Games are actually built to render at a multitude of resolutions. For instance Condemned can render at both 640x480 (480i/p) as well as 1280x720 (720p). So if you have your display set to 480p then the scaler isn't doing anything because the game is actually rendering at that size.
Kameo on the other hand ONLY supports 1280x720, so no matter what your console is set to output it will always be rendering 720p and scaling it to your output.
Interesting enough all of the first party game ONLY support 720p (PGR is 600p but that's another story), where most 3rd party games support that as well as 480p, some even natively support 1080i (it should say on the box)
That's why some games run smoother when playing through a 480 based connection, because they're actually rendering at that resolution.
Now when using a VGA cable it's kind of a crap-shoot. Some games, even if you're displaying at 1280x1024 even though it can fully fit the 720p render it will choose to render the game at 640x480 because it's a fullscreen format as opposed to a widescreen. This is based entirely on how the developer decided the game should work in such a situation. It sucks but that's how it is.