This post on the forum made me think a bit about the level of discomfort I allow myself in games:

You said earlier you were going to review
Elderscrolls IV: Oblivion. I think it would be prudent to check their
forums first - especially the bugs thread, purely on the basis that I
foresee you giving it really high marks, when currently for some people
on increadible gaming rigs, it's unplayable.

The main technical problem I personally have with Oblivion is that it runs almost well enough on my fairly moderately specced PC at home to get HDR on in my monitor's native resolution. It's so close to being fine, that I'm actually putting up with slowdown and stuttering when I know dropping the res by one level would sort it out, but would reduce some of the glorious world detail to a muddy smudge.

There's clearly an article there somewhere we should pursue about optimal video settings for LCD monitors. In the meantime I'm just going to remain frustrated knowing that my Oblivion experience is almost, but not quite, perfect.