Just recieved new e6520 screen question?

Switching back to PC lappy after using MBP for years, which I was really happy with most of the time, - Just recieved this new e6520 after doing lord knows how many hours of research on this, but I think Dell got me on this one. I hope Im just stupid and cant figure it out but shouldnt I be able to see my screen resolution in the nvidia control panel and adjust from there, its showing 1366x768 is my highest, but I ordered the FHD 1920x1080 screen - I read somewhere this system switches between native and nvidia? Do I need to do something somewhere else because this screen is nothing to write home about - pretty poor actually - Im thinking they just did not send the right unit, all other options seem to be there ???? So I should see my resolution settings in the control panel etc. have not been on windows 7 much.

 

Display an entirely black image on the screen while turned up to full brightness. If it looks noticeably gray, it's the 1366x768 screen. Call Dell and get them to replace it.

 

does anyone have a e6520 that has the option to display 1920 right, should be there if its the 1920 screen

 

Check the BIOS to see what the native resolution of the screen is. Press F2 when you see the Dell logo come up on boot. I think it's Device Info, but that's off the top of my head. Poke around if you can't find it.

If it says 1366x768 there, you need to get a replacement LCD from Dell. They put the wrong part in. Otherwise, update your driver to the latest one on Dell's site.

 

NCSU's bookstore has two E6520's for sale. One has 1600x900 and one has 1920x1080. Both of them display their native resolution properly, and show their respective maximum resolution in the screen-res setting dialog.

The 1920x1080 model has its DPI settings turned up to 125%, the 1600x900 model has its DPI settings set at 100%.

(They were originally planning on selling these laptops with the 1366x768 screens. I noticed this on the website when the laptops were put up for order, and sent an email to the IT department saying it's unacceptable to sell the laptops with 1366x768 since they're geared towards engineering students. In my email, as well as mentioning how the resolution is meant for 12-inch laptops and the fact that their Thinkpads all come with 1600x900, I referenced some Notebookcheck reviews and some NBR user reviews of the 1366x768 screen, showing how bad the quality is. They updated the configurations within a week: 1600x900 for the dual-core model and 1920x1080 for the quad-core model. They also switched the E6420 from 1366x768 to 1600x900 as well.)

 

Out of interest, has anyone tried runing the 1920x1080 at 1366x768? Would this be worse than the 1366x768 screen or would the superior quality of the FHD screen beat the lower res screen, even when running at non-native resolution?

I went for the HD touch screen but screen wasn't really relevant to me as 99.9% of the time I use a monitor.

However, I did check out screens in a (mass market) store and the only 15.6 I could find with 1920x1080 was a Sony and while the screen was very sharp, it was far too small for me. I can imagine it would also be too small for others. 1366x768 was much more preferable.

I have Sony LCD monitor that scales very well to a lower resolution (things looking a bit softer but not blurred) but an old Fujitsu laptop looks poor when running at non-native. How does the Dell 15.6 FHD screen do?

 

Considering that the scaling factor is like 0.711, it's probably going to look terrible (although that may be subjective, that may not be something I can live with, but I know some people that run their 1440x900 screens at 1280x800). Did you try increasing the DPI?