ASUS G73 display question

Hey I'm thinking of getting the ASUS G73, in bestbuy the model is offered with a display that is not full HD, but I heard this is better for games as it is easier for the machine to handle the game.

I don't want to buy it from BestBuy though as their products arent legible for Asus' manufactured warranty. I found a model at Computer Canada for roughly the same price, however the display is full HD. If I get the ASUS G73 from CC can I just lower the resolution while playing to achieve the same affect.

Also,
Ive been reading some posts about the machine, and it appears a lot of people have problems with the Aus G73. Should I consider another machine.
Thanks

 

Only minority of g73 owner have issues. And those that have issues owned the earlier models. Right now, its pretty much ironed out as quality control increase.

on topic, its much better to have HD res simply because of better picture. Sure you lose few frames but I don't think its worth switching to the inferior screen.

 

thats good to hear,
I can drop the res a little to gain some fps right?
Anyway i think ill just get the model. Thanks

 

To make your decision a wee bit harder I would opt for the 1600*900 display. First of all, it depends on what are you used to. I had 15" laptop with 1280*800 and external 22" 1680*1050, so for me the change to G73's 17,6" with 1600*900 was actually shift to finer display and I'd to set larger icons and fonts and zoom everithing in, because it was suddenly smaller then I was used to

Anyway, if you are not working with many pictures/videos/documents/whatever at once or used to be browsing web on the left half of your screen while watching new episode of Days of Our Lives in top right corner and checking stock exchange in the bottom right, you don't need so much space and thus so huge resolution. Neither the full-HD or the HD+ (as ASUS calls the 1600*900 one) are very good displays and refer to the price and size category the G73 belongs (not so good viewing angles, uneven backlitting, smaller color range and so on). Again it depends on what are you used to - it matches or is even better then the low-end desktop LCD's but can't match more expensive or professional displays.

And if you haven't bought your G73 yet, I will add something that would probably decide for you - you definately can NOT play games on other than native resolution on LCD screen. It would look so bad, that its much better to lower other details and keep the resolution maxed out. Moreover, the 1600*900 is 1,44 MPixels while 1920*1080 is 2,07 MPixels so theoretically the video card has to compute almost 45% more graphical content for the full-HD display. In reality the difference in the frame reate is smaller, approx. 20% depending on the game ( ASUS G73Jh: Today's Top Gaming Laptop - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News ), but you will still be able to play new games on max details for several months longer with the 1600*900 display ;-)

I hope I helped. My configuration of G73 is Core i5 430M, 4GB 1066Mhz DDR3 (you don't need either i7 or more RAM for gaming but it can be useful for some other demanding tasks), 500GB HDD 7200rpm, 1600*900 LCD, DVDRW and WIN7 HP with built-in Bluetooth and ROG backpack and it was for about 300$ cheaper then the version with i7 720QM, 6GB 1333 Mhz RAM and full-HD LCD. I won't argue which of these two versions is the better value (probably even the quad-core) but I wanted 1600*900 display so I chose the cheaper one (FYI I'm from the Czech Republic and the specifications and prices that are available here are quite different from those in the US).

Cheers

 

You abviosly haven't seen my FullHD screen on my A1. The viewing angles are actually very good (some loss on angle, but only minimal) and the lighting is very even, probably from being a LED unit.

You haven't noticed this thing in the CCC about changing scaling behavior. If you want to use a resolution lower than your screen, but don't want the blurries, change the scaling option to non-stretching. It will center the screen keeping black bars around the screen, and will be just as sharp as native mode.

 

Not to disparage another poster, but I'm not certain P4nBobr's points are all vetted properly.

Getting the higher resolution screen also means your screen will have the best contrast ratio on any laptop outside of a $4500+ professional Dell mobile workstation. Brightness is average, but sharpness is also stellar. Colour gamut is better than average, almost on par with nice desktop lcds. I'm not sure where the information that this display is bad came from, it was widely acclaimed and a major buying point for me. So far, it looks amazing and the viewing angles are the best I've ever seen. There is hardly any wash out or fade no matter what angle I'm viewing from.Do your own research here.

Playing games at lower resolutions with 'max settings' usually means cranking up the anti-aliasing. On a higher resolution screen you don't NEED that AA. Turn it down or off and keep all of the detail high without killing your performance.

This machine is not configured with an i5 or 4gb ram anywhere I've ever seen or heard of... so I'm not sure what to say about that. The i5 might have a better thermal headroom for turbo boosting in older games, but any of those games shouldn't really be bottlenecked too badly by the 720qm anyways.