G53JW-XA1: Resolutions other than native...

Hi all,
As you may know Asus G53JW has a Full HD 1920x1080 native resolution. Surprisingly, though 1600x900 has the same aspect ratio like 1920x1080 which is 1,777777777777778=16/9, the non-native but capable 1600x900 resolution wasn't present either in NVIDIA Control Panel (GTX 460M) and Screen Resolution section of Windows 7.

The problem: Though i managed to add 1600x900 as a custom resolution through NVIDIA Control Panel, however, when i switch to 1600x900 from 1920x1080, the screen/desktop looks very fuzzy/blurry and non-glossy as if interpolated which was perfect with in 1920x1080.

What is the reason? Though 1600x900 has the same aspect ratio with 1920x1080, shouldn't i see the same sharp/glossy display with 1600x900?

Having 1920x1080 is very overkill for 15.6" screen. Now i want to learn why lowering my resolution to a aspect-ratio capable resoluton causes unsharp/blurry display. Does it about my LCD panel? Is this behaviour normal?

Hope someone gives some insight,

Thanks!

 

Having the same aspect ratio just means that a circle is still going to be a circle (and not an oval). Any other resolution other than the native resolution (or integer multiples thereof, 2x, 3x, 0.5x, 0.25x, etc) will always be blurry. What used to be a single pixel now is 1.2 pixels, and obviously you can't just light up 0.2 of a pixel. Therefore you interpolate across two pixels and you get blurriness.

 

Thanks Lithus for your reply. It seems it's an expected behaviour because of pixels of LCD panel now they are not 1:1 on resolutions other than native such as 1600x900 though aspect ratio is preserved (16:9) Right?

This wiki entry mentions something about this:
Native resolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What happens in gaming? I obviously won't be able to play all the games at 1920x1080 and will have to lower gaming resolution to get more FPS, will i notice the same amount of blurriness in 3D games? That wouldn't be good just because of having a FULL HD capable LCD panel.

Hope you enlight me.

 

You will get some level of blurriness in games. However, if you don't mind having black bars around your screen, you can choose do not scale in the nVidia control panel. That means that if you select 1600x900, your GPU will display only 1600x900 pixels in the center of your screen and the remaining pixels that would light up won't.

 

Well, i wonder "more" about my display.

Question 1: Where isn't 1600x900 resolution listed in NVIDIA Control Panel? It must be listed because it has the same aspect ratio (16/9) with 1920x1080 which is a commonly used resolutions for 15.6" displays.

I can understand why 1366x768 wasn't listed whose aspect ratio is not exact 16/9.

BTW, putting a native a FULL HD (1920x1080) is too extraordinary for an 15.6" display. Every software's text is too small to read, you'll barely zoom in to see content of browsers/programs that you're dealing with...

The one of the most annoying part: Most of 3rd party softwares' tray icons (notification area) look very ugly and distorted such as Skype's and Nokia PC Suite's tray icons, whereas Windows system icons looks awesome such as network/sound/battery icon. What's up with that?

Any comments?

 

Your display has 1080 lines of pixels vertically and 1920 columns of pixels horizontally. If you use the native display resolution, your computer sends the same amount of pixels to the screen. If you set a resolution other than that, the number of pixels in your display doesn't magically change. Your computer then sends a lower (or higher) number of pixels then there are in the display, so the display has to interpolate (upscale or downscale) the image so it fits on the screen. Hence the blurriness.

If the text is too small for you, you can change the DPI setting. The fonts will be made larger.

About the icons, provide a screenshot to be clear.

 

Hi sarge,
To be specific, let me show you screenshot:
http://i56.tinypic.com/fkqjiq.png

As you see, popular 3rd party icons such as Skype, Nokia PC Suite, Asus NB Probe and many...seems very distorted, truncated and non-sharp. I installed these programs on several computers whose native resolutions were lower than mine (1280x800, 1366x768...) looks just fine. On the other hand,built-in Windows icons looks just fine on my FULL HD native resolution.


Playing with advanced appearance settings on Windows Aero theme has "completely" no positive effect on the ugliness of 3rd party icons on system tray (notification area).

What is the reason of that? Is that something like i must live with it or is there any fix or clean explanation of abnormal appearance of 3rd party icons?

Thanks!

 

I didn't persist any apperance setting and i'm using Windows 7 Aero Theme. I'm using the latest Skype (5.3), my current DPI is %125 which is default.

What kind of setting are you meaning by "wrong"?

Can you post your apperance settings or show some tip to make icons like yours? And it would be great of you posting your tray's screenshot here if you have a G53JW (mine is G53JW-XA1) with 1920x1080 resoluton.

Thanks!

 

Hi laptopfan88,
Though i'm unable to see your Skype icon, for some reason that i don't know, the default DPI was set to %125 by default on my official Win7 HP (maybe it was pre-set before releasing from factory due to hi-res screen), now i set to 100. All the texts got smaller very smaller but now icons seem much normal than before.

I'd like to show you also:
http://i52.tinypic.com/2uz4ih5.png

What do you think with the new setting (DPI to %100)? Does it seem it went back to normal appearence?

Thanks!

 

Maybe. Actually having a FULL HD notebook with 15.6" screen and having to set DPI %100 to see everything natural is very annoying because the 15.6" display is too small to read every text/icon with 1920x1080 native resolution.

Though anybody can suggest setting DPI to higher level such as 125 to enlarge text and icons, as you see (and as i told) it causes desktop+system tray icons to be distorted unless you set DPI to %100. That's not good.

 

I see...Thanks. However another big mistake/missing feature about Windows 7 is the lack of font size englargement without dpi. As increasing DPI takes effect on default system font size (fonts on like control panel) causes distorted icons on tray as we have discussed.

Now i wonder why Windows 7 hasn't got a feature to enlarge so-called system font size which are shown eg: when you open a window in control panel or when you click arrow near shutdown on start menu to see pop up menus etc...

Playing with advanced apperance settings ONLY effects some 3rd party programs (not all of the, eg: Skype), not Windows system font size. So, i wish there was such setting which takes effect on default system font size other than increasing DPI which causes distorted icons.

To understand what i meant see this screenshot which means the so-called system text highlighted with red rectangle:
http://i51.tinypic.com/5chkqv.png

I consider this is another handicap of having full hd resolution. Hope you got my point of view.

 

I'd like to know why %125 seems "default" on Windows 7 whereas %100 gives the best ratio quality. BTW, what's your display size (LCD) in inches? Mine is 15.6" so that can be the reason of being %125 is the default dpi claimed by Windows?

Here:
http://i54.tinypic.com/2cxxn68.png

Another thing i noticed is that if you set dpi to %100, Window 7 logon screen flickers for a short moment, if you set to %125, it doesn't flicker. Though it isn't a big deal, it's a good proof that logon screen comes with %125 dpi and all the settings you set is applied after your type your password then hit ENTER to enter desktop.

Any ideas?

 

But this blurriness does not happen with CRTs even you set a non-native (lower) resolution. Why?

 

CRTs have multiple scanline settings for various resolutions

 

Maybe that's why CRTs don't annoy user with blurriness and fuzziness when compared to LCDs. Having Full HD res on a notebook with standard appearance icon size(s) and font size(s) requires a microscope to see what's written on the screen. Increasing DPI is totally useless because it corrupts icons and much of icons are NOT dpi-aware.

 

That's (and the fps gain at native resolution) exactly the reason I'm quite happy with my 1366x768 3D screen.

 

100% is the default, not 125%.

 

As you're seeing the screenshot, In DPI settings, it's written that:

%125 (default). by Windows.

I assume the term "default" is the one according to Windows.And on some PCs which do not have big display like Full HD, yes it's written %100 is the default. I beleive Windows does some calculations and seals "default" label to what it believes in. Though i'm not keen on setting anything above normal.