G53SW 1600x900 screen?

First of all I did search, but I could not find any info. I know the G53SW is available with either a 1920x1080 or a 1366x768 screen. I find that 1366x768 is just silly in a 15.6in screen, but I'd like to downgrade my G53SW-A1 screen from 1920x1080 to 1600x900.

The biggest issue is that my eye sight is not what it used to be, and the small text is a bit difficult to read. I am running Windows 7 64bit, and the font and screen element scaling to 110% works very well. However there are some apps and web pages do not follow the settings. So my options in apps are either blurry fonts (Win7 scaling) or tiny fonts (Win XP legacy scaling), or in the case of web pages pressing Ctrl+ every time.

The other issue is gaming. The G53SW is great for a laptop, but my 3 year old desktop with a Phenom 2 X4 945 and Radeon HD4890 smokes it at 1080p. Hardly surprising since the TDP of the CPU+GPU in the desktop is 300W while the TDP of the G53SW CPU+GPU is 120W. I know it's a simplistic view, but the power consumption is a direct result of the number of transistors in these respective chips.

I'd like to run games full resolution at max settings. Heavily modded Oblivion or Fallout 3 run great on my desktop at such settings but not on the G53SW. A smaller resolution screen would reduce the number of pixels the GPU needs to render, and from what I've noticed that makes the biggest difference (more than AA or AF in many cases).

So are there any compatible screens for the G53SW with a native resolution of 1600x900?

Thanks for any replies or suggestions.

 

You can always just lower the res on a 1080p screen, other than that I can't really help you, sorry.

 

I take that you already tried to create a custom resolution of 1600x900 in nvidia control panel?
That's what I did (along with 1440x900 and 1680x1050), yeah the image isn't really super clear, it's a bit blurred, but it works well specially in games (such Bf3).
Also I dont see how Oblivion and high res mods are hard to run on the g53sw.
Be sure you have ThrottleStop enabled and running;
Be sure you have latest 286.62 whql drivers;
Be sure your gtx460m is running at least at 800/1600/1600.
Stock gpu clocks don't really help at all here, they're weak and they have by default a low memory bandwidth of 1250 which bottlenecks core speed.
At 675mhz you need at least 1400mhz on memory to feed the core clock.
Let me know how it goes: is true that your desktop gpu albeit old kicks gtx460m performance, but the gap should shorten quite alot with a small overclock.
Also your desktop CPU is no match for our i7 (unless you have a sandy i5) which is considerably faster.
Note that I advice ThrottleStop because every g53sw suffers of throttling issue unless Asus releases a bios update, thing that isn't happening at all.
Basically it's VITAL to have TS running if you plan to use the SW for gaming otherwise you'll be doomed with low fps, stuttering and so on.

 

I tried that briefly, but as you said the screen becomes blurry. I also need to run Oblivion in windowed more because I'm doing some modding, and it helps a lot to be able to Alt-tab out of the game. While running full screen I get CTDs if I Alt-tab into Nifscope or TESCS.

Oblivion and FO3 may be old, and in stock form they can run even on a weaker laptop. But believe me they can be very taxing if heavily modded. You can get visuals that rival some of the highest end current games with certain texture packs. And areas with a lot of NPCs all wearing custom armors can make the G53SW lag quite a bit.

Just because Bethesda stopped releasing updates doesn't mean the modding community gave up on them. I think the extra play time in Oblivion given by high quality mods is at least once again what the original game brought.

Right now I'm running the stock drivers that came with the laptop, which I know are outdated. But since Oblivion and FO3 are even older I doubt new drivers will improve performance by much. Worth a shot though...

I really need to do a lot more reading on overclocking before risking it. The catch is my G53SW tops at 85+ oC in Oblivion (I told you it can get demanding ), and in furmark at 92 oC at normal room temperature. I am afraid it may not cope well at higher clocks without some hardware mods or at least repasting.

I really don't like the heatsink thermal pads on the G53SW's GTX460m, and I may look into replacing them with copper pads and thermal paste. I haven't read anyone doing it yet, so I may be a first.

My G53SW-A1 came with the i7 2630QM, but after close to 2 decades of gaming, I learned that the CPU is never the bottleneck. That's why when I built my desktop I opted for a AMD rig, which was half the price of an equivalent Intel one, and spent all the extra money on a good video card. I still don't feel the need for a faster CPU.

Now this is DEFINITELY worth looking into. Now that I know what to search for, I'll do my homework.

Thanks.

 

85c is fairly acceptable as temperature. Be sure your laptop isnt clogged with dust, before even repasting it blow some air with an air compressor in the vents and youll be fine.

Also there shouldnt be difference in temps if youre on stock vbios; mine is an overvolted vbios, and i get same temps as before, just a few degrees more, nothing to worry about.

Along youre under 90c in gaming youll be fine. Also dont even bother about furmark; fermi core generation has a power limiter that prevents voltage and heat to reach excessive peaks, furmark really is pointless right now.

Disabling that limiter basically burns the card, therefore the stability test furmark does causes more harm than good, it just overheats the components.

As for the overclock i repeat dont even bother about the temps. Use nvidia inspector to raise the clocks and forget about it, thats all.

And keep throttlestop running, for your sanity sake. Download it from techinferno, launch it, use the button "turn on" and minimize it. Also in settings you may want to enable gpu and cpu temp, you can even set your own colors. In this way, as i do, i can keep an eye on max temps and current temps, min included.