Just how bad are problems with higher DPI settings when running at 1920x1080 (for a 17.3'' Asus G73) ?

Long story short, I was all set to get Best Buy's 1600x900 G73 When I came across this forum and discovered some of those units have inferior AUO LCD's. Sure enough the one remaining in the store was AUO and I'd hate to gamble ordering through Best Buy's website.

Obviously just getting the 1920 version from a different seller would solve the problem, and it's in my price range... but I'm really not sure about that resolution on a 17.3''. I haven't gone hands-on with one, but I played around with a 16'' screen at that res in Best Buy and it was waaaay too small - it just seems like it'd put too much strain on my eyes, and as far as games go, I value fluidity over graphical fidelity anyway and am worried about compatability issues with older games that the 1600 might not have. I also would never use it for movies, so it just seems like overkill. The proportions of everything at 1600 seem so much nicer to me.

Then I switched the DPI to 125% and all was perfect, giving me a really nice, easy-on-the-eyes image that felt a lot like native 1600. Problem is, I've read that a lot of apps, websites, etc. aren't going to support this and give me scaling problems. Just how bad can I expect these problems to be? I have a number of ~5-10 year old apps I'd like to install right away - are most of the "big" apps going to look nice just like the Win7 interface at this DPI, and it'll mostly be less rigorously designed stuff that doesn't? I mean, just opening the Nvidia control panel on this 16'' laptop and I get muddy text when the DPI is at a custom 130%...

Basically if every other thing I use is going to be a special case where I have to either log off to switch the DPI or find some weird workaround, I don't know if I can bother.

I'm stuck between risking the 1600 with a poor LCD or 1920 with DPI issues... >_< If anyone has suggestions, experiences, or tips to share that'd be great...

 

go with the better screen. You can always change the res if you want to what works for you but you will have the option where with the BB version you will not

 

Not really. The only option that's not going to look bad is the native resolution for that monitor.

This is why DPI settings are so important to me.

 

Would be a non-issue about screen size IF the scaling options weren't greyed out.

 

Get the 1920.

The readability increases over most 'muddy' screens because the contrast on the high end screen is simply astounding for a laptop LCD. I think Anandtech tested it and found it just steamrolled all of the other laptop LCDs except for the supremely high end Dell prescision mobile workstation 6500.

As far as DPI scaling goes you have a few options:

Ctrl + + <--universal enlarge in web browsers
ctrl + - <-- universal shrink in web browsers
ctrl + 0 <-- universal normal scaling.

The DPI settings in Windows 7 are great, but won't help you with programs 5-10 years old like you're asking about. For those, you'll be stuck at a native resolution you might find harder to read. I don't think it'll be an issue though, since the crispness of the higher end panel will make even the greater detail of the 1920 as easy to read as the muddier 1600 panel.

Failing that, Set the display down to 1680x1050 or 1280x1024. Both of those look good on this screen, but 1600x900 and 1440x1050 both look pretty bad.

 

^ thanks, but...

Can you elaborate please? Are you saying the Win 7 DPI settings don't work on this model??

 

DPI scaling works fine for me. Not sure where Chastity is seeing it greyed out. Just tested 150% and 125% and they look great including working with chrome.

 

For me DPI scaling works great. Using the default settings my 1920x1080 screen looks like 1366x768 resolution, as if it were native, no issues.

Of course, I am more than used to the 1920 resolution despite being on a 15.6 inch monitor haha.

 

I was referring to the CCC properties page where you can change scaling options, not Windows scaling.

 

The scaling isn't greyed out. If you read the official notes from ATi, they let you know the scaling option is off on native resolution. Change your resolution to say 1440*900, the scaling option turns on.

 

DPI works perfect here. I'm not sure why others are having problems... and it's obviously software not hardware, in this case

 

Oh how asinine!! almslap: I miss nVidia at times like these

 

Hi, i'm having scalling issues.. what DPI and settings to use? Also i messed with my display settings so how to restore them to factory? Don't have system restore due to SSD.