Would the Dell SP2309 monitor (2048x1152) be compatible with the XPS M1330?

I have a XPS M1330 and am thinking of getting a Dell SP2309 ultra widescreen monitor with a resolution of 2048x1152.

Dell SP2309

However, am I right in thinking that the Geforce 8400 that comes with the M1330 won't be able to handle this resolution?

Does the XPS M1330 have a maximum resolution of 1920x1200 when connecting to an external display via HDMI?

How would the laptop handle such a monitor?

 

yes.... my m1330 is currently connected to my 19" LCD at 1280x1024

it can also drive my 720p/1080i LCD HDTV at 1920x1080

both using hdmi

 

So I guess I wouldn't be able to use the monitors native resolution of 2048x1152 as the laptop's graphic card will go to a maximum resolution of 1920x1080?

 

nVidia 8400M series cards are capable of handling up to 2560x1600 over dual link DVI and 2048x1536 over analog ( source). Those are the specs of the GPU, but in reality, the actual implementation of M1330 may have much lower capabilities than that. Currently I'm driving a 26" 1920x1200 monitor over HDMI, therefore I can personally grantee that it will work at least up to 1920x1200.

If I'm not mistaken M1330 only supports HDMI 1.2 (but don't take my word for it, do a bit of digging and make sure ) which only goes up to 1920x1200. Your best option is to call DELL, since both the monitor and notebook are made by them, they should know better.

Why are you interested in that monitor ? for one thing, it has an odd resolution, and I personally think 2048x1152 is bit too high for a 23", why not get a regular 24" with a more common resolution like 1920x1200 (or 1920x1080 16:9)? There is not much of a point in going over 1080 for videos, I'm sure gaming is not one of your concerns, since that monitor is a TN panel I assume you are not a pro graphics designer either. You are getting few more lines of horizontal resolution, but less vertical resolution than a 1920x1200, therefore I really can't think of a good enough reason to buy that. Smaller dot pitch ??

 

I want it for the extra width in showing movies, not bothered about height, just want the extra width for 16:9 aspect ratio movies.

Would I be able to use the full width of the monitor even if I'm running it at 1920x1200?

 

You can play movies (videos) having any aspect ratio on any screen and see the entire picture (nothing will go out of the frame unless you specifically force it). Only difference is that you’ll see black bars : mostly on the top and bottom (when watching 16:9 content on a 16:10 screen) or in some cases on left and right (i.e : watching 4:3 content on wide screens).

If you do a bit of math you’d see that a 24” 16:10 screen is as wide as a 23” 16:9 screen, therefore even with the black bars on top and bottom the actual size of the movie will still be the same . If you are so keen on buying a 16:9 screen then buy a 24" 16:9 (1920x1080) screen instead.

 

If you actually have a look at this and the new Samsung 23" monitor you will see that they can fit in more to the screen due to the ultra wide resolution of the display.

The 24" 16:10 is not as wide as this. I have seen both.

 

You might have seen the illusion of width on the 23" 16:9 but simple math shows that 24" 16:10 is actually wider :

23 inch diagonal = 58.42cm
16:9 aspect ratio has an angle of arctan(9/16) = 29.35 degrees
therefore the actual width of a 23 inch 16:9 monitor = 58.42 x cos(29.35) = 50.91cm

24 inch diagonal = 60.96cm
16:10 aspect ratio has an angle of arctan(10/16) = 32.00 degrees
therefore the actual width of a 24 inch 16:10 monitor = 60.96cm x cos(32.00) = 51.69cm

51.69cm > 50.91cm therefore a 24" 16:10 monitor is actually wider than a 23" 16:9 monitor

However, if you are absolutely sure that the 23" you saw was wider than the 24", then the 24" screen was incorrectly advertised, look at the specifications and see if they have given a smaller size as the actual viewable size. Some 22" and 26" monitors have a smaller actual size than the advertised size, but so far I have not seen any 24" monitors advertised like that. Can you tell me the exact model numbers ?


That gives the actual size of the display width. Now lets talk about the resolution.

A 2048x1152 screen obviously has more horizontal resolution than a 1920x1200 ( 2048 – 1920 = 128 lines) to be exact. But that doesn’t mean you'll see more video on a 2048x1152 screen. Because even HD video is limited to a horizontal resolution of 1920, any screen having a higher resolution than that will stretch the video to fit the screen, there is no improvement in video quality by going over the video resolution itself. The actual size you see is limited by the screen dimensions (width and height) of your monitor.

On the other hand, for text and normal desktop work you will see more content horizontally but less vertically on a 2048x1152 than you would in a 1920x1200 monitor.

 

Hi Zenza,

I had the same question, I rang Dell who told me that my m1330 (with the geforce 8400) wouldn't be able to display 2048x1152. I suspected he was wrong and bought it anyway, and it is now up and running no problems. I had to download the latest nvidia driver from the dell website, but it is running dual screen mode with the laptop screen at 1200x800 and the monitor at 2048x1152 without any problems.

Monitor looks great, the high resolution means that icons etc are kind of small though. I had bought it for my my wife to work on as when I saw her typing on the little 13 inch screen it made my eyes hurt.... this monitor has about 4 times the screen real estate of the laptop but icons etc are about the same size.

Hope this helps