which screen resolution to go for ?

hey guys, having a tough time choosing between the wxga(1280x800) and wxga+(1440x900) resolutions for the 1520.

Will all games play well at the higher resolution or will i have to scale down ?
if i do scale down, will it affect the picture quality drastically ?

By the way, the configuration i am considering is

Intel(R) Core(TM)2Duo Processor T7300
Genuine Windows Vista(TM) Home Premium - with AERO experience
1-Year Complete Cover
15.4" Widescreen WXGA (1280x800) Display with TrueLife (TM)
2GB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
nVIDIA(R) GeForce(TM) Go 8600M GT with 256MB GDDR2
120GB 5400 rpm SATA Hard Drive
Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Combination Drive with dual layer write capabilities
Dell(TM) Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module
Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945 Dual Band 802.11a/g 54Mbps Wireless Mini Card
9-cell 85Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery

 

I ordered mine with the 1680x1050 which mayu be too high for some but the 1280x800 on a 15" screen is just HUGE (which looks bad IMO). Definately go for the 1440x900 screen. Nearly any game you can run at 1280 well will run almst as well @ 1440.

I sometimes find the 1280x800 to almost seem too big on my 12" 700m but thats because I am a high res freak. Id run 1920x1200 on a 14" screen if I could :-D

 

yeah i would take kido's advice with a grain of salt. he seems like a high res freak. honestly a really high dpi is a bad thing. 1440x900 is the most i would want at 15"...any more and it would be unreasonably small.

1280x800 is probably the sweet spot for gaming with the 8600m gt on a 14" screen. if you dont mind black bars, you can just run 1280x800 without scaling and a 15" 1440x900 now becomes about a 14" 1280x800. this bothers some people a LOT and others (self included) do not mind AT ALL. you sort of get used to it like with the cinema.

the other thing is, that older games, or better optimized games, run really well at 1440x900. think like half life 2, counter strike source, battlefield 2 / 2142, quake 4 / doom 3.

you will be able to max out all those games at 1440x900 no problem.

FEAR is happy at 1440x900 if you turn down just a very few settings. it runs almost maxed out. in 1280x800 you can max it out.

console ports are going to fare the worst at 1440. think like rainbow six vegas, graw (1 or 2), halo 2, etc. these games are sort of like movie sequels. they release them because they sell, they put in minimal effort to make them quality in any respect.

rainbow six vegas has support for like 4 resolutions total, for example. they are all 4:3, even though it plays in 16:9 on consoles. why can't they just get 16:10 for us? its not that hard. you can edit a file and choose a custom resolution, but why not just put it in the menu...

just an easy example to show its short porting time and low porting budget. as a result, its poorly coded for the pc, whereas it is optimized for the consoles. you will need a 7800 or an 8800 card to run it at any decent resolution at a high (consistently high in open areas) framerate.

its pretty obvious that poorly coded games are going to be a push for the 8600m gt at 1440x900. getting up to date drivers and getting the latest patches actually helped a lot, but its still lacking. i expect other unreal engine 3 games (like ut3) and cryengine 2 game(s) to run GREAT on this card, but it might be a case where at 1440x900 you are hovering at like 30fps, and if you take it down a notch then your performance smooths out. you might have to put settings down to medium, but it will still look glorious.

the other thing to consider is that the extra pixels help a LOT in desktop work. 1280x720 is considered high definition for gaming, but that (or 1280x800) is not a lot of space to have multiple windows open to be working on a desktop. 1440x900 is considerably better imo for 15" for desktop work. its a good balance of all these factors: dpi, gaming, desktop space.

plus- you can choose to run 1280x800 at about 14" without interpolation (thank you nvidia), or you can run 1280x800 fullscreen with interpolation. interpolation does decrease the quality of the image somewhat. it may or may not bother you. it depends on the person, but whereas black bars dont bother me, interpolation drives me nuts. especially with semi close resolutions (like one notch away- 1280x800 in 1440x900, for example, or 1440x900 in 1680x1050)... but if i had to run something like 960x600 in 1440x900, that would be ok with me.

 

What about the 14" 1420? will 1440x900 look too small on it? does anyone have the dimensions of the 14" screen? ratio, height, width?

 

yeah 14" is a diagonal dimension. the aspect ratio is 16:10. thats enough to know all the dimensions of the screen.

or were you asking about the laptop itself?

1440x900 is probably not too small on a 14" for some. for others it would be. personal preference. you will have to go and look.

personally, i have a 1440x900 monitor for my desktop, and i think its about 19" maybe? and its great. there is definitely a wide range of effectiveness for any resolution. its just that things will appear smaller or larger, and you will have a different amount of space to physically fit windows on the screen.

i dont see any reason to play games at a higher resolution that 1280x800, personally. I wouldn't mind a 1280x720p huge tv to play games on, for example. thats as far as the consoles can go. its not like people are just waiting for the tech to allow 2560x1600 games... 720p is plenty of clarity at a reasonable screen size / distance. and the only reason i run 1440x900 is that is the resolution of my monitor, and interpolation bothers me. if i had a crt, i would play 1280x800 (with black bars)