1080p vs 768p - performance

Hey,
I plan on buying a new laptop - most likely Lenovo Y580. In my country it comes with two options - i5 + HD ready screen and i7 + Full HD screen. Now the question is which one to take? My priority is performance in games, so 1366x768 is better for it, but i know advantages for 1920x1080 screen, so it's hard decision for me. That's why i want to ask how much there is a difference, between those two resolutions ? I will be playing most new games. Is it worth to take 1366x768 rather than 1920x1080 ? I have Full HD monitor in home(i won't be home for next 2-3 months though), so i can always connect it.
I know i can downgrade from 1920x1080, but then it will be blur/not sharp.
Thanks in advance for help.

 

since you already have a ful lhd monitor at home you should go for 768p screen. atleast games would look great. i dont think gamging would be decent on 1080p on your spec so i will sugest 768p. you can always hook up with 1080p screen for movie watching or video editing or anything like that

 

I get 30ish fps on skyrim at 1080p on my 650 and like 70ish at 768. The difference is pretty major. But it looks like crap at 768.

 

If there's no dGPU, then you'll most definitely want 768p, 1080p takes roughly twice as much processing power from the GPU (roughly twice the pixel count of 1366x768).

 

1,049,088 pixels for 1366x768
2,073,600 pixels for 1920x1080

Thats a 97.65% difference so you need twice as muce texture and pixel fill rate bandwidth to get same fps basically at 1080p.

My advice is if you do photo editing or video editing or anything like viewing pictures on it as well as are interested in watching blu 1080p films get the 1080p. If your gpu is something like a gtx660m you should be able to play at 1080p taking 1 or 2 intensive settings down like shadows.

 

It's quite a bit more complicated than this. The less technical version is actually much more correct in this case. To get good performance in modern 3d games at 1080p, you'll usually need a much more powerful GPU than you would at 720p. A lot of it does have to do with the fact that 1080p is a much higher resolution (approximately double) and you do need approximately double the GPU power to make up for it. However, the pixel and texture fill rates are not anywhere close to the complete story of how the performance actually plays out.

 

i know the bandwidth is as well like a 128bit card with same clocks will struggle at 1080p to a 256bit one with same clocks and shaders most likely will play at double the fps at 1080p.

 

It depends primarily on your GPU.

As along as you get something equivalent to AMD 5830m, 6770m, 7690m (or better), or Nvidia 555m, 460m, 640m (or better), you will be able to run most recent games at 1080p, with most settings maxed.

I don't know what options are available in the specific Lenovo you are looking at, but if you can get one with something along the lines of AMD 7730m/7750m/7770m or NVIDIA 650m, even better.

Have you tried disabling AA and using FXAA instead? My laptop averages 40-60fps in Skyrim at 1080p with my 5830m (although it drops down lower in Markarth), with all other settings maxed and using high res texture pack as well as texture mods. The only settings that seem to significantly impact frame rate for Skyrim are the MSAA and shadow quality.

 

I'm not as into skyrim as I was morrowind. I only got to level 11 in skyrim after like 6 months of having it lol. I tested that at high hrothgar where the wind is really animated so maybe that has something to do with it. I'm not sure how the 650 stacks up against a 5830m but my fps seems to be dead on with what notebook check says it should be.

 

MSAA has a huge performance hit - next time you play, try using FXAA instead. The 650m is a lot faster than the 5830m, so you should be getting significantly better frame rate than my laptop.

 

Lenovo Y580 has GTX 660M.
I don't mind lowering a bit of settings(i almost always lower shadows in games anyway), but still want notebook on which i can play most new games comfortable with high/ultra settings, so by choose of the screen i don't want to shot my foot, because i did see even 20-30% performance decrease with higher resolution :|.

 

Go with the 1920x1080 display. The 660m is just fine for 1080p gaming, much faster than my 5830m which runs nearly every game I've ever tried at 1080p. The only games I've ever considered dropping down to 1600x900 on my laptop are Witcher 2 and Tribes Ascend. The other recent games I've tried, such as DXHR, Skyrim, Sniper Elite V2, Arkham City, ME3 all run just fine at 1080p, usually with most settings completely maxed.

Once you become accustomed to gaming and running all your apps at 1080p, you can never go back to lower resolution. I tried using a laptop with 1366x768 display recently and it felt like shifting around giant lego blocks on the screen.

 

I did! I went from an ATI 5650 powering 1080P to an NVIDIA 650M powering 768P. I did this to future-proof my laptop as much as possible. Obviously I prefer 1080P but the difference can be negated somewhat by a healthy dose of anti-aliasing.

 

Basically it is 30 up to 50% performance cut in game-from 768p to 1080p.. but we just have to accept 768p panel quality may not be as good as 1080p.. . However, playing game with 768p native is not as bad at it sounds.. it looks good. Not sure 768p downscaled from 1080p. From my experience, downscaled gaming looks poor. It is just the colour ad contrast that i am not too happy of current n56vz 768p version. Especially coming from dell u2311h e-ips panel. Not that 1080p current notebook panel can beat u2311h Can one show that downscaled 768p will look as good as 768p native ?

Example the witcher 2 EE is around 30-50 fps on medium setting.. how can one manage 1080p @ medium ? 20-30 fps.. it's unplayable. then low graphic setting to compensate for 15-20% performance still looks bad texture wise.

Dirt 3 high setting 65-70 fps @ 768p. 70-78 fps @ medium setting. Wanna play @ 40-55 for this driving game ? it will take the joy out for this genre..

Forgot, this is with gt 650m 2GB

 

well...

wait, what?

 

I've never played any driving games before, so I can't comment on those, but Witcher 2 is the only game I've ever had trouble with myself. It's seems to be incredibly GPU-reliant, and not very well optimized to make use of faster CPUs.

For just about every other recent game out there, you should be fine at 1080p with nvidia 650m, with all settings maxed or perhaps with your anti-aliasing setting reduced a bit (or using FXAA instead of MSAA) but everything else maxed. DXHR, RAGE, Skyrim, Bulletstorm, Arkham City, Counterstrike:GO, ME3, Sniper Elite V2, DOTA 2, all of these run great on my laptop at 1080p. I always go with 16xAF and all the other available settings maxed, but sometimes I reduce anti aliasing or use FXAA. (and my graphics card is significantly weaker than your 650m)

 

1080p looks better than 720p with AA... and will run much faster...

Filter really bring a gpu to his knee...

I play SC2 at ultra 1080p without filter... 30+fps... no overclock.

But you can add that extra 135mhz overclock on core... wont add much max fps... but will help a lot on minimum fps...