1280x800 vs 1280x768 for gaming

Hello,

I am currently deciding between the Asus w3j (1280x768) and the Asus a8jm (1280x800). I know the 1280x768 is more rare than the 1280x800. I was wondering for people with these res's whether they had any problems finding resolution support on games. Is there a difference in terms of a support between these resolutions?

For instance I loaded up Oblivion and I noticed it doesn't support either of these resolutions.


Also is the whole w3j case nice material or is it just the lid that looks so nice.


Thanks for reading, any comments are appreciated.

 

newer games tend to support widescreen. I play Oblivion in 1280x800 myself. You apparently aren't seeing that resolution as selectable. Can you set your desktop to that size? If not, then that's why you can't run Oblivion that way either. I had to manually add it in as a "custom" resolution on my HEL80 -- that's in the graphics card settings.

 

You can always go to www.widescreengamingforum.com and see if people have custom resolution hacks for the game.

 

I think that Oblivion is the only game that support widescreen the best. It supports 4:3, 5:4,16:9 and 16:10.

Charlie

 

I'd say the Source engine-type games do widescreen the best. They supports both 16:9 and 16:10; 1280x768 is supported.

 

1280x800 is great on HL2, the source engine definitly does widescreen gaming well.

 

Ic.

My main concern is the difference in support between 1280x800 and 1280x768. Is there any? Is 1280x800 more likely to be supported? Or perhpas 1280x768 is more often supported? Is it both or nothing supported ussually?

I'm leaning towards the w3j, but I want to make sure I won't have problems playing games at that resolution. If, for some reason, the 1280x800 happens to be supported in a lot more games, then I could always go with that.


For Oblivion I guess my monitor (24" dell wide) doesn't support those resolutions. I figured that might be the case.

Thanks for all the replies.

 

I don't really think that the resolution is that big of deal, most games you can edit a file to make the game whatever resoultion you want. I have a W3J, and the only game that I havent been able to make the right resolution is Star Wars Republic Commando. All other games have either had my resolution available, or I was able to edit a .ini file to make it the right one.

 

I'd actually go for the A8Jm over the W3J. The price premium isn't worth it for about 200~300 3DMarks in 05 and an extra 170MHz on the processor.

More than that, the GeForce Go 7600 has one awesome feature the X1600 doesn't have: if the screen runs at a lower resolution than native, like 1024x768, rather than stretching the image to fill the screen the Go 7600 will stretch it as large as it can while maintaining the aspect ratio. That way, 1024x768 and other standard 4:3 resolutions don't look wonky.

It seems like such an insignificant feature but I think it's amazing.

 

Whoa! Pulp, are you saying the x1600 *doesn't* have that? That's huge.

Well, after reading your post again, I see you did say that... but that's still hard for me to swallow. Are you sure?

 

I've never seen nor heard of that feature supported on any ATI hardware. Strictly nVidia.

nVidia also has a setting called Digital Vibrance which lets you easily adjust color intensity to make up for a slightly dull screen.

I was an ATI die-hard for a while, but I'm really impressed with some of the stuff nVidia offers.

 

You can set it in the ATI drivers. Both of them will do it the same way, it's just off by default in the ATI settings. I've done it on my 9600 mobile, and my current X300, I can't see why things would change in their next version.

Edit: Just checked. I have the Omega Drivers installed. In ATI Tray Tools, you can go to Display->Settings, click the Options button and then untick the box that says "Scale Image to panel size" and you're good to go.

Edit: Again, re-read the post. The ATI won't scale while keeping aspect correct. It'll only let you keep running at native pixels without any scaling. Sorry if I'm causing too much confusion Does that cause any blurriness of the picture, Pulp? Does it just resample the image, or what?

 

So that only comes into play if I run a higher resolution right? So at a higher resolution I have the option of it simply being (for lack of a better term) letter boxed at the native resolution? This sounds nice.

 

Okay, here's how it works:

ATI - You can choose whether or not you want a lower resolution image stretched to full screen or not. For what it's worth, it usually doesn't look that bad, and actually the screwed up aspect ratio isn't TOO nasty. If you don't have it stretched, it's going to be a pretty small picture.

nVidia - You get the same options as ATI, plus stretching while maintaining aspect ratio. This means it'll be letterboxed on the left and right sides. This is actually really ideal and looks best.

 

Still.. wow. That feature alone, combined with my propensity for playing old games, shreds my last doubt that I would have been happier with a z96j. Not that that laptop isn't awesome too (I'd feel lousy if I started another flame war in a good thread).

 

I had Star Wars Republic Commando so its letterboxed on the left and right sides with my x1600. I forgot the name of the option, since i deleted the catalyst control center because I use ATI tray tools now, but you can check this one box, and it makes it so the game runs with the 4:3 aspect ratio. I think its in the display properties, like maintain aspect ratio or something.