7600 gaming with 1680 x 1050 rseolution

The laptop that I am looking at is a higher res 1680 x 1050 screen with a 512mb 7600 card. Now when matched with the 7600 how have people found games to look on higher resolutions? Have you had to reduce the native res...does this look okay? Or have you decreased detail etc? Or does high detail + the high resolution work?

Any advise/experience welcome

 

Depending on what games you play, what settings/FPS you like to have you may need to either turn down the settings, decrease the res, or do both.

The 7600 is a good card, but WSXGA+ is a pretty high res. to drive. It's not usually a big deal to run at a non-native resolution while gaming...it's one of the few things that don't look bad running non-natively.

 

I usually game at 1280 x 800 on my WSXGA+ machine...no problems with Oblivion (and that's just about the most demanding game out there) on medium-high settings.

 

On newer games, I doubt that the 7600 can handle that resolution. I don't even think that the 7600 is capable of utilizing 512 mb of vram. But those specs would definitely be excellent for watching movies, video clips, and the likes.

 

I play at 1280x800. It'll handle FEAR with no AA, and mid to high details at that res. I wouldn't count on anything but previous-generation games running well at that resolution. Quake4/FEAR/Oblivion and newer will need to have details set way down to run at that res.

On the bright side, I've found that aspect-ratio preserving scaling on an LCD is a very good thing, and doesn't bother me nearly as much as the "stretched" look that used to happen when you put a 4:3 res on a 16:9 screen.

 

I can go 1680x1050 on my little x700 with decent graphic settings without slowing it down too much. A 7600 should do it great.

 

A 7600 cannot drive new games at that resolution. Unless you turn down the settings. For example, at high settings, even an 8800GTS 320mb is hard pressed running Company of Heroes at 1680 x 1050.

Maybe try for a 7700, or failing that, you'll have to run most games at lower resolution (again, unless you don't mind turning the settings down, but to be honest I'd rather a smaller res and higher settings then high res and low settings)

 

I run CS: Source 1680x1050, a great looking game, with good fps at highish settings. Good is usually between 40 and 60, but in HDR lighting levels it usually drops between 30 and 40, though it still looks smooth.

 

I run Counter-Strike: Source at 1600 x 1200, all detail settings on minimum and AA/AF off.

Your GPU will handle 1680 x 1050 easily, as long as your screen is good enough, but maximum, native screen resolutions, with lower detail settings still looks fantastic. There is no point in increasing Image quality and taking away pixels.

 

There are some gaming benchmarks of the Go7600 in these reviews:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3060&review=Compal
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3507&review=Asus+Z84Jp

There is no way you are going to get the latest generation of games running at a WSXGA+ resolution as posted. However, older/more mainstream games, such as CS:S, UT2004, Far Cry, and WoW will be fine.

 

cheers guys....so if I did decide to turn down the res on that screen to say 1440x900 or 1280x800 for certain games....do these higher res screens look a lot worse than a screen with these native settings? Secondly will DVD's, video files etc look good on this resoultion....cos I know the res is highre than DVD can play for example?

 

No, because with the resolution lowered you'll be able to turn on effects and details you wouldn't be able to turn on at 1680x1050.

I play all my games at 1024x768 on my notebook for such reasons, even though it goes up to 1280x960.

 

On a positive note, on my HEL80 at least, I don't notice the difference between 1280x800 and 1680x1050 playing Oblivion.

 

Just make sure you scale preserving the aspect ratio, and you should be fine. I can't remember what the setting is since I'm on the work laptop (ATI), but with it enabled, even 800x600 looks ok on my personal machine.

 

i have external 15" monitor which has 1024x768 resolution, i think it will play games better on that resolution?

 

I haven't had a chance to try out many of the newer games, but gaming at WSXGA+ with my go 7600 is fine at stock settings (350/350). Most 7600's are set higher than that so you should do fine. As noted, however, newer games are more demanding so it is quite likely that you would have to lower the resolution to handle them at faster FPS. Most who do so do not have many complaints about it looking bad.

I can get good framerates on games like BatteFront II and Far Cry (but they are rather dated at this point) and overclocking does give a little framerate boost at WSXGA+. Something like UT2004 gets ridiculously high FPS at max settings--but it's not that demanding.

 

Strange enough, Jade Empire's been running fairly nice so far with 1680x1050, with the signed setup. Maybe it'll eventually start lagging!

 

That's not really strange - it's not a demanding game. Try running something like Oblivion or FEAR at that res and see what happens!