Gaming at non-native resolution. 1680x1050 is native.

Will it look bad if I game at say 1280x800 or 1440x900. I hear it looks really blurry and bad.

 

It should be fine, just test it around.

It's regular usage(Like typing, surfing, etc.) that tends to be blurry if you use a non native resolution.

 

no, it's not that bad.... some games you probably won't notice that much of a difference.

as long as you still game at a 16:10 ration (1280x800; 1440x900) it'll look pretty good. when you get to a 4:3 or 5:4 ratio, you'll have some stretching of course

as far as the blurriness is concerned, it's not that much of an eye sore.

 

Oh, okay. I hope it doesn't look too bad.

 

Certain games don't look bad at lower resolutions.

However, if this helps any....I used to play Command and Conquer 3 on my vaio at 1024x768 and I loved it. However, I then got to play it at 1440x900 on my brother's Inspiron 1520 and fell in love with it. Now..whenever I roll down to a lower resolution...the game just feels like....blurry and not sharp enough.

 

Just make sure you use your video cards software scaling and not your monitors hardware scaling and you will be alright.

Scaling quality is so good these days I cant tell the difference without side by side screenshots, and depending on the game even between screenshots you wont find much of a difference.

 

How would I do that? Don't I just select the resolution I want in the game?

 

viciousxusmc can you further explain what's video card's software scaling and what's hardware scaling? I'm very interested in knowing how to do that

 

In your advanced options in your video card control panel you should see something like flat panel scaling. From there you can select the scaling type (newer drivers on vista) anything from, aspect strech, fit to screen, to no scaling at all.

with aspect strech, if you play a game thats not widescreen compatible on a widescreen monitor it will keep the games aspect in tact and put black bars on the sides, With fit to screen it will strech it out horizontally and with no strech at all, if you play a lower resolution than your screen, you will get black bars on all sides but it will retian its correct aspect ratio.

Those are your software options. On a notebook you dont get hardware scaling options thru your monitor I dont think (atleast I cant find any on mine) but if you were hooked to a TV or a external monitor, you can find many have there own scaling options. So if you had scaling turned off on the video card, the TV/Monitor may scale it to fit the screen instead and the quality is never as good.