Gaming at non-native resolutions.

Does it end up looking as bad as I have heard?

I seem to have set my mind on a 15.4 1680 x 1050 notebook but of course running modern games at that res with a mobile GPU probally isn't going to give a good performance. Since the other half of my computer time is going to be spent coding and doing school working I don't really want to limit myself to a 1280x768 max res.

So if I reduced the res to say 1280x768 from 1680 x 1050 native for games, how bad would games end up looking?

 

It barely causes any blurring. I routinely play demanding games at 1200x800 on my 1680x1050 screen. Just make sure the aspect ratio matches when you lower the resolution so nothing streches.

 

If you're not hooked up to an external monitor, and you use an NVIDIA graphics card, there's an option in the Forceware drivers to set fixed aspect ratio scaling. That way, if you need to lower your resolution to something non-widescreen (1280x1024, 1024x768) it won't look blurry at all. The only thing is you'll have black bars running along both sides of the display.

 

I actually am able to game on my WSXGA+ at native resolution with my underclocked go 7600 with high/max settings. I don't think you'll have much problems with that.

 

True some older games will work just fine at that resolution, but if the kid wants to play the latest and newest (such as oblivion) it might not work to have high quality at that res and still see good fps. So depends on the game, just cuz one game plays fine at that settings doesnt mean all games will, specially not ones coming out in the near future.

 

As long as you keep aspect ratio the same you won't notice a difference when playing. The image isn't as sharp as native resolution, but once you get playing the game you won't notice at all. Try to play in widescreen formats where possible, or if that isn't an option just play in a 4:3 resolution and make sure you are on centered timings (otherwise the image will stretch out across the monitor).

 

The primary problem with scaling lies mostly in the sharpness of text, small text especially. You may notice a difference there or in other thin lines but other than that you should be fine.

 

Perfect, this is exactally what I was hoping to hear.

Thanks guys.