Gaming: 17.0" (1920 x 1200) + 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT

I order my first laptop yesterday. Inspiron 1720. I am a gamer. I am a die hard CRT and desktop fan. Only reason I bought a laptop was to lighten the load some what.

Hi Res, glossy 17.0" (1920 x 1200)
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600

The 8600 GT will have a problem running games at 1920x1200 of course and since my knowledge of LCD is limited... Will I still be able to lower the resolution in game to say 1440x900 and use a higher res during desktop apps?

 

Yes you will, although it won't look as sharp at a lower resolution. However, depending on the quality of the screen itself, and what details you put to maximum, it will still look very good.

 

Yes, you will be able to lower the resolution for games but it will not look as good as 1920 x 1200, of course playing games at decent settings at that high resolution sometimes is not possible.

 

Yeah I doubt its possible for any modern game with high settings to play on that resolution with an 8600.

But yes what resolution you use in your desktop only limits what is the max resolution during gaming it. In other words gaming res does not depend on desktop res.

 

Yes, games allow you to set the resolution the game will run at inside the games settings and it will revert back to your windows resolution when you exit.

There's one thing to note here though, it certainly isn't enough to warrant cancelling your order and getting a different laptop, but you get slightly better performance playing at the native resolution versus having a higher resolution screen and lowering it. (IE, 1440x900 screen should be slightly better than 1900x1200 turned down to 1440x900, but of course you can never turn up the lower res screen when you're not gaming).

 

Ok Good and Thanks for your fast replies. Was a little worried I went overboard with the screen. Didn't know if LCDs where stuck at their listed res.

I wont cancel. Dell is really pushing the ESD with me already.

 

at that res you wouldnt need AA or any of those goodies, im sure you could play at medium settings and things will still look amazing

 

Dude!!! I got the 1720 for the same exact reason, and holy ****, we got the same specs, nice dude

 

no. you get slightly better image quality, but performance is the same.

 

No AA is needed at that rez, but man do the games look great at that rez

 

And....your waiting for SC:2 like me. Your starting to scare me

I currently play @ 1840x1150 with my sli desktop. 1920x1200 is very nice.
My Sony 24" Widescreen CRT FW900 has a top res of 2304x1440. Though I have never gone that high.

 

Even without AA or AF you definitely will not be able to play anything new at that res, unless maybe with every option on low in which case it'd look awful.

I'd say stick with 1280x800, highish options with maybe some AA/AF - the 8600GT is a good card but that good....1440x900 with also represent a problem to your card unless you're turning details down...a Go7950GTX is what's needed for very high resolutions with high options on. Although I'm talking about new games here, stuff like Half Life 2, BF2 that sort of thing would easily run at the higher resolutions....

 

I still assume the 128bit hinders this card from performing good at a high rez like 1920x1200.

 

Yes the lower bandwidth affects performance drastically at these resolutions on the 8 series.

Though I was able to play fear on my ddr2 8600 at 1680x1050 with highish settings (lowered aa/af of course) and it was still very playable.

 

On the desktop version the 128bit bus is not as bad as people make it think though. But with DDR2 800 it's awfull

It still takes AA/Res better than the 7800GTX 256 that has GDDR 1200 @256bit due to increased shader power

 

Sure but the bandwidth is still limited. So I would like to see how this card performs at say 1920x1200. I doubt it runs Prey at 60fps. Though games like Stalker and Oblivion loves this card due to it's shader power. But not all games are shader intensive, thereby I don't think it takes AA and Res better than the 7800GTX in non shader intensive games.

 

So you think I (see sig for stats) could run BF2 at the native resolution. That would be awesome. If I could do that, what kind of settings could I use? If I can run BF2 at native resolution with maxxed settings that would be amazing.

 

That was very helpful because i was getting a 1520 with the highest res and was wondering if it would hinder gaming performance but now i know. Thnks

 

With my gaming desktop PC I play on a 24" LCD (Dell 2407WFP) with native resolution of 1920x1200. I frequently drop the resolution down to 1680x1050, 1440x900, 1280x800 for improved frame rate while setting all in game goodies to max. I rarely even need AA then either. Usually 2x will do well enough that jaggies aren't noticeable at all.

 

BF2 doesn't suppport widescreen properly unfortunately without using a hack which personally I think makes the game look stupid. I just have to play at 1280x1024 on my 20.1" screen....

But as for how it runs yes it will run fine at high resolution with everything on and full AA. BF2 is not a demanding game anymore by recent standards - older cards like Go7600 can run it at high, and even $60 desktop cards like 7600GS have no problem with it at high settings either.