How crap do games look at non-native resolution?

Quick precis:

I am in the market for a thin and light, but would like to be able to play games as well. The current competition is between the Samsung X60 and the Zepto 6214W.

Now the Zepto has a 14.1" 1280x768 display which can be used to play games at 1024x768 with some black borders at the side while leaving the screen at its native resolution. The X60 has a hugely high native resolution 15.4" display so I would obviously be scaling it down somewhat to get playable performance and because most games don't support resolution that high.

My question is: does scaling a laptop display down to an non-native resolution make it look _that_ bad? What is the overall effect - do the games appear blocky or fuzzy and is it noticeable?

Finally, from the gamers amongst you, I would be pleased to hear any experiences you have of either PC for running games.

Many thanks.

 

In think you won't notice you're playing at a non native res when you turn at least 4x AA on.

 

I have a screen thats 1680x1050 and I play in resolutions as low as 1280x800 a lot in newer games. You only notice it on text. Its nowhere near as bad on graphics as most people tell you.

 

While CRTs are capable of displaying multiple video resolutions without introducing artifacts, LCD displays produce crisp images only in their "native resolution" and, sometimes, fractions of that native resolution. Attempting to run LCD display panels at non-native resolutions usually results in the panel scaling the image, which introduces blurriness or "blockiness".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scaling

Perhaps new lcds use cubic interpolation?



While past lcds used linear interpolation since it's easier to do?



And a crt (and crap lcds) just scaled the image, adding pixels:



If I'm right, it would explain why old lcds are blurry.

It's not due to the lcd itself, but the use of linear interpolation.

And newer ones may use cubic, which explain why lower resolution is less blurry.

 

if its close to native then its fine, hard to notice, things just dont look as crisp, which some may argue makes it look more realistic. it if gets too far though it doesn't look that good. i was okay with it till i got my new comp, now i could never go back, i would rather play at low details. so be careful not to see the game on max at a high native res!
Remember, you can always set it in the nvidia control panal to not scale to the size of the screen, but rather the size of the pixles. so you are never stuck with blury images if you dont want them, the screen just gets smaller.