Lower than native reion on a laptop running games

I know that it is bad but I'm wondering given considerations to higher PPI and improved scaling and interpolation methods how much of an issue it is. And how worthwhile it is actually to specifically buy a lower resolution (and possibly lower quality display) just to achieve native resolution gaming.

For instance if two otherwise identical 14 inch displays, one natively 1980x1080 and the other 1600x900, both are running games at 1600x900. What would be your thoughts on the actual quality difference between the two? Assume that scaling is aspect ratio proper and fullscreen running the same settings.

What if we further differentiate the displays -

1980x1080p 14 inch IPS running games at 1600x900
The display on the Acer Aspire V7-482PG line ( AnandTech | Acer V7-482PG-9884 Review: Everything You Need)

or

1600x900 14inch TN running games at 1600x900
The display on the Lenovo Ideapad Y410p

I am aware there are other tradeoffs between the two laptops as well and that the Y410p is higher performing.

Just to clarify I'm trying to gauge the other benefits of the higher resolution display, outside of gaming essentially, and weight it against the tradeoffs of possibly having to run it non native while gaming.

thread title horribly mangled also

 

running at non native res looks horrible on all displays ive seen in my life which is a lot. I would get a lower res so i could run native at good fps/details.

Personally i got 2 32 inch TVs that i use with my laptop for gaming. 1 is 1080p and other is 768p. When i am gaming i dont really see the difference that much. If i however set anyone of em to non native res it hurts my eyes.

 

Well, my experiance is with desktop monitors. I didn't find stretch to be a problem. But some monitors handled it better than others. But I mostly played FPS, which most of the time had a lot of action on the screen.

I know some people hate stretch because it can look blurry. Some find that AA makes the game blurry. Different people like or tollorate different things. I would try a local computer store and try a game at native high resolution, then in stretched mode, then on a lower res laptop in native mode.

Oh, Windowed mode might be an option to run at native res, but lower resolution.

How much time will be spent gaming, and non-gaming? When not gaming you will have to live with lower resolution.

 

With 1600x900 you would get nice amount of extra fps compared to the 1980x1080 and i dont think there's alot of quality improvement with the 1080, atleast i havent seen it either.

 

Running native @ lower settings vs non-native @ higher settings

Tough choices.

After OCing my GPU on my laptop i was able to finally leave the 768p zone and play comfortably at 900p.

Oh, and the Acer is a touchscreen.

 

Here are some thoughts from a different forum monitor - What are the best laptop screen resolutions for gaming on a PC? - Arqade

 

Lol I run at 720p

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

 

I run games in OS X and Windows at resolutions lower than my Mac's native 1680x1050 all the time, and they look fine.

 

The main draw for the 1080p display I mentioned actually isn't the extra resolution for me but that it is an IPS display and rated rather good according to the Anandtech review. Whereas the y410p display seems to a rather average TN from the comments in the owners thread. The 1080p does have the advantage of course for actually running content if it is able to at that resolution and outside games (although I'm wondering about the actual usability advantage here due to the screen size).

But my concern for it is how much of an image quality tradeoff it would have versus the 1600x900 they both had to run games at 1600x900.

Was actually set on the ideapad y410p before I found out about the Acer's v7s IPS display. Now it is a performance vs display debate for me.

I may just get the y410p and see how the display actually is since they have a no hassle return policy. Unfortunately I don't think either of these will be available on display in a store anytime soon (if ever) around here.

 

The 1080p IPS display on the Acer V7 is very nice. I tried out the R7, which has a nearly identical display just bigger, firsthand at a Best Buy and it was easily the best notebook screen in the store short of the Retina MacBook Pros. Just keep in mind that the numbers in the AnandTech review are post-calibration. They were nice enough to post their .icc file so if you have the V7 you could download it and use it. Even accounting for panel variations the copied settings should offer a marked improvement since pretty much nobody except Apple calibrates their notebook displays at the factory.

It's not really fair to compare the Acer to the Lenovo since they are two different notebook categories, one being an Ultrabook and the other being a smaller gaming notebook. Do you value portability, build quality, and screen or do you value performance? With that being said, if I were in the market for an Ultrabook the Acer Aspire S7 and V7 would be at the top of my list. Acer really has stepped up their game with some of their recent products, good for them.

 

A lot of conflicting views. Honestly, I am not sure this is subjective actually. Running native at lower settings is better than higher settings at non-native. Why?
1. I have tried it
2. Unless you are working with an old CRT monitor, the LCD drastically lowers the IQ.

Native all day.

 

+1

Resolution is the last thing you should sacrifice on an LCD, and only if you absolutely can't get the game to run acceptably by lowering graphics settings. Nothing compromises image quality as much as the blurriness caused by interpolation.

 

I still wonder if some displays handle this better than others. This may explain why some are OK with it and others hate it. Take a look at this monitor review, which at the very least gives an idea of what bad interpolation can look like. PRAD | Review Monitor ViewSonic VP2330wb Page 11

Additionally I think choosing a matching aspect ratio to the native aspect ratio is a big factor as well. The above link shows this.

 

Here's an example of 1080p running at 720p four game benchmarks on a 13.3" screen:

Bioshock Infinite: w230st bioshock infinite 1080p 720p - YouTube
Dirt 3: w230st dirt 3 1080p 720p - YouTube
Metro Last Light: w230st metro last light 1080p 720p - YouTube
Tomb Raider: w230st tomb raider 1080p 720p - YouTube

Be sure to pick 1080p YouTube video resolution if you really want to see the difference. I would have shown split screen but I don't have a video editor with that capability. Unfortunately it's still compressed video. I can make raw video files available.

 

I watched those. Thank you for taking the time and effort to make and post them. They do help.

I noticed the video camera wasn't doing the best job of focusing. Manual focusing might have helped. But when I looked at parts that were in focus, I didn't see much of a difference. Yes, lower resolution was not as sharp, but it was lower resolution. It didn't seem like a big deal to me.

Maybe take your raw video, pause it and take a picture at the same spot in both resolutions. Maybe side by side the differences will stand out more.

What is your objective opinion of these four games?

 

Well I am using my digital snapshot camera for the videos, I do plan on eventually getting a video camera. In any case when I get a chance I will do some still images, but I don't think it tells the same story as real video.

 

The further away from native you go, the worse things look ASSUMING you run fullscreen. If I must run at less than native resolution, I can only handle 1 step down in resolutions and only with SOME games. Like, 1680 x 1050 is the first step down from 1920 x 1200. Please note that 1600 x 900 is a further step down from 1920 x 1080 than 1680 x 1050 is from 1920 x 1200. For me, the best way I can describe it is that there is an increasingly present "white filter" over the games the lower the resolution goes. It drives me insane. Other people claim to have no issues. You might have no issues, but you won't know until you try it first hand up close. A smaller native res screen SOMETIMES looks worse than a larger native res screen. The reason is that since the game scales most things in size, a native, 17" 1440 x 810 screen makes games like MW2, L4D2, etc look JUST as good on my 17" 1200p screen when both are at the same native res and settings.

Now some games, like BF3, regardless of the resolution you run the game at, the text in multiplayer from people chatting is the same size, taking up more of the screen the lower the resolution you're at, and the loading screens for MP maps are ALWAYS 720p in size and simply throw up black borders around the picture of the loading screen when it starts up. End of story. So it's a hit and miss for that game, but other games may similarly have squished up notifications etc to make them readable at the game's selected resolution. But this is quite rare in my experience.

All in all, if your MAIN concern is gaming and your GPU is not top of the line and you believe you want the smaller resolution to get more out of your games while having them sharp and crisp at native resolution, then the 1600 x 900 screen is for you. Nobody is going to fault you for that. If you rather the extra space for ms office/photoshop/facebook/twitter/etc and can handle lowering game settings to run them at 1080p without any hitches, then that might very well be your best choice. All I and monsieur Wingnut have done is give you video and text-based in-depth descriptions of the differences, and now you need to decide what's more important to YOU.

Edit: Also, finally, if you run your games in windowed mode at lower than native resolutions, they are still just as crisp as a fullscreened, native res game. They simply take up less space on your screen, and the game needs to support windowed mode (which isn't very common these days in many of the lesser-cared-for PC titles like Prototype 1/2, Amazing Spiderman, etc). Most games do though, so again, take that into consideration.

 

I am not sure what or why you are saying this? There were many people on this thread that are trying to help. What are you trying to imply?

 

Well he did the video and I basically wrote a book on all the pros and cons in all my experiences. Let me clarify: All we here (the whole thread responders) can offer you is third party explanations of what happens with varying setups and situations, but OP (I can't remember if you are him) must decide which he prefers based on his own needs. We can't simply say one or the other is better for all situations.

 

I am not the OP, I am one that offered opinion and posted links to help. But you made it sound like yours and HTwingnut were the only posts that mattered...

While I have have offered my opinion and posted links with information, etc, I still find the opinions offered interesting. I am thinking of a 1920x1080 gaming laptop for myself. Anyway, I think all opinions offered in this thread are helpful, as it does seem to be subjective.

 

I would definitely rather game at lower-than-native resolutions than get an inferior, lower-res screen so I could game at native resolution. Note that the general trend (i.e. not a hard and fast rule, but usually true) is that a higher-res screen is going to be better in other ways as well as resolution, whether it be contrast, brightness, color reproduction, viewing angles, or any other specification.

At the same time, my personal opinion on this is based on the fact that I wouldn't buy a gaming-only laptop. If I did, I would consider getting one with a screen resolution that is suitable to the machine's graphics power and memory bandwidth.

 

the camera video is not able to pick up the difference

 

Either take the best screen, or the faster GPU. Every factor in between is superfluous.

 

It also may depend on what games you like to play how much this will matter.

Personally, if gaming is priority one, an average panel will look better at native than a good one with interpolation at a lower-than-native resolution.

If you value higher resolution desktop for work type activities, then sacrifice for the interpolation.

It's about comprises in this case.

Take the Alienware 14 vs the Razer 14. I'll take that crap TN panel on the Razer any day to keep the 765M at native resolution. Why have that good panel just to muck it up because 1080p is too big for the 765M's britches.

 

WOW really? Damn...

The screen on the Razer 14 is one of the worst on the market no matter which way you slice it. It's not in the same league, heck not even in the same sport, as the 1080p IPS panel used on the AW 14. Running at native resolution be damned, everything would look better on the AW 14, whether it's at native resolution or not. The Razer 14 has one of those screens where it's actually impossible to avoid color shifts at the edges even if you're looking at it head-on. That's how horrible the viewing angles are.

I don't care if I have to turn down a few graphics settings to make the AW 14 perform as well at native resolution. That panel on the Razer 14 belongs on a $200 netbook, not a $2000 premium gaming device. It's utterly inexcusable.

 

Thanks for the replies. It is a bit of a tricky issue because I can't really say definitively what is the most important for me. Will be gaming on it but also watching movies as well as general web browsing. For gaming it is also more of a supplementary machine since I have a desktop as well. At the moment really only thinking about Civ 5 and MMOs and similar games as opposed to more demanding FPS games (like Crysis, Metro, and etc. on it).

If anyone was wondering the actual two machines I'm comparing the Lenovo Ideapad y410p and the Acer Aspire V7-482PG-6662.

 

You're comparing an Ultrabook to a performance/gaming notebook. Two different price ranges and categories.

 

They're the same price for me.

I'm just trying to get a picture of all the different considerations between them before making a final decision.

 

I want lower resolution laptop to gain as much fps i can get but ss a Full HD gamut screen with 90% colour closeness in 1920x1080 whole lot better then a HD+ screen in 1600x900?

 

Nah bro, you're flat out tripping. You'd take maybe the worst screen we've ever seen?

Nope, I'll take non-native res gaming on a panel that can actually display the color black.

The Acer's 750M, even with DDR3, would supplement a gaming desktop well. With that information, I think the best choice would be the 1080p IPS.

 

I like the Acer, and it's probably what I would get out of the two if I do most of my hardcore gaming on my desktop. The 750M GDDR3 is not bad, but the OP said he wants to play "Civ 5 and MMOs and similar games" on it, in which case I'd be worried about the i7-4500U being underpowered for those kinds of traditionally CPU-bound games.