The effect of WUXGA+ on gaming?

I want to have a good resolution screen. I'm eye-balling the Dell 1720's at the moment and their WUXGA+ option with that schnazzy $425 coupon.

My question is: Is having such a resolution going to be a huge deterrent?

Do laptop resolutions scale-down well? Or must they remain at their native resolution?

Would you (opinion's here) consider it wiser to get a 15.4" screen?


Now, I don't give a darn about new games, I only wish to play CoH, WoW, and Sims 2.

 

I have a Alienware with a 1920x1200 WUXGA screen and I love it I only play WoW with that res and it runs and looks great. No need for AA. I love the res on the desktop for web browsing and such, again looks great and crisp. Lots of room, and I plan to get the WUXGA on my next laptop when i decide to upgrade.

 

I own an Inspiron 9300 with a WUXGA+ screen with a 6800 Go card. I've played all three of those games on my 9300 with max graphics(except CoH) at 1920x1200 resolution and they ran and looked absolutely great.

However, there are other games that I tried on the 9300 and I had to tune down the resolution due to video card being so old that it couldn't handle it.

 

I have a WUXGA screen, although in retrospect I wish I'd gotten a WSXGA (1680x1050) instead, if just for the readability (I have to use a Firefox plugin to automatically scale every webpage to 130% text size so I can actually read things).

I can play most games at 1920x1200 (without AA, which isn't necessary anyway at such a high resolution on a 17" screen), although newer games (Bioshock, Crysis) don't play well at that res. However, playing at a lower resolution (1280x800 in Crysis, for example) looks fine (higher res looks better, of course, but LCD scaling artifacts aren't noticeable).

 

with a WUXGA (1920x1200) resolution:
- you have much larger workspace (for text, web, pics, windows, etc..)
- your gaming is nice at native since theres no need to use AA
- you have future proofed yourself with 1080p display (for Full HD movies with HD-DVD/Blu-Ray or HD video files)

As for Firefox text, it may seem small... but did you know if you hold the CTRL key and use your mouse scroll, you can increase/decrease the text sizes.

 

I too have a WUXGA on my Dell XPS M170 with a go 7800GTX, those games I can play at 1920x1200 looks abosultely stunning on that screen.