Why I'm glad have a P-6860FX over a 7811FX

Why I'm glad I have a P-6860FX over a 7811FX.

1. Its cheaper, you can get a perfectly good refurbished one for 800$ now.

2. The 7811 might have more battery life, but I'm all ready getting 3 hours of battery life for a desktop placement laptop. The reason its called a desktop replacement is because it's meant to be plugged in. And if I wanted battery life then I would get a small laptop.

3. Games look better at native resolution. The 9800m gts is only as fast as a overclocked 8800m gts. Games like Cod4 have a hard time keeping a smooth frame rate at 1900 by 1200 max settings. In Crysis can almost get 30fps at high settings only at 1280 by 800. If you were to put that on a 7811 then it would not look very good. And if you wanted to play games at a higher resolution then the 6860 supports, then just get an external monitor.

4. If you want the fastest cpu possible, just get a desktop. Who cares if the 7811 has a faster fsb. The gpu in both laptops can't take advantage of the processing power in the fastest cpus.

 

I'd like to comment on some of your points.

2. The first three charges on my P-7811FX went for 3:15 minutes. After that, the battery wore down significantly, and now it only holds charges of about 2:30. I'm sure the same will happen with the P-6860FX.

3. In Call of Duty 4, at 1920x1200 resolution, AA at max, all settings on "High", I was hitting ~50fps average. I haven't bothered to try a horribly coded game such a Crysis.

4. Agreed.

Otherwise, congratulations on the new P-6860FX, I'm sure you will enjoy it.

 

I just bought a 28" LCD external monitor, and my P-6860fx is LOVING it.. I was pwning CoD4 at 1920x1200 AA max... And it was running FLAWLESSLY! Oooh the jooooooy...

I still love my 6860... It has yet to disappoint me.

 

Sounds to me like you wish you had a 7811 and are trying to justify have a 6860 instead (because after all, the 7811 IS a better laptop and the price difference is very small.

The only reason I'd consider a 6860 over a 7811 is the 7811's have had a lot of motherboard problems.

 

Don't get me wrong, i love my 6860 and I'm glad i got it instead of upgrading to the 7811... but your going off of quite a bit of false truths.

1> While it is still cheaper, you can a 7811 for around 900, so 100 dollars for the newer tech is a pretty good deal. The 7811 was a good deal even comparing the laptops at full retail. There's never really been much more than 100-150 dollars separating the two machines in price

2> Don't know what your getting at here, so we'll just leave it.

3> Yes games look good at native res, but then you kill your argument by talking at playing games at 1200x800 (something the 7811 will be able to do as well) And while the 9800m GTS is simply a die shrink of the 8800m GTS it is still a superior card. I can match the clock of a 9800 pretty easily, but the 9800 can overclock from there and our 8800's cant match the max clocks some people were getting with the 9800's. We start to get diminishing/negative returns long before we reach the max overclock that the 9800 can reach

4> Have to disagree with you there. I have the fastest CPU you can put in the 6860 (the x9000), and even though the x9100 only give the 7811 users a extra 60Hz of speed, the 1066 FSB does give the 7811 a definite edge. My low latency ram will transfer single bits of data faster than the 1066 RAM, but i'll eventually run into a speed wall half way to the point the 7811 does.

Now saying that, a maxed out 7811 is only going to have me by 6-8% on sheer power so it wasn't a worth while upgrade. But not counting buying a completely shagged 7811 (which there were quite a few) people in the market for a new laptop would probably do well to get the 7811 over the 6860 if for nothing else but the stock CPU makes it worth the extra 100 dollars

 

Totally agree with Hep! There's only two reasons you would create such a thread: 1) To try to justify your purchase which you're questioning yourself about. 2) To troll. I don't think you're trying to troll, but I don't think you're truly satisfied with your purchase either. Regardless, Kamin_Majere makes all the right points here and I feel obliged to add to and repeat some of what he said.

1) You can get a 7811 for less than $1000 new if you know where to look. Even so, most got their 7811 for $1250, and even for that price, the price per difference vs the 6860 makes it a better value than the 6860 at $800, and that's if the 6860 were new. You said it was refurbished which is even worse of a value (still a great value vs other lines though, just not vs the 7811).

2) I think you're saying that the battery doesn't matter because you always keep it plugged in. Well I don't understand why you don't just have a desktop then. Regardless, I'm sure you realize that this isn't in any way an advantage over the 7811, so not sure why you really listed it.

3) You can't say that the 9800GTS is the same as an OC'd 8800GTS. The 8800 can't even clock high enough to match the stock 9800, and anyway, if you're going to compare an OC'd 8800, you should compare it to an OC'd 9800, not a stock vs an OC'd just to validate your argument. Besides, the 9800 generally runs cooler. Also, COD4 can be maxed out flawlessly, not sure who you talked to. Games generally look better at HIGHER resolutions, so given that the 7811 has a higher resolution, if it can max it out, it will look better. Anyway, the 7811 can play games at 1280 by 800 too... and will give even better performance than the 6860 at that resolution, so in no way can the 6860 be compared when talking about resolution in games. Besides, you said "if you want a higher resolution, buy an external monitor." OR, since you're spending more money, why not just put that extra $200 up with your original $800 since you're going to spend it anyway, and get a 7811 instead.

4) Where are you getting the evidence for such assumptions here. Talk to E-wrecked if you don't think a faster processor makes a difference in games. Besides, even the most extreme gamer isn't playing only games with their laptop, the processor is used more out of games anyway. In either case, for an argument of "the 6860 is just as good a value as the 7811", an argument of "just get a desktop" doesn't really work, that isn't really an argument for your point. Make sure you reread what Kamin wrote too, he speaks the truth.


The P-6860 is stable, reliable, and almost as fast as the 7811 but it simply wouldn't make sense to get one if you can get a 7811 instead. There's a thread about a guy who got a few 7811's at $879 at his local best buy (I think that's where he got it?). If you have a 6860 and are happy with it, I wouldn't bother upgrading to the 7811, I would wait as the 6860 is still one of the big boys of today. But if you're deciding between a 6860 and a 7811, the 7811 should hands down be your choice. It adds a lot more for only a $200-300 difference. So the bottom line here is this: both are great machines at great values, and the difference between them isn't so huge, but for the price difference, the value of the 7811 is hands-down-better. Pretty soon (hopefully) I'll be saying the same thing about a new Gateway laptop, and the 7811 will be in the 6860's shoes. That's just the way it goes in the laptop industry.

 

When I was deciding between the two (the 6860 vs the 7811) I boiled it down to three items to decide between.

1440 x 900 vs 1980 x 1200
T5550 vs P8400
5400rmp hdd vs 7200 rpm hdd

I determined that for my uses, the screen resolution wasn't important. If I wanted a better display I'd just connect it to my 56" tv at 1080p. I decided to have a little more space over a little more speed on the hard drive. And someday, SSD will be cheaper so an upgrade will be due. Same with the CPU. From what I could see, the 7811 was about 200 more than the 6860 when I was looking. I figured if the T5550 proved to be too slow for my uses, I'd spend the $250 and get a P9300 or something like that.

At the end of the day, I opted for the cheaper 6860. So far I have loved it! It plays oblivion and some other games without any problem. Often times better than my desktop (mostly GPU limitation i think)

Kudos to the 6860!

 

I guess I was wrong about COD4, but on the stock cpu you could not get those frame rates I'm sure. As for new games, you won't be able to max them on either laptop. If you were to max the game at 1280 by 800 on the 7811 then everything would look really jagged. On the 6860 it would look much better just because it's closer to native resolution. Since the 6860 and 7811 compare so close in performance then there is no way you can say the 7811 can handle higher resolutions much better.

And to xtyfyb, I've discharged my battery 3 or 4 times and it still says if I turned down the brightness and have wifi on it still get 3 to 3 1/2 hours of battery life. Which is excellent for a desktop replacement.

 

Your still going off of false truths. 1280 x 800 will look the same on both laptops. We use fixed pixel displays, so any change from native resolution will result in the same "blurring" effect, it doesn't matter if the res change is 1 step from native or 40

As to handling higher resolutions better... yes, yes i can. As i pointed out to you a maxed out 7811 will get me by 6-8% so they will handle all points of operation better than my 6860 at about the same percentage (not counting CPU intensive tasks where they only get 60Hz better for a negligible increase)

Like i said the upgrade to a 7811 isn't worth it in my opinion, but if you were looking at a new computer between the two the 7811 is a better deal. Unless you are wanting slightly less performance but guaranteed functionality. Because the 6860 has a WAY better track record for reliability.

 

How is that. Your trying to fill a higher resolution screen with as many pixels that a lower resolution screen has. How can it not look different?
And 6-8% won't do very much. I'm getting 30fps in Crysis, wow now I have 32 or 33. Not much difference.

 

You don't seem to realize that despite the difference in the screens' max resolution, they're the same physical size...

 

Yes I get they have the same screen, but if you have 1280 by 800 pixels stretched to 1920 by 1200 would it not look worse then if you only had it stretched 1440 by 900?

 

6860 vs 7811 respective Differences:

Centrino vs Centrino 2 technology (this alone worth the $ dif to me)
35watt processor vs 25watt (35 makes more heat and uses power quicker)
1.83ghz vs 2.26ghz cpu clocks
2mb l2 cache vs 3mb l2cache
667MHz FSB vs 1066MHz FSB
1440 x 900 WXGA+ resolution vs 1920 x 1200 WUXGA
DDR2 RAM @ 667MHz vs DDR3 RAM @ 1066MHz
8800GTS vs 9800GTS (higher clocks, runs cooler)
HDMI 1.2 vs HDMI 1.3
320GB stock HDD vs 200GB stock hdd (6831 comes with larger storage HDD)
5400RPM stock HDD vs 7200RPM stock HDD (possibly faster HDD but possibly more heat)
Integrated Bluetooth vs No bluetooth
Higher history of stability and reliability vs Shaky start

I'm pretty sure these are the only real differences. It's for others to decide if these are worth the $50 to $300 price diff (depending where you look). To me, these are easily worth the difference.

I still don't get why you picture it as being stretched. Why would it be stretched?

 

My computer has raid support. And a faster rpm on a hdd means more heat. I'm not trying to be a fanboy or anything, I had the money to buy the 7811 when I made my choice but I had heard bad things about the motherboard. Other than that, the 7811 without a doubt exceeds the 6860.

 

A battery is a battery. I guarantee you, that it will wear down significantly after a month or 2 of usage. It happens to everyone, it is inevitable.

 

My mistake, I was going off the Gateway website specs where it says that the 6860 has no RAID support. Looks like htey made a typo or haven't updated it in a while. I'll edit my previous post to include what you said.

 

1440x900 on a 1440x900 screen (native res) is much better than 1440x900 on a 1920x1200 screen (non-native res). 1920x1200 has 77% more pixels than 1440x900. I'm pretty sure the 9800M GTS is not 77% better than the 8800M GTS, even if it's OCed. Therefore, you will eventually have to turn down the resolution for games and when you turn down the resolution, it becomes non-native, which looks bad.

 

Wow, this is becoming insane with the assumptions by many of you. Have any of you played games on a 1920x1200 (NATIVE) but at 1440x900? It looks BARELY different. It is slightly blurry, but that's where AA comes in handy. Turn up AA x4/x8 and it looks the SAME. There are no formulas or numbers needed to determine which is better or looks better. The boosted FPS makes the game look smoother, making up for the lower resolution.

I want someone to name a game other than Crysis, that the 9800GTS CANNOT handle on 1920x1200 resolution. Here's a hint: there are none.

 

if the aspect ratio is kept when downscaling there will be little to no difference in quality( 1440x900 to 1024x768) for example.

Downscaling from a higher resolution causes less distortion then if it was from a smaller resolution.

 

Reasons why I love my NX860XL and I'm glad I don't have a 6860FX or a 7811FX-

1. Who really needs directX 10, more than 2 gigs of RAM, and large hard drives anyway?

2. 7900GS FTW

3. Oh, never mind... it got stolen and nobody here remembers what it is in the first place.

 

i love my 6860 but kind of wish i had a 7811. the max oc i can use on my 8800m gts is 650/950 and ive heard of 9800m gts going over 700 on the core clock. then you factor all the other advantages of the 7811 and its deffintely worth the extra cash for it.

 

The only advantage in getting a 7811 (for me) would be the higher native res... I dont find think the slightly better HDD or CPU is a dealbreaker for me.. Considering, I had already made my mind up about upgrading both before even buying the 6860FX.

I solved the res. issue, by buying a 28 inch external monitor, which looks absolutely great :-D

 

8800m gts will run 9800m gts clocks and higher, but it will not match 9800m gts oc clocks. (doing 600/1500/850 for few months now - never a hiccup)

this 6831fx still gets 3 hours of battery (8 month old)

all that said, the only reason to get a 6860 is peace of mind, if you are worried about the 7811 issues and cant be bothered to replace it up to 5 times (j/k)

 

Was going to post this.
It's been done, no need for me to now.

Though I don't think 1440x900 --> 1024x768 is maintaining ratios...
Basically, if you play at a resoultion that is four times smaller than native, it will look the same as native (though of course it will be clearly a lower resolution, you won't have distortion). This is because every four fixed pixels will be filled with one pixel's worth of information. Wheras 1440x900 scaled down to 1280x800 will result in every 1.125 pixels needed to be filled with one pixel's worth of info, and since this is impossible, some places will be one pixel and some places will be two. And that's what makes it look bad.

 

Thank you, some one agrees with me. If you have not put crysis at the lowest resolution on the p-6860 then don't say anything about it not looking any different because it looks horrible at 800 by 600 scaled up to 1440 by 900.
All the trees are blurred together and everything is jagged. This is what you would be seeing if you put crysis at 1280 by 800 or 1440 by 900 and scaled it up to 1920 by 1200. It looks too bad to play at the highest settings, making you have to play it at lower settings. And any new game that comes out is just going to be as intensive as Far cry 2 or crysis.

 

You can't say that putting crysis to 800x600 on the p-6860 is anything like putting it to 1440x900 on the 7811. It's two completely different things, and it's not even the same ratios... you're just assuming things..

Read the other posts in this thread (such as narsnail's for instance) and you'll see why yours and rapion's assumptions (and that's all they are since you haven't seen crysis down to 1440x900 from 1920x1200) are wrong. Besides, this is a crysis specific issue (that you're wrong about anyway). The point would be moot if playing other games, in which case we would just play at 1920x1200 and have it look a lot better than the 6860 playing at 1440x900, since higher resolutions generally look better anyway. Please just stop trying to reassure yourself by comparing to a better laptop. You can't say in any way that playing games on a 6860 is advantageous over playing on a 7811. Be happy with your 6860, both are great laptops and at least you saved money, but comparing to the 7811 is not the answer..

 

Actually Jakamo5 playing at native resolution, the 6860 would be more effective. The 1920x1200 screen is a lot more taxing on a GPU than the 1440x900, and the 9800gts isn't that much more powerful to make up for the increased pixels.

Now saying that the wonders of the 1920x1200 screen means you have the choice to play lower end games on a really kick a** resolution, and if the game gets demanding you can switch to a lower resolution, where as a 1440x900 screen can never go above that even for the lowest end games.

I would love a 1920x1200 screen for my 6860, but i prefer gaming at 1440x900. its just really sweet to be able to work on 2 documents at the same time in full view

 

Actually that's just not true. You guy's are simply assuming that the 7811 can't handle gaming at its native resolution. Why would Gateway put out a laptop with a gpu that can't even handle the native res. As I said though, the problem is crysis specific. I play a lot of games, red alert 3, cod4, team fortress, crysis, left 4 dead, for instance. The only one that I haven't been able to max without stuttering gameplay is crysis. And in that case I simply go to a lower resolution, 1440x900 for instance, which looks the same as my roommate's 1440x900 display on his alienware (except that I get higher FPS still). So how is the 6860 more effective when playing at native resolution if theres no problem maxing out at 1920x1200? In fact, the only difference would be that the 1920x1200 looks BETTER, so in a way it would be more effective. Yes, 1920x1200 is more taxing on the GPU, but you can't assume that the GPU can't handle it, because I see first hand that it can and does. 0 problems maxing out any other game except crysis, and they look the same or better on a 1920x1200 display since it's higher res.

Here is how it breaks down:
1920x1200 puts more tax on the GPU. If GPU can handle it, then 1920x1200 looks better than 1440x900 since its higher resolution. If GPU can't handle it, then go to a lower resolution and have it look the SAME as the 1440x900 at that resolution (since aspect ratio is maintained), and the only difference is that you get a BETTER performance with the 7811 since it has a more powerful GPU (among the other upgrades as well...). So in ANY case, the 7811 is more effective.

 

No... 1440x900 on a 1920x1200 display will look worse than 1440x900 on a 1440x900 display. Period. Sorry.

 

Maybe add something with a bit more intelligence to that, such as this thing called evidence, detailed information explaining your point, proof, reason. Helps to make posts seem a bit more credible...

Even if you were right, which you're not (my roommate and I just examined the difference in detail at the beginning of a few of the levels, there was 0 difference). The point still stands that there is only one time so far that the resolution has even had to be reduced from 1920x1200, and that's when playing crysis. So if you really think you're right, I hope you bought your laptop to play crysis and don't care about getting the best experience from any other games..

 

trust me it is, im very picky and if I was to downscale from 1440x900, 1024x768 is the only res im happy with. its that or native.

 

Well I thought you were intelligent enough to understand the concept since I've already posted this so called evidence. Here, let me help you with that.

You can try it yourself. Set your desktop background to a picture like the default XP background. Then set your resolution to 1440x900. It will look like garbage compared to 1920x1200 on a 1920x1200 LCD. If you don't have a 1920x1200 LCD, just set the res to anything lower than native.

I believe it, but then you're also stretching the image from 4:3 to 16:10. That can't be pretty.

 

Right, when you post something and then I respond explaining why you're wrong, and then you stubbornly say "it's this way, sorry," I'm way too unintelligent to recognize your retort in that last part. Thank you for clearing it up for me.

Theres a large difference (that you unfortunately don't seem to recognize) between you saying something "will be" this way or "can't be pretty" and me actually taking the two situations we're describing and comparing them to each other, and seeing no difference. Hate to break it to you Hep, but there's hypotheses, and then there's actual case studies, and any intelligent person will tell you, not only are the hypotheses often wrong, but the actual experiment itself is always held in higher esteem and is in fact where the conclusion is derived from. "Sorry."

All that says is something obvious, that 1440x900 looks worse than 1920x1200... but thanks for showing me how terrible you are at testing the discussed differences.

 

Wow, you're not changing the actual resolution of the picture when you set a background. Take a picture, a picture with a resolution of 1280x800. Set it as your wallpaper, and set your resolution to native.

Then lower the resolution. The resulting distortion is the same that you will get lowering the resolution from native in anything. Where are your facts? You're typing up long paragraphs to make up for your lack of evidence.

Besides, I gave numbers in my post. Since when are numbers not evidence? They're not arguable.

 

Ok, then why did you tell me to use the xp background in the first place?

Um, no. You can't really think this is any different from what you told me to do earlier. I'm taking the same picture at the same resolution and looking at it at different resolutions. Of course the lower resolution will look worse. Can you explain how this in any way relates to us comparing gaming at 1440 from native 1920 and gaming at 1440 from native 1440?

I'm the only one who has actually done a direct comparison side by side. I told you my results, all you've told us is what you think WILL happen. Sorry if my long paragraphs scare you. If you think that's scary though, you gotta hear about these things that are a bunch of long paragraphs compiled together, called books. Don't worry though, some of them have pictures too.

hahaha wow, no need to say much to that.. funny though, you weren't serious were you?

 

I said the default XP background because it's a picture that anyone has or can get and I know this picture will show you just how bad it can look from experience. Also we know that the resolution won't be changing of the actual picture, just in the mode it is displayed in.

How will the lower resolution look worse? If the original picture is the same resolution, and what you are saying is true, that displaying something in non-native resolution does not cause distortion, the picture would look identical. Think about it.

I'm not the only one who thinks this, and you're probably the only person I've ever heard argue what you are saying.

You clearly don't understand how an LCD panel works. Go back and read my post, and directly refute what I said.

 

I don't think you understand what's going on anymore. We're trying to compare Case 1 to Case 2:

Case 1: Image A at 1440x900, native being 1920x1200.
Case 2: Image A at 1440x900, native being 1440x900.

These are the two cases you're comparing with what you said to do:

Case 1: Image A at 1920x1200, native being 1920x1200.
Case 2: Image A at 1440x900, native being 1920x1200.

You see, included in what we're trying to do is a change in native resolution. You're not changing the native resolution, you're just comparing a higher and lower resolution each at the same native resolution. In this situation, the higher resolution will always look better.

You don't seem to catch on too easy, maybe you should take an extra few seconds and reread what I wrote here.

! ughhh, you're right then. Me being the minority here is such compelling evidence that I must be wrong. You are victorious! lol.

I read again, and laughed again. Sorry but it was just funny because I could picture you screaming "THE NUMBERS DON'T LIE!!"

 

If 1440x900 on a 1440x900 screen is very similar to 1440x900 on a 1920x1200 screen that you can't tell the difference, then why the hell would I play any game at 1920x1200 when I can get a much higher FPS at 1440x900?

 

Because at a certain point in the high number of FPS you can't tell the difference, whereas you CAN tell the difference between image at 1920x1200 and image at 1440x900. You do realize that each of our lcd's has a max FPS of 60 (that being the refresh rate). If the 7811 can get the same FPS as the 6860 (it can actually get more at matching resolutions, because of the better GPU), then wouldn't you want the better image that comes with the higher resolution?

So two reasons:
If you play at 1440x900 on the 7811, you'll get higher FPS than 1440x900 on the 6860.
If you play at 1920x1200 on the 7811, it will look better than 1440x900 on the 6860.

 

well how about you agree to disagree and leave each to his own ?
not much useful information in this page

 

I've been waiting for a mod to close this for a while now.. I'm tired of having to defend against false assumptions.

 

No, I don't think you understand what's going on, which is probably why you're being so hostile. You've refused to refute what I say, you merely mock it.

What you said we are trying to compare is true, assuming when you say "Image A at 1440x900" you mean Image A rendered at 1440x900" (because you can have an image rendered at one resolution and displayed at another).

What I am saying however is this.

Image A rendered at 1440x900 displayed on panel with native resolution of 1920x1200 will look distorted, since the image will be stretched to fit, and there is no way to stretch 1440x900 perfectly into 1920x1200 (since you can't have partial pixel fill, one pixel cannot display more than one color at a time). Instead, some pixels on the LCD will display two pixels of the original image, while others will display one. This is called distortion. Whether you see this or not, that can be argued. But whether it's there or not, that can't be argued. These are the numbers I ask for you to refute.
vs
Image A rendered at 1440x900 displayed on a panel with a native res of 1440x900 will look natural, since for every one pixel of the image, one pixel of the panel will be lighted.

Get it now?

 

well report your self trolling that will be a good one

 

Why did you ask me to first look at the XP background, and then look at an image at 1280 when now you're talking about 1440. Regardless, what you asked to do before was look at the image at 1920 and then 1440 on the same lcd. Completely different from what you're point to now, which is what I had to explain to you.

Now that you understand what we're trying to compare, can you show me where it says that crysis is rendered at 1440x900? In fact, considering that it takes such high-end newer tech to play it, wouldn't you more likely assume that it's rendered at 1920x1200? In fact, if the game is rendered at any other ratios (and I think we can both agree that this is likely due to the large number of other resolutions) then at 1440x900, the image would be fitted with distortion regardless of native resolution, which is EXACTLY what I've been saying all along.

Just defending my baby, I'm not the only culprit here. It could be argued that the thread title is trolling.

 

Do you understand what it means when you pick a display resolution in a game? That's the resolution it is rendering the game at... which is what we're talking about. That's why it's important to set a game to your LCD's native resolution no matter what, unless your GPU can't handle it... IMO, FPS are more important than how pretty it is. So no, Crysis is not rendered at 1920x1200 or 1440x900, unless you set it that resolution. For this exercise, we were assuming that Crysis was set to 1440x900.

I asked you to do the thing with the XP background because it is a simple experiment that will give you the same sort of results. I thought it might help you visualize it, but instead of trying you just scrutinized my methods. In the end, I understand where your confusion comes from, it's that you are failing to understand that when you set a game's resolution, that is setting the render resolution.

At least we can agree on that, haha.

 

I think you misunderstood me. I'm not saying that the game is rendered at any set resolution regardless of the computer. I agree that FPS are more important up to a certain point. As soon as there's no noticeable stutter, that's when image detail becomes more important, for me at least, and I think most would agree. But it makes sense that you're arguing this now that you said that, since FPS will always be better at lower resolutions, even if the FPS/image quality ratio is much worse. Anyway, if FPS matters to you most, I hope you realize that regardless of who's right here, the 7811 gets higher FPS at 1440 than the 6860. Also, regardless of who's right, as soon as you beat crysis and realize you can max out every other game with the 7811 at 1920 and get the same FPS as you would with 6860 at 1440, you won't be so "glad" that you have the 6860 over the 7811 (that's mainly to the OP). 16:10 is the future of gaming...

 

Okay, so let's clear this up once and for all.

You open up [insert game name]
You set your resolution to 1440x900.
Scenario 1: Your LCD's native res is 1440x900.
Scenario 2: Your LCD's native res is 1920x1200.

[ ] Scenario 1 will look better. Reason:___________________
[ ] Scenario 2 will look better. Reason:___________________
[ ] Both scenario 1 and 2 will look identical. Reason:___________________

 

dang... ... i don't understand anything...

well... i prolly understand some stuff. but definitely not all of them... one thing i could deduce though:

someone mentioned or a bunch of dudes mentioned that running games on lower res would give you better fps with a very minor change in quality of picture....

7811fx = 9800mgts + 1920*1200 ==> 1440*900
6860fx = 8800mgts + 1440*900 ==> ?? (obviously something lower comes in here)

now choose...

"end of discussion" ftw

 

3rd choice. Here's why:

If playing at Resolution A which maintains aspect ratio of Resolution B (native resolution). And then if playing on a separate laptop at Resolution A which is native resolution, then both will look the same, that's not what we're arguing. Your argument from what I understand is that aspect ratio is not maintained between 1920x1200 and 1440x900, and therefore it will be distorted when native resolution is 1920x1200, vs it being perfectly natural at 1440x900 native res. While you're right that aspect ratio is not maintained, the difference is so slight, so minimal, that the human eye will not even notice it, even when looking for it.

So you're arguing the numbers, I'm arguing the actual experiment. I'm telling you it looks no different, and narsnail has similar results seen here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4212959&postcount=19
and here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4216255&postcount=31

my argument is that the data and conclusion are derived from the actual experiment, whereas you're deriving the data and therefore your conclusion from the hypothesis...

 

So your argument, in summary, is both will look the same because the human eye cannot notice a difference?

*facepalm*

I've been arguing the whole time that Scenario 1 will be displayed more clearly, but the difference is negligible and it can be argued whether it is even noticeable. Personally, I can notice a difference. I can also see a CRT refreshing when it's set to 60hz, and it hurts my eyes.