How "bad" do laptops look when not running at max resolution?

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Tigershard

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Mar 9, 2011
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TLDR:
Do LCDs still look like shit when running at non-maxed resolution?

I'm in the market for a new laptop and have my choices down to two. I am waiting until next week to see what the announcements from Apple are concerning the new MacBook Pro line. I am very interested in the retina display rumor. Thing is, I want to do some gaming on my laptop (Diablo 3 and The Secret World). If the MacBook pro does get a retina display, but launches with something like a Geforce 660M, I doubt that is enough power to push a display that has more than 1920x1080 resolution in games. I remember back when I got my first LCD, its max res was 1240x1024, but when running Unreal Tournament 2003 I had to lower the res to 800x600 due to my old video card and it looked like complete ass. Is this still an issue with LCDs today?
 
Tigershard said:
TLDR:
Do LCDs still look like shit when running at non-maxed resolution?

I'm in the market for a new laptop and have my choices down to two. I am waiting until next week to see what the announcements from Apple are concerning the new MacBook Pro line. I am very interested in the retina display rumor. Thing is, I want to do some gaming on my laptop (Diablo 3 and The Secret World). If the MacBook pro does get a retina display, but launches with something like a Geforce 660M, I doubt that is enough power to push a display that has more than 1920x1080 resolution in games. I remember back when I got my first LCD, its max res was 1240x1024, but when running Unreal Tournament 2003 I had to lower the res to 800x600 due to my old video card and it looked like complete ass. Is this still an issue with LCDs today?
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I used 1366 on my 1080p laptop when playing Battlefield on a 460m.

Long story short, it is noticeable, but not horrible. I'd avoid it if possible, but would not be completely devastated if I had to lower the resolution.

I would assume this is one of those things that as you get larger and larger physical screens, and (obviously) as the resolution difference is larger, the effect becomes worse.
 
Like BigJay said its noticeable but not horrible. It also depends on what you're looking at as well.
 
It depends upon the resolution you are trying to do as to how bad it iwll look

resolutions that keep the same aspect ratio do OK while resoltions that result in a significant change tend to look worse....ie going from 16:10 to 4:3......
 
I found it looks much better to leave the max resolution and adjust the DPI scaling instead.
 
Thanks for the input, everyone. If those new Mac Books have a decent enough video card, most likely end up with one.
 
Run the display with a quarter of the resolution and you'll be fine: this way 1 pixel equals four.

So if the new screen is 2560x1600 then run the MBP in 1280x800.
 
Well, the Mac Book news came and went, and I decided not to get one. Wanted at least 2 gigs of ram for the Geforce 650M. Bummer. Hey, at least I will save myself some money buying a PC notebook instead ;)
 
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Tigershard said:
Well, the Mac Book news came and went, and I decided not to get one. Wanted at least 2 gigs of ram. Bummer. Hey, at least I will save myself some money buying a PC notebook instead ;)
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Huh? The retina display MBP's have 8GB RAM.
 
Tigershard said:
Well, the Mac Book news came and went, and I decided not to get one. Wanted at least 2 gigs of ram for the Geforce 650M. Bummer.
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Really this seems like a spurious reason to decide not to buy one. I would never buy one, because $2200 seems crazy for any laptop to me.

But the amount of memory in the discrete video? At best we are talking about a marginal frame rate hit in 3D games if you are playing at full resolution which is likely impractical on most games anyway.

Also when down ressing games, you really can't compare with older monitors running 800x600 and effective DPI below 50 dpi.

Running a Macbook Retina at 1/4 resolution of 1440x900 would still be 110dpi. It would probably look very comparable to a native 110dpi screen, and 2GB video memory would be pointless at this resolution.

So I can see not buying a Retina Macbook for lots of reasons, but 1GB for the discrete video Mem seems completely arbitrary.
 
Snowdog said:
Really this seems like a spurious reason to decide not to buy one. I would never buy one, because $2200 seems crazy for any laptop to me.

But the amount of memory in the discrete video? At best we are talking about a marginal frame rate hit in 3D games if you are playing at full resolution which is likely impractical on most games anyway.
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Right, if I can't use full res, I don't want it. Maybe my reasoning was incorrect "if it only has 1gb of ram I won't be able to run things well at 2880x1800", but it is basically the same conclusion.

Snowdog said:
Also when down ressing games, you really can't compare with older monitors running 800x600 and effective DPI below 50 dpi.
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Which is exactly what I wanted to find out by starting this thread.

Snowdog said:
Running a Macbook Retina at 1/4 resolution of 1440x900 would still be 110dpi. It would probably look very comparable to a native 110dpi screen, and 2GB video memory would be pointless at this resolution.

So I can see not buying a Retina Macbook for lots of reasons, but 1GB for the discrete video Mem seems completely arbitrary.
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It isn't arbitrary. At certain price levels, I expect certain features. In other laptops that cost less than $2200, I can get a 2GB video card, and an SSD.
 
Tigershard said:
It isn't arbitrary. At certain price levels, I expect certain features. In other laptops that cost less than $2200, I can get a 2GB video card, and an SSD.
Click to expand...

It is arbitrary spec whoring, if it actually doesn't deliver any real performance enhancement. Which most likely it doesn't.
 
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