High res laptops dire for gaming?

RicardoSmith

I notice a lot of the high end laptops have very high res screens, 1920x1200 and the like. Even with the top of the line mobile GFX card you are going to struggle to run recent games at a decent framerate. So whats the point in putting a good gfx with a high res screen in the first place? You'd be better with a lower res screen.

ressem

Want to reverse the qn? Do people buy laptops with top of the line graphics card with the expectation that they're great for games?

Take an Insp9300.
Anyone flush enough to pay the extra 400 for a top of the range graphics card might as well pay 120 for a higher res screen with fancy UltraCOLOURFancyPatentedCoating tm.

Don't know about you, but I crowd my 1600x1200 res screen with toolbars and panels far more often than I use the 3d aspects of the graphics card. Though the 3D OpenGL ubuntu/deb screensavers are hypnotic.

RicardoSmith

ressem wrote:

Want to reverse the qn? Do people buy laptops with top of the line graphics card with the expectation that they're great for games?
...

I would have said yes...

You don't need a powerful card for anything else. Even a budget 3D card is enough for CAD and 3D open GL "toys"

maidhc

I gave my Radeon 9700 Pro to my sister in exchange for her FX5200 some time ago. I run two 19" CRT monitors at the oddball res of 1152x864, it manages just as well as the Radeon for what I do.

I dont play games, but I guess its a good point that Ricardo is making. TBH how can people use those high res screens with suffering permenant eye strain?

RicardoSmith

maidhc wrote:

....I dont play games, but I guess its a good point that Ricardo is making. TBH how can people use those high res screens with suffering permenant eye strain?

Well thats a different point in fairness. I'm just saying that the mobile GFX cards are not powerful enough for the latest titles on thereally high res screens. So whats the point.

I think people are getting eye strain for completely other reasons.... :eek:

Captain Trips

RicardoSmith wrote:

Well thats a different point in fairness. I'm just saying that the mobile GFX cards are not powerful enough for the latest titles on thereally high res screens. So whats the point.

I think people are getting eye strain for completely other reasons.... :eek:

My laptop doesn't run at mad high res, but at 1440x960. The card is an X600 and BF2 runs silky at medium settings.

jesus_thats_gre

Nope, I have the XPS2 with a 6800 Ultra and have been managed quite well with resolutions.. You can scale down the res for better performance. The dedregation from using a non native res that you would normaly experience is not noticable in games.

ressem

But in answer to the thread subject, no, High res laptops are rarely worse than medium res laptops for gaming, and you have the advantage of the extra desktop space when needed without virtual or scrolling desktops.
After 18 months you'll probably be playing games in 800x600 anyways.

Even a budget 3D card is enough for CAD and 3D open GL "toys"

If you don't get an x300 or better, you might have problems running even the graphical toys on MS Vista. (They say 915 will be just about good enough. IE at 15 FPS anyone? ). As for 3D CAD, No it's not.
Seen the 3D apps in lookingglass that Sun think we might find interesting? Heavy use of alpha, rotation and scaling. Add a few textures and effects in there and the low end card will suffer (screenshot)
Also the chance that new software will be able to take advantage of the 2 way Pci-express and GPU to accelerate video and possibly other stuff. Eg that H.264 hi-def codec that chews up top of the range pentiums and spits them out.

But that's arguing for the exorbitant graphics card, not for resolution. Short answer is lots of us, geekish enough to buy high end graphics card like having multiple apps in front of us at the same time and pay the comparitively small extra.

RicardoSmith

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

Nope, I have the XPS2 with a 6800 Ultra and have been managed quite well with resolutions.. You can scale down the res for better performance. The dedregation from using a non native res that you would normaly experience is not noticable in games.

I can do that on my Sony, 1280x1024 scales down to 1024x768 quite nicely. My desktop TFT can't do that at all. What res does the Dell do? What does it scale to?

I'm curious people thinking. Because I have a older desknote (laptop desktop replacement). Mine has a 1280x1024 screen, though it does 1024x768. It has a fx5600 gfx card, which was decent enough when I bought it. When I bought it I had the option of getting a 1600x1400 screen, but the 5600 would have choked at that. To be honest it chokes at 1280 and even at 1024 you have to turn down the detail. Though it looks fine, kinda looks like you have 2xAA turned on.

But I always wonder would I not have been better with a more powerful desktop, which could play games at full res and detail. and a more portable laptop. The battery on mine is woeful. Having both machine iss probably the same price as just having a powerful laptop. I guess it comes down to how you are using laptop. I guess if it was your only machine, and you only had the space for a laptop, it makes sense. I bought the laptop so I wasn't restricted to one room in the house when I was on the computer.

RicardoSmith

ressem wrote:

But in answer to the thread subject, no, High res laptops are rarely worse than medium res laptops for gaming, and you have the advantage of the extra desktop space when needed without virtual or scrolling desktops.
After 18 months you'll probably be playing games in 800x600 anyways.

Why 800x600? Because the hardware won't play the new games?

I reckon that increasing from 1024>1280>1600>1900 is a massive framerate hit each jump. I don't follow your thinking that high res isn't much different from medium res?

ressem wrote:

If you don't get an x300 or better, you might have problems running even the graphical toys on MS Vista. (They say 915 will be just about good enough. IE at 15 FPS anyone? ). As for 3D CAD, No it's not.
Seen the 3D apps in lookingglass that Sun think we might find interesting? Heavy use of alpha, rotation and scaling. Add a few textures and effects in there and the low end card will suffer (screenshot)
Also the chance that new software will be able to take advantage of the 2 way Pci-express and GPU to accelerate video and possibly other stuff. Eg that H.264 hi-def codec that chews up top of the range pentiums and spits them out.

But that's arguing for the exorbitant graphics card, not for resolution. Short answer is lots of us, geekish enough to buy high end graphics card like having multiple apps in front of us at the same time and pay the comparitively small extra.

You don't need a high end card to get high resolution. You only need it for 3D apps and games. Personally I would consider the x300 a budget 3D card and the 915 chipset not 3D at all, its so poor.

Java 3D API's and Project Looking Glass is a very specialised niche area and I thing people who want to run that would be looking at mobile workstations with decent OpenGL cards. You might aswell say people who are designing oil piplines. In fact that would be more common use case.

Longhorn uses 3D acceleration for some of the GUI so I guess thats a similar situation though. OS X does too AFAIK.

jesus_thats_gre

The native res of the XPS2 is 1920x1200.. I normally run games ar 1680x1250 or something like that...

When running at such a high res, you do not need AA at all either and you just max everything out to get 100fps

RicardoSmith

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

The native res of the XPS2 is 1920x1200.. I normally run games ar 1680x1250 or something like that...

When running at such a high res, you do not need AA at all either and you just max everything out to get 100fps

100fps@1680x1250 :eek: Impressive. Is it noisy at all?
Whats the battery life when you;'re not gaming?

Might have to sell my Sony and get one of these Dells.

jesus_thats_gre

Not really noisy at all, the fans only spin up during gaming.. The laptop only gets hottish while gaming. Battery life of about 2.5 hours when not gaming..

Wolverine_1999

the only problem with high res laptop screens, is that a very high resolution has the best picture quality for that screen. If when running games you want to have the best picture quality, you would have to bring the resolution up, which goes heavy on framerate, unless you have a good mobility graphics card such as the ATI x700

RicardoSmith

A x700 would be useless at 1920x1200....

jesus_thats_gre

Considering we are now talking about the XPS2 with a 6800 Ultra, the frame rate is less of an issue at high resolutions..

DirkVoodoo

As Jesus knows, I have an Inspiron 9100 with the 1920x1200 display and an ATI Radeon mobile 9800 256MB card.

For games its fantastic! I only played the Doom3 demo on it and it runs fine, can't remember what level of detail to be exact as i dont have my laptop right now, but it never upset my viewing experience. Ditto for rome total war, I could run it with all the settings maxed out, though some of the colours looked a little washed out on the LCD.

I suppose its ironic that the only game ive had visual issues with has been championship manager 03/04 (best IMHO).If i run it in its full screen mode everything gets stretched and looks distorted. Not to a huge degree, but anyone who has played CM knows you spend a lot of time looking at spreadsheet-style screens and when it strains your eyes to look at it, it aint fun!
Easy solution though, clicked on the "run in windowed mode" and it works a charm, in fact i find when i play football manager on the desktop everything looks too big and chunky.
Same problem with Galactic Civilizations, now that i remember it, and more or less the same remedy.

As someone said above, the display is fantastic for multiple window use. I had a thermo report last year that involved hours of flicking between internet explorer, excel and word (any UCD mech eng student know what im talking about ).Needless to say being able to see all the data at the one time (but yes, sometimes the windows had to be very small) was a great help and saved me from a lot of expanding/minimizing.

RicardoSmith

DirkVoodoo wrote:

As Jesus knows, I have an Inspiron 9100 with the 1920x1200 display and an ATI Radeon mobile 9800 256MB card.

F.....

I would have thought it would have struggled based on these benchmarks.
http://www.hothardware.com/printarticle.cfm?articleid=580

DirkVoodoo

Like I said i dont have the specs of what settings were turned on or not, it certainly wasnt skimping on details though.

Ive been playing games a long time and id know if it dropped as low as 30fps, which it most dertainly did not.

Sorry i cant be more specific, im about 5000 miles from my laptop right now