Image quality using lower res. on laptop?

[Feisters]

I ordered a Dell Inspiron 8000 tonight. I opted for the 15" Ultra XGA screen. This has a native 1600x1200 resolution. This is actually a little on the high-side for me, but I reasoned that I could always lower it. I had to get this order in tonight to take advantage of the $200 savings (last day). My question is, will I notice any image degradation (pixel clumping, jaggies) at say 1024x768? Or will the image look similar to what it would on a regular 1024x768 XGA screen? Will the pixels be dithered? I'll call Dell in the morning and ask them too, but I wanted to get some unbiased opinions.

If anyone's interested, here's what I ordered with the 8000:

15" UXGA
PIII-850
64 meg ram (add 128 meg stick from Crucial - $55 vs. $200)
32 meg ATI M4 AGP-4X
20 gig hdd
Modem/Nic combo
WinMe

$200 instant savings
Free shipping
-------
$2200

Tax and the 128 meg ram stick from Crucial will set me back about $2400. Not too shabby.

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

At res lower than the max of LCD screens, there will either be a black boarder around the image, or the image will be scaled bigger to fit the whole screen. When the later is done, some image degradation occurs. I dun kno how bad it is for this paticular screen tho. Sorry, i wasn't too helpfull.

 

[Feisters]

The former never occurred to me. The later makes sense. Every little bit of info. helps and is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Vinny N]

Pixel clumping, jaggies are artifacts that older laptops were notorious for when not running the LCD at native resolution.

On most of the newer laptops, it will scale the image and filter it.

The quality is actually quite nice IMO.

I'm certain that the Inspirons in the last 2 years (if not older) work this way.

 

[Lore]

I know that a Dell Inspiron 8000 that I ordered for a friend back in January cannot run 640x480 without looking horribly jagged; its native resolution was 1280x1024 (I believe).

 

[Workin']

Any time you run an LCD at anything other than its native resolution the results suck, in my opinion. I've NEVER seen one that looks better than poor when scaling computer graphics. Playing video (like DVDs), now that's another story, but there are still visible artifacts.

 

[MGMorden]

Also note that with that high res they usually turn on big icons and large fonts etc for you so the high res isn't hard to read at all. You might not have a problem at 1600x1200 when you get it.

 

[Feisters]

Thanks for the replies. I called my Dell Point-of-Sale rep. today, but he wasn't at his phone (go figure). Rather than hold for someone else, I did a little research. I surmised that it would be the video controller that would handle scaling and filtering, so I went to ATI's web site. The M4 chip is essentially the Rage Mobility 128 that does AGP 4X. According to ATI, this chip scales and filters up to a max. of 1600x1200, from a source image of 1280x1024. Accordingly, I should be able to take my Dell 8000 down to 1280x1024 without any artifacts.

I'm wondering, what if I want to play Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf 6 at 1024x768, or 800x600? Like some of you have suggested though, anything less than the native resolution, could be dicey. I know I can size the fonts and icons. But I don't want to have to set a large font in a Word document just so I can see what I'm typing, then have to lower the font for printing.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see. Everything I've read about the Dell 8000 15" UXGA screen has be positive, stellar even. And, I suppose if I don't like it, I'll turn it around and have Dell build me another one with SXGA. I'll certainly post my "review" here after it gets here.

 

[Gepost]

I just ordered an Inspiron 8000 today. I hope you did not get the 20 gig "ATA 100" drive. There is no such thing for a laptop hard drive. I talked to my saleman about this and told him and he was going to check it. You can see my post in this section a couple of days ago. On the other hand, you can get you laptop and then call Dell and complain that you paid extra money for something you did not get.

 

[Zenmervolt]

I have a ThinkPad with an identical screen (1600x1200 at 15 inch diagonal). I have not had any problems with running it at the native resolution, it is much clearer than a CRT. In my experience, the ATI cards do fairly well at scaling and filtering the image for lower resolution on an LCD, but it is still distorted because images must be stretched and compressed. Just a note, at 800x600 on a 1600x1200 LCD the image is perfectly clear because the native resolution is evenly divisable by 800x600. That said, I prefer 1600x1200 to everything, after a day or two you get used to it and everything else looks huge and blown up.

Zenmervolt

EDIT: <<According to ATI, this chip scales and filters up to a max. of 1600x1200, from a source image of 1280x1024. Accordingly, I should be able to take my Dell 8000 down to 1280x1024 without any artifacts.>>

Sorry, but no. The jaggedness is a product of the LCD itself and no amount of trickery in the video chipset can totally overcome it. Trust me, I have the same chip (albeit the AGP 2X version) and the screen always looks best at 1600x1200. Try it out first, 1600x1200 is not as tiny as it would seem.

 

[Feisters]

Zenmervolt O.k., we'll give it a try. Actually, from everything I've read about 1600x1200 displays, everyone who has one likes them. (And that's about 200 testimonials and reviews.) Oh, and I figured that 800x600 would give the best reduction (4:1 pixels).

Gepost, I got the standard 4200 rpm ata33 hdd.