PC Widescreen displays

Im looking into getting a laptop (a 'vaio a790' to be specific), and was wondering, if I end up going with a widescreen display, should I expect compatibility issues with older games and applications as a result? I've never used a PC that had a widescreen display, and as such im not sure what to expect from one.

 

You may have some issues with games that dont have widescreen resolutions (even new games. Some you can edit to get real widescreen resolutions others stretch).

Though you can always play old games with black bars on the sides.

I have a 20.1" wide and would never go back either.

 

You will not regret getting a WS LCD one bit.

I have a Dell 24" and it is one of the best things I have done for my desktop setup. I have had no trouble playing all my games, new ones, old ones, they all look great. 99.9% of games have settings or config files that will enable some form of WS.


^_^_^

 

Don't expect to run games like Battlefield 2 or Half Life 2 very well, which support widescreen, but are considered old by todays standards ;-). The card in there is equivalent to a 9600. 4pixel pipelines, pixelshader 2.0 (although 9600 has 1.4 pixelshader).

If you look hard enough you might find an Acer Ferarri laptop that has a Radeon X1600 GPU in them and costs around the same price of the Sony laptop. THe Sony is a good laptop nonetheless but if you want gaming + widescreen, then look for something that has something better than the x600 gpu.

This is the laptop I will most likely get.

http://www.cyberpowersystem.com/system/ntbkx56700.asp?v=d

It has everything I need. I'm looking for average gaming but most importantly lots of RAM and good CPU speed for AutoCAD/Photoshop and batterylife.

 

I can tell you first hand this notebook is great. I have the IBuyPower equivalent (older model with R9700/256).

The model with the better GPU stated in that link will play most games in very good resolutions. Uniwill the whitebook maker of this notebook is a good company. I have not dealt with Cyberpower although they do get pretty good ratings from most people. Do NOT buy from IBuyPower, unless you want to deal with many, many headaches when you need something serviced.


^_^_^

 

If the game doesn't nativly support widescreen, you can usually edit the field of view settings and bump them up (150? depending on the game). I know the games based off of the Quake 3, Doom 3, and unreal engines have this setting in the config files.

 

Yeah you can but i blame my lame performance on halo due to this so i say that method sucks!

Though there are games that will support widescreen properly just by editing a file.

 

Hmmm, speaking of gpu's, are their any laptop/notebooks that support desktop ones? I've heard that some companies are doing that now because of how slow (comparably) mobile video cards are. It sounds like a load to me, as such a thing would certanly make them massive and the batteries energy would be consumed at an alarming rate, but maybe im wrong and it's actualy been done.

 

There aren't any laptops that literally support a desktop GPU, the laptop would have to be big, heavy, and awful with battery life. Nvidia does have what is called, MXM, graphics module.

You can read about it here in detail.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/mxm.html

So lets say you buy a laptop that does have an MXM platform like the laptop I posted earlier. I can buy that, upgrade the RAM to 2gigs ($100-$150), buy a 7800 Go GPU MXM card for $400 off ebay. THat is a total of $550. So, $1439 (the price of the laptop) plust $550 worth of essential gaming upgrades, although the 1gig will suffice in most games today, you end up paying $1989. Compared to this laptop:

http://www.pugetsystems.com/part_info.php?part=3236

However, from what I've been reading. ATI might have an edge in the mobile market with their newer mobile GPUs that are out. Right now their top of the line GPU, which is almost as good as the 7800 Go, but consumes much less power, is the Mobility Radeon X1600 GPU. Sadly though I can't seem to find any laptop that has this GPU. Ati must have stop manufacturing them for some reason. But ATI will soon release a mobility version of the x1800 which will give them an edge in this market.

If you're not in a hurry in getting a good laptop that is good on battery life and is great on upcoming games that use Smart Shader 3.0 (which the 6600 and 7800 support), then wait until this summer. Laptops that use the x1xxxx line should be coming out in full force soon.

 

I looked into the x1600 mobile graphics line, and at this point only the Acer TravelMate 8200 has them. Unfortunetly though Acer doesn't exactly have the best reputation when it comes to quality control or customer relations. Benchmarks using it don't prove it to be particularly powerful either:

http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?page=5&articleid=756

MXM sounds like it's definetly a step in the right direction for the market, but I have to wonder, will it end up only supporting nvidia gpus while ati designs their own version, or is it set to become a possible industry standard? The laptop industry realy needs some sort of gpu standard if it's ever going to compete properly with the desktop market.

It also turns out that asside from the mobility x1800 the mobility x1900 is in the works. But it looks like ati is waiting for the x1600 to catch on before giving specifics on them (such as release dates).