[macintologist]

Ok first let me say that I refuse to run games at a lower-than-native resolution on lcd screens. On my 12" PB I run all games, no matter what, at its native res of 1024x768. Running at a low res is not only ugly, but doesn't offer a performance increase either.

So I'm thinking about getting a 15" or 17" PB. The thing I'm concerned about is the widescreen resolution when playing games. What exactly happens? Does the game stretch and fill the whole screen? Or does it create black borders but still retain the native pixels?

For example, the resolution of the 17"er is 1440x900. If there were to be black borders on the sides then the native 4:3 resolution of the 17" would be (900x4)/3 = 1200 so a 1200x900 resolution. Does this occur in games? Do they give you an option to set it to this resolution if widescreen is not supported?

There's a bigger problem with the 15" PB resolution. The 1280x854 resolution does not allow for a 4:3 equivalent. (854x4)/3= 1138.666667 So therefore you would be forced to switch to a lower resolution like 1024x768 or something that allows a 4:3 ratio. I find this to be a huge disadvantage for the 15" and one reason why I would get a 17" instead.

So what can people say specifically about gaming on their widescreen Powerbooks, and also the cinema displays and 17"/20" iMac?

[MilkmanDan]

Depends on the game. StarCraft cuts leave large black areas on the side, but I've been told that Quake 3 based games can be made to stretch.

[ibook_steve]

"Running at a low res is not only ugly, but doesn't offer a performance increase either."

This is completely not true. Just think about the number of pixels you're pushing for a frame of animation at different screen sizes:

640x480=307200
800x600=480000
1024x768=786432
1440x900=1296000

Of course reducing resolution increases performance. It is a simple fact that if you have less pixels to calculate and display, the more frames you can render in the same amount of time. I'm not sure where you are coming up with this, but it's simply not true.

Steve

[macintologist]

It is true and the reason is because when you're running the monitor at a less-than-native resolution, the LCD has to not only generate the pixels that the game requires, but also scale it down the entire picture to a lower display, thus the graphics chip is performing two jobs at once 1)game pixels 2)scaling the resolution. Therefore when running a game at native resolution, the graphics chip only deals with pushing pixels.

CRTs don't have this problem. Every resolution on a CRT is native, and loops crisp. LCDs look like crap when scaling to a lower resolution.

[mdc]

warcraft 3 is another game that supports widescreen. looks good too

[Dimitri]

the LCD has to not only generate the pixels that the game requires, but also scale it down the entire picture to a lower display, thus the graphics chip is performing two jobs at once 1)game pixels 2)scaling the resolution.

You do know the LCD and graphics chip are seperate entities, right? The LCD alone takes care of the 'scaling' down of resolution, which is why the quality of that image is dependent on LCD model, NOT the graphics card model. Some LCD's do a pretty good job of this, actually, and some people think of it as 'Free Antialiasing'. The graphics card only handles pushing pixels at a given resolution, not scaling resolutions.

[PatheiMathos]

resolution will affect performance...bar none

running at lower res will help in framerates whether its native or not thats just a fact of life.

Go on any laptop and run some Quake III timedemos and you will see the results for yourself.

[macintologist]

I was playing Jedi Academy on a big map on 1024x768 and the frame rates were low. I switched the resolution down to 800x600 and not only did it look like crap, but it was SLOWER. It didn't help at all. It's always best to run games at native resolutions.