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sieb · Jun 27, 2006, 12:37 PM

I'm looking at getting a Macbook for its portability over my trusty 15" PB, but I am concerned with what I have heard about the GMA950 on it. At home, I plug my PB into a 21.3" Samsung 213T via DVI (clamshell mode) w/o any issues, but some have commented on the poor video quality at higher resolutions with external monitors plugged into the MB (i.e. choppy Expose/Dashboard, graphical aritfacts, etc). If I get the MB, I plan on putting two gigs of RAM in it, but the conflicting reports has me stuck between the MB and MBP. Has anyone else had problems plugging their MBs into large external monitors?

knicks20 · Jun 27, 2006, 12:50 PM

I have my MacBook w/ 2Gb of ram hooked up to a Dell 2405FPW right now. It's running at full resolution (1920x1200), and It looks perfect. I haven't done any gaming, but dashboard and expose are smooth and there are no artifacts anywhere.

Kyle Dreaden · Jun 27, 2006, 12:55 PM

I'll second that.

My blackbook with 2GB of RAM looks flawless and runs without lag or problem on my 23" cinema.

Simon · Jun 27, 2006, 03:15 PM

Ditto here. BlackBook drives a 23" ACD, 20" ACD and Samsung 213T perfectly fine. No lag, nothing choppy.

sieb · Jun 27, 2006, 04:50 PM

Sweet, thanks guys, I feel at ease now.

TheoCryst · Jun 27, 2006, 05:23 PM

That's good, I've been wondering about that. I've got a monitor that I'd be spanning to if possible. My iBook (with the spanning hack) can barely power both at once. I guess that's why they disabled spanning on them? I guess 32 MB isn't quite enough to power two desktops smoothly.

muaddib420 · Jun 27, 2006, 09:01 PM

i hooked up my macbook (white 1.83ghz, 1gig ram) to my viewsonic vp201b 20inch monitor using the adapter i got from the apples tore. there were artifacts on the external monitor when the screen was dark. there were little flashes of tiny red flickers when the screen was dark. normal web surfing, you wouldn't notice, but when i was running photoshop, with a black background, it was quite noticable. this was running in dual monitor mode (spanning) and with the external monitor at 1600x1200 native, which was what it defaulted to when i hooked it up.

i didn't think to try to change the resolution to see if the artifacts went away.

sieb · Jun 28, 2006, 01:10 AM

Have you tried running the macbook headless with it just driving the external monitor (the laptop lcd off/closed) to see if it still exhibits this problem?

nJm · Jun 28, 2006, 06:05 AM

There is a white MacBook at my local Apple store running an Apple 20" Cinema display, showing two seperate digital tv channels in full screen on each screen running EyeTV flawlessly.

muaddib420 · Jun 28, 2006, 08:42 AM

Originally Posted by sieb

Have you tried running the macbook headless with it just driving the external monitor (the laptop lcd off/closed) to see if it still exhibits this problem?

no, but i will try this tonight and report back. i was going to anyway to see if the new .7 update changed the artifacting.

sieb · Jun 29, 2006, 11:49 AM

How did it turn out for you?

muaddib420 · Jun 29, 2006, 12:47 PM

couldn't get to it last night, but tonight i'm home all night and will try out different configurations and report back.

jhchan · Aug 25, 2006, 10:45 AM

Hi All,
New guy to mac here. I thought I read that there was a short coming with the new MacBooks (non-Pro) while using both the LCD and an external monitor. Is it possible to run both screens at different resolutions or will the screen only run at the highest the laptop LCD can handle? For instance and I run the laptop LCD at native res and an external monitor at 1600x1200 and use spanning so it will be treated as one huge desktop? Thanks.

SLiMeX · Aug 25, 2006, 11:05 AM

Does anyone have 1GB of RAM and run externals?

silkk · Aug 25, 2006, 01:33 PM

I currently only have 512MB of RAM in my macbook and it runs a dell 2005fpw at native resolution just fine.