[SuperCoolAl]

I've got a Mobility X700 powering a 15.4" widescreen at 1200x800 res. Half-Life 2 in glorious native widescreen

When buying this laptop I made sure the graphics would be powerful enough for native res.

[IceFire]

LCD question for you all.  I just bought a Samsung 173P Plus (+) and its a fantastic screen so far.  My only question is should I run it with DVI or VGA?

I have noticed a few oddities so far...some videos seem to show some minor colorbanding (perhaps the videos errors just come out clearer on this?) and some games seem to blur a bit even when others seem to be just fine...

[Clave]

DVI should be best in theory...

[CP5670]

DVI will be at least as good as VGA. If that monitor has a DVI connection you might as well use it.

The color banding appears slightly on most LCDs, even 8-bit ones. It's only the 10-bit professional ones that get rid of it altogether.

When buying this laptop I made sure the graphics would be powerful enough for native res.

I wanted at least a mobility 9600 for mine (was one of the better cards about 18 months ago). I didn't actually buy mine but got it at a competition, so I didn't get to choose the specs. The other specs were very good for the time but the video card was low end. Then again, the image quality on this laptop screen is absolute trash compared to my main computer's monitor, so I'm not sure I would want to play games on it even if I could.

[Grey Wolf]

Originally posted by CP5670
Does that make a difference? I thought it gives you more options but the actual scaling looks about the same. Unfortunately the ATI driver on my laptop (some OEM thing, not catalyst) doesn't seem to support it. The standard nvidia drivers on my desktop do but I don't need it on the CRT.

It depends on the algorithms used. I know the nVidia's resizing looks better than my BenQ monitor's.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by IceFire
I have noticed a few oddities so far...some videos seem to show some minor colorbanding (perhaps the videos errors just come out clearer on this?) and some games seem to blur a bit even when others seem to be just fine...

Yeah... when I upgraded to an LCD, all my... erm... perfectly legally downloaded 175Mb Enterprise episodes, which were quite watchable on the 17" CRT, are now painful to look at. Same with most of my (completely legal... ) DivX/Xvid movies that are only 1 CD, not 2.

Try a few DVDs. If you still see colorbanding, it's the monitor's crap 6 or 8-bit image processor. If DVDs look fine, breathe a sigh of relief, and go... purchase some higher-quality, 2-CD movies.