e6500 - WUXGA Changing screen resolution

I just bought a Latitude E6500 with a WUXGA LCD with Nvidia NVS 160M to replace my old Inspiron 8600 also with WUXGA screen.

I am puzzled with one thing : with my old 8600 I was able to change resolution from 1920X1200 way back to 800X600 without any loss of quality. The screen always ramained crisp and clear.

Now, with my new E6500, anything less than 1920 X 1200 gets fuzzy. I read all about the "native resolution" speach, but what I can't understand is why the old laptop was able to show all resolutions properly, and the new on doesn't.

Can anyone explain this to me ?

Thanks

 

Your screen is a 16:10 resolution and 800x600 is 4:3 AR, they aren't the same that is why it looks fuzzy. The old notebook may have had some extra software in the driver that would fill the screen a bit so that it didn't look as bad, but neither resolutions aren't the same AR so you would have seen stretching regardless.

 

That's the catch... With my old 8600, even if the ratio is different, the display is still very crisp and clear, not fuzzy at all...

What changed over the years ? Is the clarity due to the old video card (mine was an ATI RADEON 9600 PRO) ? the old monitor ?

 

Thats pretty hard to believe.
I always find non native resolution fuzzy - even with really small dot pitch (as in WUXGA on 15,4").

 

Yes. Unfortunately that's the way it is with these resolutions on the widescreens. Native is the best way to go. You'll just have to set the fonts and icons to larger.

I do have a question for you though. When booting up Windows during the Windows XP or Vista splash screens, please look towards the bottom of the black screen. Does it appear blue-purple to you a bit? Also, when on the desktop, do you have slight shades of black in the bottom left and right corners over the Start menu and clock? Hard to explain without really showing it to you so I hope I make sense. I have already swapped 3 screens with the same issues on each. They were all Samsung WUXGA 1900x1200 LCD panels. I did see a LG and wasn't impressed with the colors or brightness. Looked washed out compared to the Samsungs. Thanks!

 

See for yourself. I made a screen capture of 3 different resolutions of my old 8600 (800x600, 1280x800 and 1920x1200) and put it on top of each other...
No need to put larger fonts. Just changing resolution.

See how good they look ? That's why I don't undestand why this kind of quality cannot be achieved with newer systems...

 

That's been my experience also, so I always get one I'll keep at 'nat... err, factory resolution..... The old desktop tube displays could change easily and stay sharp...what up with that?

 

These pictures are not taken with a camera are they? Because a screenshot taken with a PrintScreen or similar will of course not include the scaling artifacts you get when running in the non-native resolution.

Örjan

 

Of course the screenshots will be clear since the image is saved at that resolution. I can drop mine to a fuzzy 800x600 and take a screenshot that will show up just fine. The problem is with your screen displaying that image when it has a different number of pixels. I don't know how you would have a clear display at non-native resolutions; I have never seen such a thing, but I sure would like to.

 

I can assure you that those screen shots are an exact match to what I get on screen.