1920x1080, or 1680x1050 External Monitor with 7720

My father's sight is failing and I want fix up an external monitor with his Acer 7720, so that I can crank up the dpi, but still have reasonable window size.

I am a bit unclear about whether the laptop's graphics card can drive a higher resolution external, and how much higher.

I am looking at either the Acer 22 inch 1680 x 1050, or the Acer 23 inch with 1920 x 1080

Thanks for any help or comment.

 

That depends on the type of graphics card you have.
Go to Control Panel, then to System, then to device manager and tell us what it says under Display adapters.

In general, it should run start monitor without any problems, but performance depends of the graphics card. I have a 7720 with GeForce 9500m GS and I can use integrated screen on 1920x1200 and external on 1600x1200 without any problems.

 

Thanks,
Unfortunately my father is not local so I can't check details quickly, but I will find out and report back. I suspect the 9500m GS is a higher spec than my fathers which I think is a fairly basic 7720 variant.

 

Well, the most important thing is what your father is planning to do with the laptop. Is he isn't going to play new 3D computer games, then you shouldn't have any problems, as long as you buy monitor with correct connectors.

On the left side of the laptop, there should be a blue VGA DE-15 connector, next to it there should be something that looks like white DVI-D connector. It could happen for his laptop not to have the DVI connector.

I don't think that you will have any problems with the external monitor.

 

Great thanks!

He is definitely not into 3D (or even 1D) games!

 

Then the only thing you have to worry about is to have same type of connector on the laptop and monitor, but that shouldn't be a problem!