display - Lenovo u410 Resolution Upgrade Problems and Questions

08
2014-07
  • Apotheosis

    I'm an IT Pro, so I'm not a complete noob, but I will say that dealing with specific differences in notebook video cables is something new to me.

    I got a u410 for an absolute steal - seriously - and it's perfect for me except for the resolution. I purchased a new panel (1600x900 Matte - https://www.laptopscreen.com/English/section/search/index.php?section=products&model=M14X&brand=Alienware) and it fits perfectly, but it appears to be missing a whole set of vertical lines. That's the best way I can think of to describe it. Based on what I've read, this is due to the cable itself - the connector fits just like a standard 40 pin, but it's definitely missing something. On one of about 10 attempts I got the color to display perfectly, but it was still clearly missing vertical lines (images ok, text almost unreadable). If you've dealt with bad display connections you know what I'm talking about.

    My question is: What can I do? Can I get a different cable and fix the issue or am I stuck at 1366x768? I'm willing to go to just about any lengths to get a higher res panel working in here (it was THAT good of a deal).

    Thanks :)

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    display - LCD resolution interpolation quality
  • Mauricio Scheffer

    How good are recent LCDs at non-native resolutions?

    I'm considering replacing my old CRT with a 20" LCD but I'm not planning on changing CPU or graphics card soon, so my games would have to run at 1024x768 or so. Does that look too bad or is it acceptable?

    I also play MAME and C=64 games sometimes so I'd need an even lower resolution to play full-screen.


    • Related Answers
  • Sinan Ünür

    If the aspect ratio of the new monitor is different than 4:3, then the pixels will not be square in 1024x768 which will give a somewhat fuzzy look.

  • Jeanne Pindar

    It varies greatly depending on the LCD and the graphics card. I don't think there is any way to tell other than trying it.

  • Mauricio Scheffer

    After some research, I found out that some LCDs have a feature called 1:1 pixel mapping which allows non-native resolutions without stretching/scaling/interpolating the image, at the expense of screen estate.

    I recently also learned that this can be done via graphics card drivers, i.e. in NVidia drivers it's called "flat panel scaling"

  • splattne

    Emulators have the images upscaled in the computer to the native resolution of the LCD. I like them upscaled blocky to 5x5 pixel blocks, but you can also choose to use tridot emulation in software, to fake an old TV dot pattern. With vector games like Tempest or Star Wars high res LCD's are awesome!

    With those 1024x768 games, it depends on your monitor. Some have a 1:1 pixel mapping feature, some have scaling in the native aspect ratio, some scale everything full screen independent of the original aspect ratio. With the best LCD's you can even choose some upscaling algoritms, but most LCD's scale a bit like bicubic scaling in Photoshop.