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Casual games and x700 vs x1400 vs x1600?? - Page 3

post #41 of 53
3/18/06 at 2:47am
really?
i heard the x1400 was decent for games (even FEAR)
did you format it and install all nex drivers?
im still in a huge dilemna. im almost sure about the 5672. i hate the webcam thing tho as it takes way too much space.
one last little question before buying : do the dell coupons really work?
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post #42 of 53
3/18/06 at 5:37am
you dont have to format the machine to get decent graphics
first of all get rid of Norton antivirus (or at least disable it for playing games)
else follow my instructions in my sig for installing the omega drivers which doubled my frame rate in FEAR, which with original drivers was diabolical
Its amazing the difference between the demo and the full version!!!
the demo ran really fast but full FEAR has something strange going on with the game engine.

Skypine, you might want to install the omega drivers for your ATI card too because there is a brightness setting, and you can set the brightness way up!!!
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post #43 of 53
3/20/06 at 11:54am
As an owner of an 8104, I thought I'd give my opinion on the colors, brightness, and resolution. Originally I noticed only the res of 1680x1050 and how tiny it made everything. I'd seen so many people post that they would never get a notebook that didn't have high res or ultra res, and I decided I wanted it as well. But I quickly decided that I should have gone with the standard res of 1200x800. And as for colors, my old Toshiba Satellite (a75-s209) has much brighter screen and colors than the 8104. This is my main comparison base, but it's a very distinct difference.

However, with time I've learned to really like the higher resolution, and I can tell the difference in gaming between the two resolutions (lower res = more pixelation/rough edges). I do also like that with the high res I can view two web pages next to each other without having to scroll sideways. Also, on my 8104's desktop I can now fit 370 icons, versus 165 on my work desktop. Not that anybody needs to max the icons on their desktops.

I find the higher resolution a fair tradeoff, when you get so much more room to work with on such a tiny screen.

Ransom
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post #44 of 53
3/20/06 at 12:08pm
Is the 6.3 ATI driver ok to use on the TM8204? The ATI website does not list Acer as a supported vendor. Also, I'm using the driver I downloaded off of the Acer site, how much game improvment is there with this new driver?

I'm not really a hardware guru so - Thanks in advance.
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post #45 of 53
3/20/06 at 1:19pm
Thread Starter 
All in all, I am somewhat disappointed with my 8104 purchase. I really can not get past the 1680 x 1050 native res. It does not work well at all with a 15.4" screen. You'd need a freaking 21" screen to be able to comfortably view a windows desktop at that resolution. My Aspire 5004's 1200x800 res, and the brightness and colors of the screen was MUCH better suited to a laptop environment.

If they had only made a 5004 with a dedicated video card and a faster processor, acer would have a real winner. To anyone considering a purchase of a laptop with a 1680 x 1050 res, make sure you go see one first in person. I wish I had, I certainly would NOT have bought one.

We'll see what next year brings...
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post #46 of 53
3/20/06 at 1:23pm
Skypine, I have to agree with you. I've warned more than one person who was going to purchase a high-res screen to first get some experience with one, before making such a purchase. I probably would have preferred not to have bought one. Now, however, I can comfortably use it in native res.
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post #47 of 53
3/20/06 at 1:39pm
well i finally got the game playable, I had to tweak some settings in the catalist to performance rather than quality.
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post #48 of 53
3/20/06 at 6:51pm
sorry for the weird question but cant u guyz change your resolution in the settings... i have a toshiba ( thinkning of buying the 8204) and i can swap between 800x600 and 1024x768...

cheers
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post #49 of 53
3/20/06 at 6:53pm
Yes, that's very doable, and I used to do it quite a lot, back when the higher res bothered me. But most people don't like to do that because on an LCD screen, it makes things slightly blurry (you lose some of that crystal clarity).

Ransom
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post #50 of 53
3/21/06 at 12:27am
Thread Starter 
Yes, that is a good question about changing resolution. I mean, on your regular old school desktop CRT monitor, you could go all the way from 800 x600 to 1280 x 1024, and the picture quality stayed exactly the same. Maybe a different refresh rate, but the picture quality stayed the same.

However, this is definately NOT true of a laptop LCD. If you change the screen out of its native resolution, even downwards, the picture quality gets substantially worse. When I change my screen's resolution out out 1680 x 1050(native) down to 1200 x 800, the picture quality becomes terrible.

Again, to all, DONT buy a high res laptop screen w/o seeing it first....
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post #51 of 53
3/21/06 at 10:21am
i read this on the pc pro website... review of the 8204

"The 15.4in widescreen TFT boasts a resolution of 1,680 x 1,050. That provides tremendous flexibility and, as with the Evesham, it will really come into its own under the vector-based nature of the Windows Vista interface. This will render the small-text issue irrelevant should you decide to upgrade later this year."



any thoughts??
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post #52 of 53
3/21/06 at 10:34am
Vista does a much better job of scaling the interface. Not just text, but icons and other interface elements can be scaled, meaning that the Windows XP experience of having larger text cause issues with an interface that otherwise doesn't change is pretty strikingly different in Vista.
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post #53 of 53
3/22/06 at 12:27am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
"The 15.4in widescreen TFT boasts a resolution of 1,680 x 1,050. That provides tremendous flexibility and, as with the Evesham, it will really come into its own under the vector-based nature of the Windows Vista interface. This will render the small-text issue irrelevant should you decide to upgrade later this year."
Wow, that's the first encouraging news I have heard about my native res complaint. So now all I have to do is wait 9 months for Vista to come out, and my problems will be solved. Of course, by then, my 8104 will be totally obsolete, but hey, at least I'll be able to finally read webpages again.
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