WXGA vs UXGA (8890 or 8790)??

First off, there are two different UXGA monitors available for the 8890, both very different, most obviously 15" vs 16". I can talk about the 16" since that's what I have, but you should consider both as the 15" is supposed to be of a better quality all round.

The 16.1" is the same as that ungodly priced 16" in the AW, but fortunately PCT offer it at less than half the price. I cant give much quantitative other than I believe the contrast ratio is 250:1, the response time (rise+fall I think) is 50ms and the viewing angle is something like +-70°. With regards to that, higher numbers are better, 0 would mean you have to sit directly in front of the screen and +-90 would mean you can sit at 90° to it. Some sites say the entire angle which is double the +- figure, ie +-85° would be 170°.

And for opinions, I have plenty of those. The most glaring statistic about this monitor is the response time, pretty high, but that doesnt bother me at all. I do play games (CS mostly but a fair bit of UT2k3 too, and some rise of nations on the side). I wont say the ghosting isnt noticable, it is, but in my experience it does not have a negative impact on the experience of playing, either in terms of enjoyment or scores. If you look for it you see it, otherwise you just dont realise its happening.

The thing that comes closest to disappointing for me is the brightness, it's far brighter than my ancient inspiron 3200 but it looks decidedly dim when I've been working on my CRT, it really does depend on the ambient light but it is something I notice occasionally.

Like any LCD, I find it crisp and extremely readable, and if you're eyesight's ok you shouldnt have any problem with either this or the 15" UXGA, even though that might sound daunting if you're used to CRTs being much bigger, or a much lower resolution.

The viewing angles are also very good, from the sides the colours look near perfect at any resolution you'd reasonably want to look at the monitor, the weakness is vertically where the whites / greys seem to invert from about 45° above the monitor, and the picture gets much darker the further you go below the monitor.

In short, I have very high opinions of this monitor and I want to emphasise that my criticisms are just what I can point out when I'm doing my best to be critical, none of them bother me in everyday use.

The 15" (also on the 5680) I cant review properly, but from everything I've read I can say that the viewing angles are better, the response time is better, I think its contrast ratio might be better but dont quote me on that, and I can say with certainty that it's a shade over an inch smaller.

The 8790's screen is a world apart in terms of what it's suited to, it's wider, larger and has a lower resolution than either of the 8890's screens. A lot of people are put off by the wide form factor especially relating to games, new and old moreso. Many are concerned about the resolution. What do you normally use on your current computer? What kind of work (or play) is the laptop intended for, and is WXGA+ (1440x900) good enough for that?

go to a store and look at some WXGA screens. only way to make up your mind.

personally as a gamer, i'd say dont go with it. any resolution that needs its own forums is a bad sign.

www.widescreengamingforum.com

I thought the same thing, Ifrit.

Then I saw a game running at wide-screen resolution.

It's true that support -was- very limited but now it's something that most modern games are being released with or being patched for.... I have a feeling that this is one of those changes where if I decide to go widescreen, it will be very hard to go back to 4:3 in the future...

too bad I can't decide yet even after 3 trips to Circuit City/Best Buy to muck around with their settings...

$tack$

so which lcd would be good for gaming? WXGA or UXGA?

Well, I'm going to be labelled a 4:3 bigot, but actually I own a 16:10. You won't have me buy another one unless I absolutely have to.

Nothing looks really good on it, it's an awkward format. I believe that 16:10 (or even 16:9 which they seem to tend to) is not suitable for computers. Unless all you do is watch DVDs, in which case I suggest to buy an external LCD Television or perhaps a Plasma.

All old games will play poorly on a widescreen. Consider 'ol' every game released more than a year ago.

Some new games will support widescreen, some won't. After that, it's only a matter of opinion.

check those forums. ask the question there. ... i dunno. ask MS too if u want.

my thoughts: if you're unsure and have to ask, patch, or hack a game to make it work on you computer - ITS NOT WORTH IT.

In which case, just about every game I own will not work well. I think the newest games I own are Uru and SimCity 4 (not counting expansions for older games).

Its bad enough that running Diablo II on an existing SXGA 16" 8890 is just plain awful. I've actually considered running it in Windowed mode if I have to live with that. I can't even contemplate what D2 would look interpolated to a UXGA or WXGA screen if it looks bad on an SXGA screen (and the default res is 800x600 via the LOD expansion).

The higher the native resolution, the more accurate a stretched image will look (generallly), so it would look better on UXGA anyway. Fortunately this is a special case, since 800x600 is half of UXGA it will look perfect (2x2 pixels for every pixel). WXGA would look pretty terrible though if it all its doing is stretching an 800x600 image.

oblivion, ditto

from my perspective, if i go the sager route, i'm trying to decide between the 8790 or the 8890, the 8790 has crappy native resolution but the higher end ati 9700 card, the 8890 has the higher native resolution but the lower end ati 9600 card. Why can't sager come out with a laptop with a choice allowing for the higher resolution screen, preferably WUXGA screen like the new dell xps laptops (which by the way i hear are beautiful screens)?

The 5680 and possibly the 8890 (if they continue the series) will get the 9700s, it's just a matter of time, although to be honest I expected there to be an announcement by now. The WUXGA screen isnt necessarily a gaming screen, it's smaller and for gaming, higher resolution tends to be a bad thing from an fps point of view.

In gaming terms a 17" WXGA is much better than a 15.4" WUXGA all other things being equal (and they are, pretty much). The 8790 will inevitably get a higher res screen at some point in the future, there just arent any yet, but I doubt they'd go down to 15.4" to do that, it just wouldnt fit the look of the laptop. Also, they're both wide, you'd have just as many problems with the xps as the 8790.

As of right now with compatability as it is I think the 5680 with 4:3 UXGA and especially when it gets the 9700 will be the ultimate all round gaming / desktop machine, the 8790 is the best choice for new and upcoming games which will have widescreen support, and the 8890 will continue to be the function before form all round workhorse that it's always been. If the xps suits you better there's nothing wrong with just going the dell way, nowadays you've even got part of these forums supporting dell.

Oblivion, what's this flight sim game of yours, are you sure it doesnt support wide resolutions? I'd imagine flight sim games are one of the easiest genres of games to adapt to widescreen, in development terms it's literally a 10 minute job, if you do it properly in the first place its not even a job at all (I know, I've made these things).

Did you notice how I managed to type all that without actually saying anything?

Edit: I didnt see your last post oblivion, if it's MS flight sim 2002 or later, I know that they definately do support widescreen, even very wide screen as matrox demonstrates here, you should have no problem running it on a WXGA screen

i figure this needs repeating. jus cuz a screen is 15.1" or 15.4", doesn't mean it supports "regular" desktop resolutions, i.e. 1280x1024, 1600x1200. it can still be widescreen at that size as well!!. if you're going to get a widescreen LCD, you might as well go with the Sager 17".... *shrug

I was sold on the 8790, but now i might wait and see what else will get the 9700 card. It just seems like WAY to much work inorder to get older games to work.

I'm not sure if you've considered this but you dont have to force games into 1440x900 to use them, there's no reason why you cant run them at 800x600 or 1024x768, but they will look distorted when the screen stetches them. Or, you can change the display properties to play games in a box the appropriate size in the middle of the screen, albeit with black borders around the side. It's not perfect but I'm just saying you will be able to play even the oldest games, but for the times when you do you'll have to put up with an imperfect view.

It's also worth pointing out that for 2d games like red alert 2, baldurs gate etc, many of them are forced to run at certain resolutions, like 1024x768. In these cases no sager LCD would be able to give you a perfect display because they'd all have to stretch the resolution up to UXGA or SXGA. You wouldnt get people looking unnaturally wide like you would on a widescreen, but you'd still get text that looked a little off. I'm not trying to put you off here, I'm just saying that there might not be as much reason to wait for a 4:3 9700 as you thought.

Oh, and if all you do is office type work and the occasional old or current game, then the 5680, 4080 or 8890 might suit you better anyway. Fair enough though if you want a mix of the old and the upcoming.