Playing games on wide screen monitors?

Im buying a 17 inch Dell notebook next week, i was wondering will i be able to play games like counter strike on it since it got 1400 by 800 resolution how the hell the game fits in on the screen???

Hey i have a 19" widescreen monitor play CS:S all the time... looks fine lol i dont know how it works but it looks normal... like i dont know if it's stretched or what but its fine. I don't look at it and think hmm that looks funny

WS is great for gaming. Newer games on WS give you an advantage of an extra inch of peripheral vision on each side the other players dont have.

very few games neglect widescreen resolutions. most of them probe the hardware and list the resolutions your monitor can display. battlefield 2142 intentionally doesn't support widescreen because EA thinks it gives players an unfair advantage. to me it seems widescreen is becoming standard. anyone with a 4:3 aspect is putting THEMSELVES at a DISADVANTAGE. not the other way around. anyway, with any LCD it's ideal to set your resolution to match the monitor's native res. otherwise it has to scale it to fit and it will get blurry.

Just like a desktop computer, how well you will game at a given resolution, is based on your hardware.

If you want a gaming notebook:

I recommend core 2 duo processors-the faster the better-try for 2.0 gigs or more.

I recommend 2-3 gigs of ram...seriously.

Now, here will be the biggest part-the video card.

"Some" models of dell notebook come with replaceable video cards.
Some even come with 2 video cards, sli........

Yes, all this goodness will cost you..................2-4 thousand.
You can look in the refund section of dell site to find all that processing power at a much more affordable cost. \
They are fixed and come with FULL factory warranty.


That all said, what resolution your screen has and what resolution you "game" at are completely different.

My friend has a monitor that has 1280X1024 resolutions,

However

He games @800X600.

The reason is, the lower the resolution-playing- the easier it is to draw, or the more "eye candy" you can turn on.

Fore reference, my monitor is 1680X1050, but I game @1024X768 in Crysis.


Last, but not least.....MAKE SURE YOU GET XP NOT VISTA!!!!!!!!


Hope this helps explain what you need to know to make an informed decission on your laptop purchase.




If you have any more question, please feel free to post them here or u2u me



[edit on 12/19/2007 by mrmonsoon]