High-Resolution, Anti-Glare LCD for Gaming Laptop?

Kra Z Joe asks: "I've been having difficulty locating a laptop that has an anti-glare, WSXGA 15.4" or WUXGA 17" display AND a gaming-capable graphics system. As for anti-glare displays, I can find the standard WXGA 15.4" screens on laptops with graphics systems capable of running today's games, and I can find the higher resolution displays used with either an integrated Intel 'Extreme' graphics system, or some dedicated 'business' graphics systems. Unable to locate a major brand PC that meets my requirements — I've also attempted to find an add-on anti-glare product to use with those glossy-screened laptops. It seems that nobody makes a working product without also tacking on some type of 'privacy' guard, or some plastic frame that would prevent me from closing the laptop. Does anyone know a reputable laptop maker that would like my money, or where I can find a good anti-glare covering that works without limiting my ability to view from the side?"

i know how you feel

[Anonymous Coward]

I am always gaming from a side view.

Sager

[Rinisari]

Sager [sagernotebook.com] or any other fine Clevo-designed laptop. It's offered that which you seek for years.

Re:

[Peter La Casse]

You beat me to it; Sager sounds like what the submitter is looking for. I had a good experience buying a Sager from http://www.discountlaptops.com/ [discountlaptops.com] . Like lots of small online stores, their score on resellerratings.com is great and they don't force you to buy Windows.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

and they don't force you to buy Windows.

He said "gaming." what part of that word didn't you read?

Re:

[Peter La Casse]

and they don't force you to buy Windows.

He said "gaming." what part of that word didn't you read?

What makes you think I didn't read it?

Have a couple free clues: some people (especially on slashdot) don't want to buy Windows with their computer. Some people (especially on slashdot) have access to existing or cheaper Windows licenses and don't want to pay for new ones.

Re:

[static0verdrive]

Yep, I agree. I have a MacBook Pro 2Ghz and 256MB VRAM PCI-X Video (with 2GB RAM mind you) but it plays tons of games really well, and has this kind of screen. No windows in sight...

Re:

[Achromatic1978]

I know marketing is all about promotion, but this statement on Sager's website is positively laughable:

As the biggest name in small computers

Wah? I've never heard of them. I'm not a gamer by any means, but I do (did) like to think I knew most of the "big" notebook brands out there.

Re:

[Achromatic1978]

And replying to myself, their high end laptop looks /exceptionally/ similar to my Asus. Same specs (for 'odd' components - HDTV, webcam, HD audio, wireless chipset), and nigh on identical case (but for a split mouse button on trackpad) and extra light or two on the front 'lip'.

Re:

[Peter La Casse]

their high end laptop looks /exceptionally/ similar to my Asus

Sager and (apparently) Asus are OEMs who use Clevo as their ODM. There are only a handful of laptop ODMs in the world that all the OEMs buy from.

I mostly like the Asus laptops I've seen, but when I was shopping for a new one, I couldn't find any Asus models with a 15.4" 1920x1200 screen.

Not Sager, Acer

[1point618]

I have a Sager (NP3880) with 2 gigs RAM, 2.13 Ghz processor, Geforce 6600 graphics card, etc. It's pretty damn awesome, still a hugely powerful machine a year and some after I bought it. However, it has a real overheating problem, and I've had to send it in for warranty work twice due to the motherboard's power supply dying, and I'm a computer tech at my school and can usually deal with hardware issues.

I'd suggest getting an Acer myself, the Aspire 5000 line. Just go for the newest one. I have a friend with

Re:

[Atragon]

Just watch out for their Wireless chipset.

I work in the IT department at a college, we have seen many Acer laptops using the RTL8185 wireless chipset experience issues connecting to the college wireless networks. (WEP encryption, SSID non-broadcast).

OTOH, they are nice laptops.

Re:

[Fez]

The Acer I've got uses the Intel 3945ABG chipset, which aside from lackluster open source support, works great. I use it at home and at work with WPA2 and it has no problems.

Good info source

[Propaganda13]

Start looking here http://forum.notebookreview.com/ [notebookreview.com]

Re:

[Chazmyrr]

As far as I'm aware, they only come with glossy screens. That's the main reason I went elsewhere.

Re:

[nazsco]

what part of "for Gaming" you didn't get?

Re:

[Alcimedes]

Must have been the part where the machine can dual boot into native WinXP or OSX. You know, the part that makes your comment stupid.

Apple

[Ice Wewe]

While I'm not an avid Apple supporter... I would suggest the MacBook Pro.

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/ [apple.com]

Re:

[StingRay02]

Have you not heard of Boot Camp? The MacBook Pro comes in the specs he's looking for, almost to a T, and with Boot Camp, he can install Windows and play whatever the hell he wants.

Re:Apple +1

[TibbonZero]

With Bootcamp, these should run great. My gf got a new 20" iMac with the 256mb ATI card and 1GB memory. Seemed to work fine with any reasonable settings. No it wouldn't do FEAR at max settings, but even oblivion was quite playable. I'm sure that soon enough Paralells and other companies will even have the games running natively in OS X soon enough.

Plus, you have the great options of OS X, Windows XP/Vista, and Linux. The new Duo 2 chips are killer fast, and they really are solid machines. I'm typing this on my iBook G4 that i've had since they came out. In the same time, my parents have gone through 2 Sony laptops and an HP. The iBook is still rock solid and does all my general (non gaming, non 3d intensive) day to day work perfectly. I have a good desktop, so as a laptop this is as good as it gets.

Re:

[GreatDrok]

I have a 2Ghz MacBook Pro with 256MB ATI X1600 and 2GB of RAM. It is my swiss-army knife laptop. It does everything and it does it all very very well. The screen is nice (non-reflective version) and bright with good resolution. The core duo performs very well and with parallels I can run concurrent sessions of Windows XP and Fedora 5 on top of OS X. With Boot Camp I can reboot and play Call of Duty 2 at pretty high settings and Doom 3 and Far Cry play very well indeed.

I'll also second the vote for the

Re:

[Achromatic1978]

These days the MBP is getting to quite a sensible price

I confess to being not intimately familiar with Apple's notebook pricing on a day to day basis, but what I do know is that these [apple.com] prices have not moved a cent downwards since product launch.

I'd be quite happy to be corrected, but therein lies the rub - the initial models are 8 months old, but they still want the same price for them??

Re:

[GreatDrok]

The specification has changed since the MBP was released. Originally, it announced with 1.67 or 1.83Ghz processors. When it was actually released, Apple upgraded the spec to 1.83 and 2.0Ghz for free with the option of a 2.16Ghz Core Duo for extra money. Then they upgraded the base model to 2.0Ghz and the top model got the 2.16Ghz processor as standard which is the current position. In addition, they have added the option of the glossy screen for no charge. My 2Ghz model cost me £1699 in April but

Re:

[nonsequitur4122]

I have a macbook pro and i dual boot(i have the high end with the 265 video card) and i can play CS:S, HL2, and CoD2 as well as WoW and even some fear at high settings. it works great with the mobility x1600 and i think its a great poratble and it suits my needs.

Re:

[thpdg]

Does that have the Quadro card? Can you play games with that chipset?
I keep looking at it, but I can't decide if the CAD card will be useful for gaming.
Thanks!

Re:

[nazsco]

In the geForce2 era, the game chipset (geForce2, duh) was the SAME of the Quadro2 chipset.

The only difference was a resistor value. change the resistor, get a diferente board.

On the Quadro2 mode, you don't get much of the defects rendering polygons on CAD. And you also get better smoke and other effects in games. and ~70% of the framerate (I only tested with half life)

On GeForce2 mode, you get speed and shitty graphics.

Re:

[Overzeetop]

Does it last longer than about 1:45 on a charge going full blast? I've got a similarly configured M70 and (aside from the two motherboard replacements, one CD/DCD replacement, lack of DVI on the unit, flaky rubber feet, no memory card slots and no FW) it will blow through a fresh battery in just under 2 hours under moderate/full load, and in under a year the battery is lucky to go for 1:40 with the wireless on. That and all the heat dissapation seems to go right into your lap.

I've got a bit of upgrade fever

ThinkPad Z61p

[Arae]

http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/z-seri es/index.html [ibm.com] The Z61p model there is probably the best laptop that suits your need at a reasonable price.

HP zv5000z

[AP2k]

^^^ Thats the laptop I use. Its got an integrated MX440. Its defintiely not most powerful GPU, and it cant even render Direct X higher than 7.0, but it does play CS:S well (minus HDR) and has a no-glare 17" 1280x1024 display.

"Gaming" is a pretty broad term. I play CS:S and its not too strenuous on the graphics card. Then again, there are laptops that rival gaming rigs costing several thousand dollars. How much performance do you really need out of this laptop?

Re:

[menkhaura]

I've played Doom 3 and Quake 4 on such a laptop, under Linux (of course, all sliders waay down, but doable). Gotta love nVidia!

I only wish HP offered a little beefier nVidia graphics chip with their laptops; I can't find a decent nVidia solution from them.

Re:

[TubeSteak]

I'm confused. I certainly wouldn't consider an integrated MX440 to be a gaming solution.

All a "gaming" laptop really needs is a good graphics card... which he could install himself.

I assume that he could find a no-glare display, decent CPU, + features, with room for a mediocre, yet upgradeable graphics card. Right?

Or are laptops different enough that even Slash-Nerds are scared to open 'em up?

Re:

[Nasarius]

All a "gaming" laptop really needs is a good graphics card... which he could install himself.

I'll bite. Where can I buy a laptop video card (eg, a GeForce Go) by itself?

MacBook Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a MacBook Pro? Available with a non-glossy anti-glare screen and a 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1600. When booted into Windows, it can run Half-Life 2 at native screen res with all options set to high and 6x anti-aliasing without breaking a sweat. Runs World of Warcraft with everything maxed in either WinXP or OS X.

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/ [apple.com]

Try HP

[Chazmyrr]

HP nx9420 17" 1440x900 or 1680x1050 glossy or matte, X1600, FX 1500M, or NVS 510M. Starting at $1229.

Mine is T2500, 2GB(667), 1680x1050 matte, X1600 w/ 256MB, 80GB 7200RPM, DL 8X DVD-R, 3945 a/b/g w/ bluetooth. It's great. Lighter than my old 15". Gets around 3.5 hours battery life playing movies or surfing. It handles Oblivion and HL2 at decent resolution with most of the eye candy on.

It's hard to find a decent laptop w/o a glossy screen. I looked for weeks before I decided on this model. I would have preferred a slightly better video card, but I couldn't pass up the deal I got on this one. I've been trying to find specs/pricing on the NVS 510M. It just showed up as an option and I can't find anything solid on it. My guess is that it's similar to a 7900GS. If so, I might swap out the X1600 one of these days.

Erm...

[ADRA]

When you use glare blockers, the point is to remove or reflect away as much incoming light while trying to keep the outgoing light as intense as possible. One solution to this is to remove incoming light by angling '_/_' the reflective material so that light coming in from an angle relects away from observer viewing the screen from center position. This makes light relecting 'out' of the glare blocker just as weak at those same angles. This is why you can barely make out the picture from the side. The light has been trapped inside blocker.

I can't think of a decent glare blocker that wouldn't apply either depth or angular constraints on the display. Unless I've got my theory very wrong, you're asking for a glare blocker that doesn't do what glare blockers do.. erm.. yeah....

The only other hope you have is to boost the source lighting from the laptop. Maybe you should buy a super high intensity iris burning LCD. That'll cancel out most ambient lighting as well as turn your eyes into two little meat balls =)

Re:

[miscz]

My Asus notebook has anti-glare screen that performs very well even it the most intense sunlight and the view angles are good too. I don't know anything about mechanics of these displays but the only drawback I see are the colours which are not saturated enough.

Have you looked at Acer?

[Fez]

I have an Acer Aspire 5672WLMi and it's pretty good as a gaming system for my needs. It plays HL2 and CS:S admirably at the display's native resolution of 1280x800. Mine has a core duo T2300 (1.66GHz dual core), 1GB of RAM, and a Radeon X1400 (newer revisions come with an X1600)

The screen is a little glossy, but so far it has not proved to be a problem for me, though there have been times when some sort of anti-glare coating would be nice.

The price isn't too bad, either. I gave just under $1100 for it.

Here

Re:

[Fez]

I hate to reply to myself, but this is worth noting:

The ATI/OEM drivers for the X1400 are crap for gaming. They are choppy in-game, among other problems - like once you exit a graphics-intensive app, it chews 100% of one core of the cpu until you reboot.

Once you ditch those drivers and install the Omega Drivers ( http://www.omegadrivers.net/ [omegadrivers.net] ) it works like a dream. It's probably a good idea to do that for just about any Radeon card.

Omega Drivers are vastly over hyped

[@madeus]

I should really point out the Omega Drivers are just the same drivers you download from ATI, but with various default settings changed (obviously they are not new drivers at all - yet the guy who distributes them seems to go out of his way to give the opposite impression). You can change all the settings that make a significant difference via the ATI control panel anyway - and other 'hidden' registry settings (which are largely hidden by ATI for good reason, though admittedly it's nice to be able to tweak t

Re:

[Fez]

I completely agree about running OEM drivers in favour of generic ones though. Both on Windows and Mac OS more often than not I've found that downloadable generic drivers perfom better and have more features than the bundled drivers (pretty major stuff, like new shaders being supported, and being able to toggle FSAA and AF in case of the ATI drivers on Mac OS).

Even thought it may be that it's just a prepackaged 'optimized' set of driver settings, it still performs better without having to find the sweet s

Re:

[Achromatic1978]

DHmod3 [driverheaven.net] is your friend. As far as I can tell, his tool just hacks the 'allowed pci signature' (I don't know the technical term), so you can download generic Radeon drivers and use them on laptop chipsets (when your laptop manufacturer has not done a deal to allow the generic updates to work).

Re:

[threeboy]

I've got an acer for business. Doesn't alienware make laptops for gaming? My next laptop will probably come from http://sinsystems.ca/ [sinsystems.ca] they're like a smaller alienware.

Re:

[Wayneth]

I've got an Acer TravleMate 4400 and it works great for gaming. It came with a Radeon X700 Mobile, 512Mb of ram, and an AMD Turion64. For an extra $80 I added another 512 stick. It runs HL2 and CS:S at medium settings at 1200x800. Overall its a good machine, and again the pric range was good, costing me a little under $1,200. I've heard some of the newer TravelMates like the 8000 and 8800 come with better video cards and processors for about the same price. Definately worth checking out as a good gaming lap

What is it with the glossy screens anyway??

[5pp000]

This whole glossy screen thing seems like a very unfortunate fad. I know, glossy is better for watching movies -- is that really the primary use that most laptops are being sold for???

I think we (those of us who don't always use our laptops in the dark) need to let the manufacturers know that there is still a significant fraction of the market for whom glossy screens are unacceptable, period. It's just nuts that you can't get a 17" 1920x1200 laptop from Dell with a matte-finish screen.

Re:

[5pp000]

Well, I don't do much image work, so color accuracy means little to me -- and I just hate glare.

I suppose if the manufacturers would take the next logical step and add an anti-reflective coating, we could all be happy.

Re:

[WaterBreath]

I bet you can find it in the "Small Business" section. I managed to get a 15" WUXGA matte from Dell, but it's from the Latitude line rather than XPS line. It's up to you whether you're willing to trade the gaming-directed features to get the matte display. But if you're interested, check out the Dell Latitude D820. WUXGA is not one of the defaults, but if you customize, you should be able to pick it. And unless they changed the offerings since June, only matte displays are available for this model.

But

Re:

[mabinogi]

They also work a hell of a lot better outside. The older screens may not have suffered from reflections, but the newer ones don't wash out in strong light. My previous laptop with a matte screen was practically useless outside, whereas my current one with a glossy screen is fine.
I don't know if it's the glossyness that's responsible but if it is, then it's an acceptible trade-off for me.

Re:

[jo42]

Say "Thank You" to some management/marketing/PHB idiot that decided to go with shiny screens. And then "Thank You" to all the management/marketing/PHB idiot lemmings that decided to follow the fad.

I want to replace a 3 year old Inspiron 8200 and CAN NOT find anything suitable because of these glossy screens. Feck heads won't be getting my money.

MSI-1039

[kennyv]

I found a barebones WSXGA+ non-glare MSI-1039 on eBay for $600USD. It'll take a Turion-64 and up to 2 gigs of pc3200 DDR, and it has a 256mb Radeon x1600. It runs really hot though, but it's my dream (realisticly speaking) gaming laptop. MSI-1039 Product Sheet [msicomputer.com]

Compal HEL80

[gotgenes]

I own and highly recommend the Compal HEL80 [notebookreview.com] This notebook is awesome! You can get it with a matte (not glossy) WSXGA+ (1680x1050) screen. Power behind it is nVIDIA GeForce Go 7600, and you can get Intel Core 2 Duo now. It's a whitebook which means you buy it from a notebook reseller, not from Circus City or Worst Buy. My favorite and most highly recommended reseller would be PowerNotebooks [powernotebooks.com]; if you order from them be sure to order by phone for a nice discount. ProPortable [proportable.com] is also a good place to buy from.

Mac Book Pro

[Toveling]

Need more be said? [apple.com]

LCDs that handle multiple resolutions?

[sphealey]

Related question: are there any LCDs that handle more than one resolution? I would like to replace a dying CRT with an LCD for space and eyestrain reasons, but I have (1) family members who prefer/require different resoluions (2) more importantly - some legacy games that require 800x600. Is there any LCD that looks right in at least two resolutions (native and 800x600)?

Thanks.

sPh

Re:

[NiceBacon]

You should go for a 1600x1200 then - LCD's always look terrible when runnning something other than native resolution but halving the resoultion (to 800x600) may just look acceptable.

Change it out for $100

[aggiefalcon01]

This may not be the most attractive option, but worth mentioning. There's a company out there called ScreenTek that will change your LCD from matte to high-gloss for $100. The "re-polarizing" process involves removing the old surface, and then installing a new one. They figure most people want high-gloss, but if you have it and want matte instead, they can use the same process and tools to change it out for you.

So if you do find a laptop you like for $1800 in glossy and for $2000 in matte, then I'd get th

Portable One MX (based on Asus A8JM)

[Maverick1337]

http://portableone.com/ [portableone.com] Check out their MX series and add the $399 option for the transreflective display. While pricey, its a great display and should give you what you need. Only down side is that the resolution is a bit low.

Offtopic

[PenGun]

LCDs suck get a CRT for gaming. They are pretty bad at fast motion video too. I have yet to see one I don't dislike. My 34" Sony XS955 Super Fine Pitch HDTV CRT will be along soon, shipping 200#s from NY to Vancouver BC may seem crazy but I am very pleased. The local Sony store boss has one at home, won't trade for anything in his store.

Hmm 1400 lines vertical, I wonder what res it will go to ;).

PenGun
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