3K display on 15.6" laptop

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Perseid
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3K display on 15.6" laptop

Post by Perseid »

I've been looking around lately at getting a new laptop, for gaming and some dev work of my own (not really using it for work). And I've noticed that a lot of high end machines, whether they be pre-built or custom, are offering 3K or even 4K displays on 15.6" screens.

I suppose my question is, is it worth it? Is there any real benefit on what is actually quite a small screen having such a high resolution? Or would I just be better off sticking with a FHD screen?
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Grumman
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Re: 3K display on 15.6" laptop

Post by Grumman »

Without seeing it for myself, I would say you would be able to tell the difference. Normal resolutions are pretty good, but still low enough that jaggies are a thing. I'd call it a superior anti-aliasing replacement. Instead of blurring the edges of a rendered object to pretend to have a 4k resolution, you'd actually have a 4k resolution.
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Vendetta
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Re: 3K display on 15.6" laptop

Post by Vendetta »

As someone who's been using a retina display Macbook Pro for a couple of years now, the difference is very noticable, notebook screens tend to be close enough that you can really see the benefits of high resolutions.

However, Windows' display scaling is very finicky and not everything performs well if you're using the 200% dpi scaling setting which makes a 3k display comfortable to use at that size.

It's great in Mac OS though because most things are retina aware and have specific high resolution support.
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Perseid
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Re: 3K display on 15.6" laptop

Post by Perseid »

As much as I'd love to have a Macbook my focus is more in the Windows realm of development, and I don't see the point in buying a Mac and then switching to Windows 75% of the time when I want to do something besides browse the net.
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TheFeniX
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Re: 3K display on 15.6" laptop

Post by TheFeniX »

Vendetta wrote:However, Windows' display scaling is very finicky and not everything performs well if you're using the 200% dpi scaling setting which makes a 3k display comfortable to use at that size.
I've got a 29" 4k monitor. When I want to do any work, I basically have to set it to 2K because Windows 8 and application support for 4k is balls. The games look great though. However, reading text in FFXIV is annoying because they haven't fully supported 4K. They only recently upgraded the resolution and scaling on the in-game map. At 4k, it used to be I couldn't even zoom in past what I could on 1080p, which made the map near unreadable.

But for general use on a Windows laptop? I really wouldn't bother, especially not with that screen size. Maybe Windows 10 fixes this?
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salm
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Re: 3K display on 15.6" laptop

Post by salm »

I got a Mac Book Pro recently with a Retina display.
I don´t think it is really worth it. The difference doesn´t seem that huge and I feel just as comfortable doing stuff on my old Windows Laptop with full 1980*1080 resolution as on the Mac.
The difference of the touch pad on the other hand is increadible. Modern touch pads are awesome whereas old touchpads are next to useless.
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Re: 3K display on 15.6" laptop

Post by Perseid »

Thanks for the advice guys.

So basically, what's being said is that 3/4k display's are only really worth it when there is plenty of screen real estate, ala TheFeniXs' 29" monitor.
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TheFeniX
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Re: 3K display on 15.6" laptop

Post by TheFeniX »

So basically, what's being said is that 3/4k display's are only really worth it when there is plenty of screen real estate, ala TheFeniXs' 29" monitor.
I would say it depends on the price difference. Even with a smaller screen, you're cramming that many more pixels in your view-space which leads to a sharper image. 4K looks pretty damn good, but not at a glance vs 1080p. Mostly in motion. Particle effects look a lot cleaner, I'll give them that. And the enhanced resolution acts as pretty good anti-aliasing. However, texture quality (or lack of) becomes even more noticeable in 2K+, so be prepared.

The 1ms response rate is also great, but that's monitor specific.

This is an uncompressed 4K screenshot. 11 megs. It takes some hardware to run this. As I posted in another thread. Using a 970, my PC does FFXIV 1080p at 144FPS, 75 FPS at 2K, and 25FPS at 4K. I didn't bother with 3K, but I assume it would be around the 45FPS mark. I had to overclock my video card and turn down some settings to keep 60FPS solid.

Even the crummy (yet awesome) 7 Days to Die looks a lot better in 4K. There seems to be a difference in the way the game renders textures (or the texture are just so simple) that they actually increase in quality at 4k, even though the game is ugly as sin.

Even with a smaller screen and upscaling, 3K is going to look better than 1080p. The question is "how much better vs the price." If we're talking $100, then I'd say why not?, provided there's some sort of decent graphics card in the machine.

I don't know what dev work you do, but if it's coding: 3k isn't going to do much for you. You may end up running your desktop at 1080p anyways. If it's 3D modelling or graphics work, you'll have that much more resolution for fine detailing.
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salm
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Re: 3K display on 15.6" laptop

Post by salm »

Be sure to check if the laptop can even display resolutions higher than 1080p. The MacBook Retina has a 2880X1800 display but the maximum you can set the OS to is 1920X1080. I don´t know if this is the same on Windows Laptops but on the Mac it is not possible to have higher resolutions than 1080p. At least not natively.
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Re: 3K display on 15.6" laptop

Post by Vendetta »

salm wrote:Be sure to check if the laptop can even display resolutions higher than 1080p. The MacBook Retina has a 2880X1800 display but the maximum you can set the OS to is 1920X1080. I don´t know if this is the same on Windows Laptops but on the Mac it is not possible to have higher resolutions than 1080p. At least not natively.
That's not actually how it works. The display is running at 2880*1800 but everything in the operating system is twice the size it used to be (literally the whole OS was redone at double the dimensions, so the standard icon size is 114*114px not 57*57 as it was before the introduction of Retina displays).

It can scale that to look like 1920*1200, but that's what it's doing, scaling the display to 66% but still rendering at 2880*1800.

What that means is that when you're running the display at its native scaling it's like using a 1440*900 display in terms of perceptual size of items (which is about the most comfortable for a 15" notebook screen), but you have double the pixel density so that everything shows up clearer, more detail is possible, and especially things like text is far more comfortable to read.
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salm
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Re: 3K display on 15.6" laptop

Post by salm »

Vendetta wrote: That's not actually how it works. The display is running at 2880*1800 but everything in the operating system is twice the size it used to be (literally the whole OS was redone at double the dimensions, so the standard icon size is 114*114px not 57*57 as it was before the introduction of Retina displays).

It can scale that to look like 1920*1200, but that's what it's doing, scaling the display to 66% but still rendering at 2880*1800.

What that means is that when you're running the display at its native scaling it's like using a 1440*900 display in terms of perceptual size of items (which is about the most comfortable for a 15" notebook screen), but you have double the pixel density so that everything shows up clearer, more detail is possible, and especially things like text is far more comfortable to read.
Yes, I know. I was mainly answering to The Fenix statement that a larger resolution will give you more space for things like 3D modelling software. It does and a higher resolution is very welcome but the retina way of doing it is rather useless because you don´t really need clearer icons. You need more space and that is not what you get when everything is just scaled up.
I don´t know how it is for games as I´ve never tried a game on a retina display.
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