Widescreen Gaming Forum

This is on one hand a complete new aspect for me on the other a very old idea:

Decades ago, one of my first machines was a notebook, after some while I started connecting to a modem, continued with a monitor, external keyboard a.s.o. I simply used the notebook often at home.

Begining with the next PC I bought I did say goodby to notebooks and had PC towers from this time on.

When my company told me, they will replace my office PC with a laptop, I was shoked at first. Then I thought more about it, finding it not so bad. I will still have an external keyboard, mouse, external flat monitor, spekaers and so on. But instead of this big tower I will have a notebook connected to them, completely able to fullfill all office task, but with the surplus off beeing mobile and saying goodby to any synchronizing or copying tasks.

Whith the speed of innovation, it's only a question of time, when gaming-notebooks will be able to play most modern games, and getting cheeper and more popular. In the end it will be like the move from CRT to flat monitors. There will be much discussions comparing capabilities and cost, but I qess, that's the move it will go.

Normally notebooks' graphic will only support their monitor, but I wonder if you could connect screens with higher resolution to them, or even a TH2G. Perhaps only as inbetween solution, but don't want to throw away two of my three monitors, when I go that move. Has anyone tried a high resolution monitor or TH connected to a notebook sucessfully?

As long as your notebook has a decent graphics card it will work fine. Problem is most laptops have crap integrated or poor 'cut-down' discrete graphics chipsets/cards. You should be able to plug the laptop direct to a TH unit, same as you do with your external monitor. I haven;t tried it though. However unless your work is very nice and buy you a laptop with lots of graphics grunt TH will be like a slide show with low low low FPS on most new (or even old!) games.

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Dipping bags at Mach1.9

Thanks for the info. Only to clear up, I didn't plan to use my works notebook, a Lenovo 400 or so, for this. This only brought me up the idea, when I have to by my next desctop in a year or two, if I choose insted a top level notebook.

So far I see some differece in performance and quality between decent desktops and high level notebooks, but it's getting closer.

It has some advantages and a few drawbacks besinde price and mobility. I guess, I will buy a high level notebook next year instad of desktop, but not always my plans come true. (My planning to buy a watercooling already two PC-generations ago I never realized because of different reasons ...)

laptop gaming processors are low power models and normally do not have the....balls for most games like a desktop would.

But in response TH2G should work the same way.

Just discovered, that the notebook needs a DL-DVI (dual link DVI) connection (this is different form two DVI connections). The same is true for the docking station.

I only know that many of the more advanced graphics chips are able to (8600M GTX and such), but there is very little info about actual notebooks and docks, if they support it. I'm looking for more information on this subject.

BTW: Dual link is also needed to connect a 30" monitor to a notebook (every resolution above 1920x1200).

EDIT: Forget this Dual link. Nowadays notebooks use HDMI, which should be able to transport same ore even higher rate than DL; you may need an adapter to connect a DVI monitor. But if you use a docking station, which is connected thru USB or Express Card Slot a direct HDMI connection between notebook and moitor (not thru dock) is preferred.

Has anyone tried a high resolution monitor or TH connected to a notebook sucessfully?

Yep!

I use my laptop both at work and for gaming with TH and the resolution 5040x1050.

The fps in the race sims GTR 2 (old) and STCC (almost new) are good around 45-55 with settings at high. :D