Retina bootcamp users - 1440x900?

Corey Naish · Jun 17, 2012

Hi guys,

From the sounds of it my order won't get here until July 5th, but I'm really curious to find out how the scaling works (gaming question obviously).

Can anyone confirm whether or not the screen is crisp/sharp under 1440x900? At exactly half the native resolution you're not really stretching the image size to scale, just doubling pixels.

Hell, if you could take a snapshot of the screen or a video with a nice camera of some gaming that'd be excellent too

.

henrikrox · Jun 17, 2012

Hm, u wouldnt get double pixels in 1440x900 in windows. Hidpi wont work there.

So anything besides the native resolution will have degraded quality.

Freyqq · Jun 17, 2012

I think native + 150% dpi text is the best option until win 8 comes out

GreyMatta · Jun 17, 2012

henrikrox said:
Hm, u wouldnt get double pixels in 1440x900 in windows. Hidpi wont work there.

So anything besides the native resolution will have degraded quality.

but you can obviously set the resolution in windows

I think the OP is asking if anyone has set it to 1440x900 and is asking how it looks (blurry etc)

1440x900 is exactly half retina so should scale well

plazmic · Jun 17, 2012

GreyMatta said:
but you can obviously set the resolution in windows

I think the OP is asking if anyone has set it to 1440x900 and is asking how it looks (blurry etc)

1440x900 is exactly half retina so should scale well

I've tested 1440x900 in OS X and Windows. When you change to it, you're eyes will immediately perceive the retina screen as blurry. However, its really a trick on perception. When I put the Retina (in 1440x900) up to my older MBP and Air, the difference is indistinguishable. However, OS X appears to be aliasing a little different on this screen.

GrayParrot · Jun 17, 2012

plazmic said:
I've tested 1440x900 in OS X and Windows. When you change to it, you're eyes will immediately perceive the retina screen as blurry. However, its really a trick on perception. When I put the Retina (in 1440x900) up to my older MBP and Air, the difference is indistinguishable. However, OS X appears to be aliasing a little different on this screen.

Very interesting to hear!
Like Corey, I'm very curious to see how the retina display handles this resolution without Apple's built-in pixel doubling.
Plazmic: How hard was this to do in boot-camp?

I need to run certain apps at lower res because of the stress they put on the gpu, but of course I want to use the 2800X1800 for everything else.

Corey: why do you want to run the lower resolution? Is it gpu specific?

GreyMatta · Jun 18, 2012

plazmic said:
I've tested 1440x900 in OS X and Windows. When you change to it, you're eyes will immediately perceive the retina screen as blurry. However, its really a trick on perception. When I put the Retina (in 1440x900) up to my older MBP and Air, the difference is indistinguishable. However, OS X appears to be aliasing a little different on this screen.

If you have them can you tell me how Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 run at that res?

Corey Naish · Jun 21, 2012

Alright, so mine arrived.

Diablo 3 is unplayable at 2880x1800, we're talking 15-20fps.

1440x900 is NOT crisp like native--but it's not as bad as other displays scaling. 1680x1050 actually looks better though. Game runs smooth as butter on both, runs better under boot camp though.. and Mouse tracking isn't so pathetic (I've never used a mac before but mice don't work very well, there must be some acceleration setting somewhere).

As I don't have a tripod offscreen snapshots are damn near impossible but I can assure you it's not as bad as it is on a regular monitor.

killmoms · Jun 21, 2012

Corey Naish said:
Diablo 3 is unplayable at 2880x1800, we're talking 15-20fps.

Hasnt been my experience with D3 at full res, though I turn AA off and shadow quality to Medium.

Y2JDMBFAN · Jun 21, 2012

I've tried forcing Windows 8 to 1440x900, it is not a default option, you have to create it in the NVidia control panel. However, the screen is not crisp as we all though that it might be. It still suffers from Blur. I am running at 2880x1800 with 200DPI in Windows 8 Release Preview. Right now I am debating on going back to Windows 7 Professional x64 as I have had some quirks in Windows 8 so far. I had the machine hard lock twice in Windows yesterday and it seems a bit laggy in general.

Y2J

mzjin · Jun 21, 2012

killmoms said:
Hasnt been my experience with D3 at full res, though I turn AA off and shadow quality to Medium.

Lol who are you kidding? My Core i7 iMac's 6970M which is about 50% faster than a 650M has to keep 1920x1200 for playable 60 FPS.

I'm anticipating 1440x900, literally ALL settings off or lowest for playable frames on my new Retina Macbook Pro.

GrayParrot · Jun 21, 2012

Corey Naish said:
Alright, so mine arrived.

Diablo 3 is unplayable at 2880x1800, we're talking 15-20fps.

1440x900 is NOT crisp like native--but it's not as bad as other displays scaling. 1680x1050 actually looks better though. Game runs smooth as butter on both, runs better under boot camp though.. and Mouse tracking isn't so pathetic (I've never used a mac before but mice don't work very well, there must be some acceleration setting somewhere).

As I don't have a tripod offscreen snapshots are damn near impossible but I can assure you it's not as bad as it is on a regular monitor.

Corey, Y2J: Thanks a million for testing and reporting back! Could you subjectively compare this to the quality of 1400x900 on a native panel in an earlier MacBook Pro or Windows laptop?

Corey Naish · Jun 21, 2012

Hehe, no can do, I've only got a 1920x1080 panel and no other laptops. This is my first macbook. What I will do in a few minutes here is put them side by side, with the 1080 panel at native, and the macbook panel at 1440x900. I'll open a font in windows do view "the quick brown fox" etc etc. Give me about 10 minutes. That way you can at least tell the scaling VS a normal display at native.

EDIT:
Side by side: http://i50.tinypic.com/210mzrq.jpg

Zoomed in on clock :
Samsung PX2370 at 1920x1080 native - http://i46.tinypic.com/ziqczl.jpg
Macbook Pro Retina display at 1440x900 - http://i45.tinypic.com/igx5dl.jpg

As you can see, at 1440x900 there's still some slight blur, but it's not like a normal panel. It's noticeable, but not as bad as I expected it to be.

jcpb · Jun 21, 2012

Corey Naish said:
Alright, so mine arrived.

Diablo 3 is unplayable at 2880x1800, we're talking 15-20fps.

1440x900 is NOT crisp like native--but it's not as bad as other displays scaling. 1680x1050 actually looks better though. Game runs smooth as butter on both, runs better under boot camp though.. and Mouse tracking isn't so pathetic (I've never used a mac before but mice don't work very well, there must be some acceleration setting somewhere).

As I don't have a tripod offscreen snapshots are damn near impossible but I can assure you it's not as bad as it is on a regular monitor.

Diablo 3 isn't a FPS game, so 20fps is actually very playable, but if you're running at native res you should turn AA off (there's no point having it on when you're playing at 5MPixels) and low shadows.

Also Windows 7 allows a Custom DPI setting beyond 150%. When set to 200% you get the Microsoft equivalent of Retina

killmoms · Jun 21, 2012

mzjin said:
Lol who are you kidding? My Core i7 iMac's 6970M which is about 50% faster than a 650M has to keep 1920x1200 for playable 60 FPS.

I'm anticipating 1440x900, literally ALL settings off or lowest for playable frames on my new Retina Macbook Pro.

Uh, I own the laptop in question, and I play the game, and that's my experience. I also don't consider 60fps the threshold for playability. DIII is more than playable at 30fps, and it runs around 20 - 30 at native res on the MBPR.

iMacDragon · Jun 21, 2012

Y2JDMBFAN said:
I've tried forcing Windows 8 to 1440x900, it is not a default option, you have to create it in the NVidia control panel. However, the screen is not crisp as we all though that it might be. It still suffers from Blur. I am running at 2880x1800 with 200DPI in Windows 8 Release Preview. Right now I am debating on going back to Windows 7 Professional x64 as I have had some quirks in Windows 8 so far. I had the machine hard lock twice in Windows yesterday and it seems a bit laggy in general.

Y2J

Unfortunately whatever scalers they use don't notice the fact that running in a perfect scaling resolution, and still apply whatever process they do that ends up slightly blurring the picture, I discovered this 10 years ago with a 1600x1200 dell laptop that I had the exact same hopes for ( for running games in 800x600 at the time )

Joe23 · Jun 21, 2012

I'm running the Windows 8 release preview on my rMBP at the native resolution. I find it perfectly usable with the fonts scaled to 200%. In some respects it scales better than OS X! So much real estate.

GrayParrot · Jun 22, 2012

Corey Naish said:
Hehe, no can do, I've only got a 1920x1080 panel and no other laptops. This is my first macbook. What I will do in a few minutes here is put them side by side, with the 1080 panel at native, and the macbook panel at 1440x900. I'll open a font in windows do view "the quick brown fox" etc etc. Give me about 10 minutes. That way you can at least tell the scaling VS a normal display at native.

EDIT:
Side by side: http://i50.tinypic.com/210mzrq.jpg

Zoomed in on clock :
Samsung PX2370 at 1920x1080 native - http://i46.tinypic.com/ziqczl.jpg
Macbook Pro Retina display at 1440x900 - http://i45.tinypic.com/igx5dl.jpg

As you can see, at 1440x900 there's still some slight blur, but it's not like a normal panel. It's noticeable, but not as bad as I expected it to be.

Super useful info! My sincere thanks for the pictures too!

Veraxus · Aug 2, 2012

I'm running Windows 8 Release Preview on a MBPr and for some reason I don't even HAVE a 1440x900 option. That resolution is just plain missing from both Windows and all my Windows games.

I've tried installing NVIDIA's beta drivers, but they don't seem to work at all under Windows 8 (the installation fails every time).

So yeah, I have to intermediary scaled resolutions when games run too slow under the full 2880x1800 (like The Secret World and The Witcher 2). The side effect of that is the games look awful since I can't use 1440x900 (not available) or 2880x1800 (too slow).

DTKblaster · Aug 10, 2012

In the Nvidia control panel, under "adjust desktop size and position", there is an option of choosing what handles the display scaling.

Does anyone know if this is a list of available hardware scalars only? Or if its possible to download plug-ins which can somehow be installed? Google doesn't seem to want to help me out on this one.

As a few people pointed out here, 1440x900 in windows in the rMBP is not being perfectly up-scaled 2x2 to the native panel res, and instead is blurry.

Maybe a registry hack to disable the current filtering, or ideally a replacement filter is what I'm looking for here.

rockyroad55 · Aug 10, 2012

Corey Naish said:
Hi guys,

From the sounds of it my order won't get here until July 5th, but I'm really curious to find out how the scaling works (gaming question obviously).

Can anyone confirm whether or not the screen is crisp/sharp under 1440x900? At exactly half the native resolution you're not really stretching the image size to scale, just doubling pixels.

Hell, if you could take a snapshot of the screen or a video with a nice camera of some gaming that'd be excellent too .

Did you get it to do 1440? I'm just planning on using a 1440 monitor to run it at that resolution.

Zeov · Aug 10, 2012

1680x1050 or 1920x1200 both look really nice

DTKblaster · Aug 10, 2012

rockyroad55 said:
Did you get it to do 1440? I'm just planning on using a 1440 monitor to run it at that resolution.

Yeah, I had to create it as a custom resolution in the nvidia control panel, but thats really simple to do. Its just not sharp like it would look on a native 1440x900.

I am currently using 1680x1050, but I find 1920x1200 too small (Maybe because I run my 24" monitor at that), and scaling breaks too much stuff for it to be worth it sadly. I just hope win8 has a good scaling solution!

Once the Nvidia forums come back up, I'll ask around in there, see if theres a way to get rid of current filter.

charlieegan3 · Aug 10, 2012

I use the full resolution with the apple default display settings (larger). Most programs are ok, some like chrome are way too small.

winkosmosis · Oct 20, 2012

I registered just to chime in on this thread.

I've read a forum post somewhere by a guy who asked nVidia about including pixel doubling capability in their drivers. I think he wanted to run a 1920x1200 monitor at 960x600 with no blurriness. nVidia told him that they won't add it because there isn't any demand for that feature... even though it takes very little programming to create the capability. Heck, you can do it in OSX right? So maybe if you all write letters to nVidia they'll enable pixel doubling with their Windows drivers.

Retina bootcamp users - 1440x900?

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