Mac Book Pro and External Monitor

[xcharlesy]

Around 2 years ago I had a simple powerbook, I then purchased a 20" Mac Cinema Display right when they came out, and kept my powerbook under my desk CLOSED and used the display on my 20" Screen with a mouse and keyboard.

Here is what I want to do now:

I want to buy a 20-22" Dell or Samsung monitor.

My Macbook Pro is currently fully partitioned with windows.

I want to run my Macbook Pro on WINDOWS mirrored to a 20-22" Screen and keep is SHUT underneath my desk again. Using a keyboard and mouse.

Are there any problems with this? will it work? is boot camp a problem?

My Goal is to turn my Laptop into a somewhat fluctual desktop for GAMING on windows.

I will run 1680x1050 resolution in World of Warcraft and Steam Apps.

I get excellent performance currently on WoW with just the 1440x900, will I lose a lot of FPS on the larger screen?

am I wasting my time?

will this work?

Any input would help me out a lot! Thanks guys!

 

[eddx]

It should work fine, much higher than 1680 x 1200 you will find the gaming quality a little lacking. I have used mine on a 24inch dell that was 1920 pixels across and it worked fine for general usage and videos but with gaming the frame rate was a little slower compared to the perfection you see at the native 1440 x 900

 

[thechidz]

screen management in XP is a pain. I have to run the program to mirror the screen every time I start XP

 

[xcharlesy]

I see, anyone else have anything to add?

 

[digitalpencil]

Unfortunately, I don't think you can run Windows in clamshell mode (closed screen) so this wouldn't work. As for the rest however, WOW is well-optimized and low resource anyway so you should get great FPS at 1680x1050. I tend to run games like COD4 and GOW on my ext 22" from my MBP but at low-res as FPS is more important to me then overall quality but each to their own.
It is worth while switching your display drivers though as the ones packed with bootcamp aren't great. You can get replacements at laptopvideo2go.com whch give you more options for mirroring/calibration etc. & in terms of overall performance, you can use FRAPS to monitor your FPS in-game at different settings and can OC your GPU/MEMCORE speeds (as it is heavily under-clocked) using n-tune. Do be careful though, you don't want to fry your logic-board! Just make sure you run the stability tests to ensure your OC'd system can handle the new clock speeds.
Hope this fills in the gaps!