Gaming with lower resolution on "retina" screen - experiences?

[Calista]

My questions concerns those that have experience running a game at a low[er] resolution on a "retina" screen. With retina I talk about screens in the >220 PPI range, not a normal 1080p screen. With high enough resolution even a LCD monitor should behave a bit like a CRT, i.e. any resolution can be used without odd artefacts like pixel errors.

Q: What laptop do you use. What's its resolution? What kind of games do you play and what resolution works and what won't work well?

I must also say I'm surprised this question seem to be largely ignored. Its all about how well the computer perform at it's native resolution, but rarely a word about how lower resolutions actually look.

 

[Ferzerp]

I use a Dell Precision M3800 (native res 3200x1800). Gaming at 1600x900 works great and there is no blur or anything. 1920x1080 looks pretty good, but I can tell it is scaling With 1600x900 (exactly 1/4 of 3200x1800) it is great though.

 

[Calista]

I use a Dell Precision M3800 (native res 3200x1800). Gaming at 1600x900 works great and there is no blur or anything. 1920x1080 looks pretty good, but I can tell it is scaling With 1600x900 (exactly 1/4 of 3200x1800) it is great though.

Great reply. Especially that you mentioning that scaling is visible when running at 1920x1080 since I assume it's a common resolution to aim for. What games have you tried? What about lower resolutions than 1600x900?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I use a Dell Precision M3800 (native res 3200x1800). Gaming at 1600x900 works great and there is no blur or anything. 1920x1080 looks pretty good, but I can tell it is scaling With 1600x900 (exactly 1/4 of 3200x1800) it is great though.

Similar experience here with a Retina Macbook Pro. 2880x1800 is a slideshow, but 1440x900 is fine and looks good.

Great reply. Especially that you mentioning that scaling is visible when running at 1920x1080 since I assume it's a common resolution to aim for. What games have you tried? What about lower resolutions than 1600x900?

Non doubled/halved resolutions would be antialiased and would tend to look worse due to scaling. 720p on the rMBP looks like garbage. (But that's the resolution of the TV in the living room, so if I do the living room thing, that's what I get.)

 

[Ferzerp]

I run all sorts of games on it. FPS, RPG, strategy, etc. I haven't really tried lower than 1600x900 because it handles everything fine at that resolution as long as you don't turn up too many options. For simple games it will run at 3200x1800, but not many, so I tend to just set everything at 1600x900 right off the bat.

 

[Calista]

Non doubled/halved resolutions would be antialiased and would tend to look worse due to scaling.

Sure, but with high enough resolution the screen would be able to deal with any resolution without visible artefacts similar to how a good printer can deal with vector graphics. So my question is really if 230 PPI is sufficient for normal viewing distances and the answer seem to be a clear no.

720p on the rMBP looks like garbage. (But that's the resolution of the TV in the living room, so if I do the living room thing, that's what I get.)

Is this because of the scaling or because the resolution is "too low" to look good anyway?