Laptop lid closed with external monitor.

[Blueeyes9999]

Hello everyone,

I have a few questions to ask about hooking up an external monitor to my laptop with the lid being closed. I am about to order a 21.5" 1ms gaming monitor to my laptop, the laptop will be closed inside my desk. My current laptop display is 1366x768 and it is like 15" or something in that ballpark. The display I bought is 1920 x 1080, will that be an issue for FPS. I also bought a cheapy wired gaming keyboard for like $60.

My main worry is that I will lose a lot of FPS while playing games. I do not want to not be able to play games just because of the display and I really need to use this display. I know that I need to change the power settings so it does nothing, and I know to completely stop the laptop display from doing anything. I just want to know if there will be a significant drop in FPS. If it does, please, please, please give me a solution on how to make it not lag while I am gaming.

Thank you all for the solutions I am hoping to be getting pretty soon.

 

[PhysX_HW]

Well, calculating more pixels needs more power, and as you'd have twice as many of them, you would get 50-65% of the original performance, depending on the game, when comparing 1366x768 and 1920x1080 at the same settings. You can play in 1366x768 in the new monitor, which I don't recommend as the scaling would make the image look blurry, so you could just lower the settings, details etc. if your FPS dips below 60. There is no other, magical solution for this. You simply need more power to drive more pixels.

 

[Eximo]

We'll need to know the laptop's specifications to estimate performance.

You don't necessary have to have the laptop lid closed, you can tell it to only display on the one monitor. I know a few Lenovo models that have better cooling with the lid open.

 

[Blueeyes9999]

Would it look really really bad if i lower the resolution

 

[Blueeyes9999]

I have an AMD A8-7410 processor and Radeon R5 graphics. I only play games like Minecraft, League of Legends, Skyrim, CS:GO.

 

[Blueeyes9999]

8GB of RAM

 

[Solandri]

the laptop will be closed inside my desk.

You mean on your desk, not in your desk, right? The laptop needs access to room air to keep cool. If you put it inside your desk in a drawer, it will gradually heat up the air inside the drawer until it overheats. Especially a gaming laptop.

My main worry is that I will lose a lot of FPS while playing games. I do not want to not be able to play games just because of the display and I really need to use this display.

1366x768 = 1 megapixels
1920x1080 = 1.98 megapixels

So you should expect the framerate to be about cut in half going from 720p to 1080p.

I know that I need to change the power settings so it does nothing, and I know to completely stop the laptop display from doing anything.

You should also:

• 
  ■ Check your laptop's air vents. Some laptops vent hot air up in front of the screen. If you close the lid, it blocks this air vent, and the laptop will overheat.
  ■ Monitor the laptop's temperatures the first few times you game with the lid closed. Some laptops are designed to also vent heat via normal air circulation over the keyboard. Close the lid and it can no longer shed heat that way, and could overheat.

 

[Blueeyes9999]

What if I put the monitor down to 1366x768

 

[Blueeyes9999]

Or even like 1600x900

 

[PhysX_HW]

What if I put the monitor down to 1366x768

It would have to upscale the image. It would look like 1024*576 or 800*480 on your current display. You can go ahead and see what those look like right now, but I'd rather lower the settings and keep the native resolution.

 

[Blueeyes9999]

See the problem is that I don't have the best PC. Do you think with AMD A8-7410 and radon R5 graphics I could still play games like Minecraft League of Legends and like CSGO

 

[Solandri]

Ugh, yeah that's a really low-end GPU. I believe even the latest Intel integrated graphics is faster.

As others have stated, running at the native resolution is best. If you run the game at a resolution which doesn't match the monitor's resolution, it will scale the image. The better monitor scalers do a fairly good job, but it will result in the image appearing blurrier especially along lines and sharp edges. You probably won't mind in photo-realistic games like CSGO. But games which use sprites or 3D pseudo-sprites like LoL will look blurry due to the scaling. (Minecraft is already horribly blocky so you likely won't even notice.)

As PhysX_HW suggests., try running the games on your current display at a lower resolution to see what scaling does to their appearance. You can decide if you can live with that.

Another alternative is to get a 1440p monitor. That's 2560x1440 resolution, so will scale a 1280x720 image at exactly 2:1, thus avoiding the blurriness. Unfortunately, I don't think you they come any smaller than 25". So you'd be spending extra money on a monitor when you really should be spending it on a better computer.