Using external monitor and screen resolution?

Question

it might sound very basic question but i need some help. I have lenovo Ideapad y560p which offers a maximum resolution of 1366px x 768px.

Now i am planning to buy an external monitor, and i short listed some FULL HD resolution monitors, but it is my understanding that even with FULL HD, i would only achieve the best resolution my laptop supports. Is it true?

And also if this is the case, should i really go for an HD monitor or settle down with a lower resolution version? 2ndly, is there any way to increase resolution with simple upgrade? or it is not possible without voiding the warranty??

Answer 1

Your graphics card (Radeon HD 6570M) can support the following maximum resolutions on external monitors based upon the type of connection:

• Dual-link DVI with HDCP10: 2560x1600
• DisplayPort 1.1: 2560x1600
• HDMI® 1.4a with Stereoscopic 3D Frame Packing Format, Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit-rate audio: 1920x1200
• VGA: 2048x1536

If you run your displays in "clone" mode, then the external is limited to the size of your laptop screen, because it's just a copy of your laptop screen. If you run your displays in "extended" mode, then you can set separate resolutions for each monitor, and they will function independently. Generally the only time you run in clone mode is if you're giving a presentation of sorts, and even then you're usually limited by the resolution of the projector, and not your laptop.

So, don't feel limited by the size of your laptop screen when selecting an external monitor, and there's no need to upgrade the internal screen (which you can't do without voiding your warranty and a lot of work).

Technical Specs for Ideapad Y560P
Technical Specs for Radeon HD 6570M

Answer 2

You can use the maximum resolution that the display supports.

Just be wary however that your laptop is powerful enough to render smoothly at 1080p but I do not suspect that you should have much trouble.

Answer 3

The resolution on your laptop is going to be limited by the physical number of pixels on the screen. The only way to upgrade that would be to replace the entire display. However, most laptops can handle external monitors of varying sizes. If the laptop's onboard video card is woefully underpowered, you may find that an HD monitor will not run at it's full resolution, or it just may not perform well. However, in my experience I have never had an issue with running an external display on a slightly higher resolution that the one that the computer's native display supports.

One more thing to keep in mind is that you can't display the same pictures on both displays unless they are both at the same resolution. If you setup your computer to use only the external display or to extend the desktop to it, then you can run at the full HD. Otherwise, if the displays are mirroring each other, you will be limited by the resolution of the laptop display.

Answer 4

Your current display resolution is limited by the actual amount of pixels in your monitor, but the laptop's GPU (AMD Radeon HD 6570M) can render well above 1366x768. Well above Full HD even (1920x1080), its maximum resolution is 2560x1200, according to AMD's specifications. Note that even though the GPU can render in 2560x1200, that does not mean it is powerful enough to handle any task smoothly on such a resolution, although it is more than capable of doing 1080p video playback.