Resolution Support for External Monitor ~ T41

[rrntexas]

I have an IBM T41 laptop with 1400 x 1050 resolution. It has a ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 GPU with 32 MB memory.

I would like to purchase an external monitor, but I am unsure if this laptop will support an external monitor at high resolutions such as 1920 x 1200 widescreen. I will be using the monitor for web browsing, MS Office and watching movies. I have a docking station that will support DVI and HDMI connections to the external monitor.

Would anyone have some thoughts as to whether this laptop will support high resolutions on an external monitor?

Thanks in advance,

RR

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

Not sure if the T41 can handle any external widescreen monitors, but the technical document (tawbook.pdf) says that the maximum external resolution is 2048 x 1536 x 16.7M color at 75Hz. You might be able to play around with different video drivers other than the IBM-supplied one but that's just a guess...

[basketb]

I'd be surprised if the T41 couldn't handle an external WUXGA monitor, as my old A31 can handle it. You may need the Omega driver though (google for Omega driver or search around here, if you don't know what the Omega driver is).

[rrntexas]

The Omega drivers worked perfectly. I was able to run the 22 inch external monitor at native resolution. 1680 x 1020 (or something like that)

Thanks for your help...

RR

[Stargate199]

From my knowledge on these systems and on this GPU, the max resolution supported is 1680x1050 (widescreen). Any resolutions lower should be fine.

[basketb]

Why wouldn't it support 1920x1200?

[bmwman91]

I had this question a while back. It seemed that the best I could get with my T41p using the 8.103.something ISV driver was 1400x1050 on my external monitor, but its native resolution is 1680x1050. I used the Omega drivers and that enabled me to choose other resolutions. Unfortunately, it is not working as well as I would like.

I get some little green artifacts sometimes, and other weird ones when the CPU is under heavy use. The Thinkvantage System Configuration utility BSOD's/crashes the system when launched (every time) with the Omega drivers. It is also irritating that I am unable to set the external monitor as my primary one, leaving the start menu & desktop icons on the laptop screen.

Does anyone have any alternative ideas? The Omega drivers can be lived with, but they seem to have a price. Am I the only one experiencing these issues?

[Stargate199]

Why wouldn't it support 1920x1200?

Memory limitations. You need to GPU memory to get that higher resolution. On standard T41's the max video ram is 32MB, not enough to drive 1920x1200 pixels. The T41p's had an option for a 128MB FireGL card that should have no problem achieving that resolution (In theory, the driver would still have to support it).

[basketb]

As I wrote in my previous post, my old A31 with (if I remember correctly) 16 MB of video ram could drive an WUXGA monitor without problems. So I am surprised that a T41 with twice that amount shouldn't be able to do it.

[Stargate199]

As I wrote in my previous post, my old A31 with (if I remember correctly) 16 MB of video ram could drive an WUXGA monitor without problems. So I am surprised that a T41 with twice that amount shouldn't be able to do it.

I need to run the math to double check, but you may be right. Lets see here..... 32 bit color means 4 bytes needed for each pixel. There are 2,304,000 pixels in a WUXGA screen, so multiply 4 x 2304000 = 9,206,000 bytes (9.206 MB) needed to display the picture. So yes that would be possible to display a picture on that about of VRAM, but VRAM is used for a lot more things that just the display.

It may be possible that the GPU used (Mobile Radeon 9000) just does not have the power to drive that kind of display. I just know that 1680x1050 is max supported by the driver for that GPU. I know this because I had a T41 and I looked at all the modes that were supported.

P.S. Please correct me if any of my math is wrong.