Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
A laptop with a decent video chipset will drive an external monitor at its full native resolution; it won't simply replicate the laptop's internal screen resolution on the external monitor.
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In theory correct, but not completely accurate. The resolution can depend on a lot of things including driver, the connection type and the laptop's internals. Some chipsets support a higher resolution than the laptop's built in graphics system will support. Example, a laptop using the integrated graphics in a Sandybring cpu will only support 1920 x 1200, even if you have a chipset such as the HD Graphics 3000 that supports up to 2500 x 1600. You need a dedicated graphics card to get the full resolution of the chipset. Laptop makers frequently are willing to make trade offs like that. On my work laptop, the external resolution in the docking station is better than the external resolution plugging the monitor directly into the laptop. That's because the only video connection on the laptop is a VGA connector. There are a lot of little gotchas in the fine print.