Other resolution (no scaling) in MacBook Pro retina

What do the other resolutions look like? I know in OS X you can't go down (for now) to really (non retina) at 1440x900 and also in Windows (for no new bootcamp driver) you can't; but I see how in the gaming sessions you can choose the 1440x900, how does it look compared to a standard MacBook Pro display with a 1440x900 native resolution?

Because, in theory, it would look identical, without the problem about scaling to non-native resolutions (what happens, for example, when you go to 1280x800 in a display with 1440x900 native resolution), due to the fact who each 4px of retina display becomes exatly 1px at that resolution. There is any one who can try and check this?

Solution 1:

Images and icons look about the same because of integral scaling. But text in non-Retina apps looks clearly worse. The difference is that on a non-Retina display, text uses sub-pixel rendering. But with Retina, old apps use full-pixel anti-aliasing instead. (Those full pixels are then multiplied perfectly with integral scaling.) Not quite sure what Retina text on a Retina display uses, it's hard to eyeball.

Separately, other resolutions look pretty good. The highest is 1920x1200. The trick is they are also rendered in double-resolution (3840x2400) and then scaled down for the display (2880x1800). Because there are so many tiny pixels, the result is acceptable, but the optimal setting is definitely sharper.

So Retina apps at 1920 look pretty good, and non-Retina text at 1920 has smaller and slightly fuzzier full-pixel anti-aliasing.

Solution 2:

Late 2013 13" Retina is very choppy both at native and scaled resolutions. You can notice the shuttering when resizing apps and going to full screen