As we all know, resolution is the ability to resolve two different details close together, and, Corran, I have to say, in your crop example, I don't see a significant difference in resolution, and I am really trying to look for it. I opened it up in my large display, and spent 5 minuets looking at both carefully. Maybe there's a resolution difference at the 20ish % level, which means it was resolving say 1800 dpi the other one is resolving 2200, or something like that.
The branches in the back are resolved the same level in both cases pretty much, and several other details (edges, wood grain, etc) are really close too, and it's coming down to almost single pixels.
I can also say there is definitely a difference in tonality/contrast and the eye tends to associate contrast with resolution.
I don't see high-frequency noise in either one either (the one that the eye dislikes the most).
This is just what my eyes are saying.