What Is a Good Gaming Contrast for a Monitor?

My old CRT that is installed on our second system is finally giving up the ghost. It is 6+ years old but the pink screen is now constant.

I want to take my 3+ year old 17" ViewSonic vx724 with a 500:1 contrast and replace the CRT with it. Now I need to get a new monitor for myself. Since this is a gaming community who better to ask than gamers.

Honestly, I played a lot of games on my ViewSonic and it provides a clear, crisp picture. The colors are vibrant, no dead pixels, and I never had an issue with ghosting.

I am not a fan of the widescreen as I do prefer the 5:4 as opposed to the 16:9. My budget is $200. I don't need all the bells and whistles as this will be for my PC only, but if widescreen is the way to go so be it.

I did find an HP widescreen at a decent price and it has a 1000:1. I realize that lower ms is important and other things come into play, but from your experience how has the contrast affected graphics, picture quality, etc.

And if you have any suggestions please let me know. I really don't need anything bigger than the 20 to 23 inch range. 19" will even be fine.

Thanks.

Dell 2209WA 22-inch Widescreen but it's priced at $289. They used to have some on sale but it became very popular so I'm not sure if there will be any reductions in price.

I would track 'dealzmodo' on Gizmodo, and also the Consumerist for daily deals on this stuff.

Anything under 22" doesn't make sense. Too expensive and too small in widescreen. 22" widescreen is basically 19" 5:4 and then some more space at the sides.

We had on or two other discussions here about TFTs. Maybe you should try to find them.

Most LCD's these days are more than good enough for the average gamer. Ghosting is mostly a thing of the past, and the contrast rivals cheaper CRT's from back in the day. I also second the notion of going at least 22" wide.

Personally I like Samsung and Dell screens, but companies like BenQ and Acer makes affordable and decent monitors. A quick check on Newegg turns up this 22" Acer for instance, with good reviews from a lot of people and at the very reasonable price of $159.99 (I found it at "PC Connection" too, for $130, but I can't vouch for that company)

Thanks for the replies; much appreciated. And jimmith, thanks for that link to the Acer. Like you the Samsung and Dell (and some HP's as well) are my first choice but that Acer seems like one fine monitor and with a 2500:1 contrast ratio it is above the standard 1000:1.

By the way, I take it your monitors are at a 5ms response time. How do you find this for gaming?

At 5ms- 5/1000 second, effectively 200 frames per second, it should be almost impossible to see any ghosting from the screen itself, anyone telling you differently are braggarts

My first LCD had a 16ms response time, and when i really tried i convinced myself I could see the ghosting. Thing is though, when you're gaming or watching a movie you have better things to do than to search for flaws in the image.

I've built several systems but I always find which monitor to pick and what firewall to run to be the biggest pains because there is so much debate as to what is good, what to avoid, etc. Believe it or not Jimmith I've even run into people saying 5ms is "okay" but get faster if you can. That didn't ring true with me but I figured it would be better to ask you about your experience.

Thanks for the information.

No problem

People will be people. You'll always get the ones who firmly believe that a expensive HDMI cable somehow, magically, will produce better colors and deeper blacks than a cheap one.
The Placebo effect can make a big difference though, and there are a few people who can see the difference between 100 and 200fps.

I'm confident though that you'll get every dollars worth out of that Acer should you decide to buy it.