dilemma with Widescreen LCD

Remus

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It's been a while looking for nice and best value widescreen LCD monitor for my future system.

Currently the 22" widescreen LCD seem very popular, and the price is good enough for that kind of size. Unfortunately all the 22" LCD in market now using TN panel, which is inferior in term of color quality and viewing angle, etc. The 20" Viewsonic 2025wm used MVA panel, but it was no longer in production. The BenQ 24 Fb241WZ's specs are very attractive, but with its price i can buy two 22" Samsung 226BW monitors!

List of my hardware below and component marked # is my current prefered choice.

Processor-------------C2D E6600------------------------------#

Motherboard-----------Gigabyte 965P-DS4 1066------------
------Gigabyte 965P-DS3 1066 Rev 3.3------#
------Gigabyte 965P-DS3P 1333----------------
------Asus P5N-E SLI NF650i 1333-------------

RAM-----------------Kingston Value PC6400 DDR2 800(2x1G)
------Kingston Value PC5400 DDR2 667 (2x1G)#

Optical--------------Asus 18X DVDRW Black SATA Light-Scribe-
------Liteon 20X DVDRW Black SATA L-Scribe---#

Hard Drive---------Seagate SATA2 320G 16M 7200RPM-------#

Sound Card--------Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music-------------------#

Speaker---------------Logitech Z-5500 505RMS------------------
------Logitech Z-5400 310RMS--------------------
------Edifier S5.1M 180RMS-------------------------
------Creative Gigaworks G500 130Watts
------Logitech Z-5300 280RMS--------------------#
------Logitech X-530 5.1 70RMS-------------------

Graphics Card----------------------------------------------------------

LCD Monitor------------------------------------------------------------
------20" ViewSonic VX2025WM--------------------
------22" Samsung 226BW--------------------------
------BenQ 24" FP 241WZ Wide-------------------

ATX Casing------------Cooler Master Centurion 5--------------#

PSU-------------------Cooler Master 550w Real Power---------
------Enermax Liberty 500watt-----------------
-----Cooler Master Green Power 500Watt---#

Mouse-----------------Logitech MX518 Gaming Optical--------#
Mouse Pad------------------------------------------------------------

Keyboard--------------Logitech Ultra Slim (Black)--------------#
------Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000----

As you can see i still undecided on display card and monitor. I think i'll wait until first week of May when ATI announces the launch of HD2900XT (competes with 8800GTS as far as i gather now)
 
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Joined
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The words ATI scare me personally. I had a lot of gaming issues with ATI that were much harder to resolve then with Nividia.

The rest of the unit looks good. I prefer Asus for a motherboard myself, but that is just based on past good performance. ;)
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
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Missouri USA
I have the 22" Samsung widescreen and I have never been happier with a monitor. The color quality is great... I had no dead pixels upon arrival, and I like the features.

It comes with presets for gaming, movies, text, etc. I keep it on text because it's a little darker (that's the only problem out of the box - it's too bright). The gaming preset makes it very bright, so it just depends on what you like.

All my games look great on this monitor. Games with widescreen support look fantastic. But even games that don't support it look good. You can choose to have the monitor display unsupported games in their native format (basically with black edges on both sides of the game). But you can also choose to have the monitor "stretch" the game in a way that it doesn't looked stretched. I'm playing Avernum 4 in widescreen mode and I think it looks great (of course I have a 50" widescreen TV that I keep on widescreen all the time so I may just be used to the stretching).

For the money, this is the best monitor I've ever bought. And since I got it from NewEgg it came fast. And trust me 22" is big... I love it.

<edit> Almost forgot... you'll want to run this monitor in its native resolution.
<edit again> Oh yeah... definitely go with the Asus motherboard. Best in the business in my opinion.
 
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Joined
Dec 8, 2006
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Ohio
Many games can be hacked to display officially unsupported resolutions. There´s a whole website dedicated to gaming on weird resolutions. Unfortunately I always forget the link.

An alternative to one big monitor is buying two slightly smaller ones for the same price.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
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I suppose that the site Gorath mentions is here http://www.widescreengamer.com/

I have no personal experience with WideScreen monitors, so I cannot commment on that topic.

When considering large montirors (like 24''), you should take into account its native resolution and hence the resolution that will be (almost) necessary to run your games in. It all depends on how often you plan to upgrade/buy new machine. The very high resolution such monitor has may be ok for now (you are buying new machine) but may be problem in half a year or in one year with the new titles. The problem with LCDs is that that lowering resolution is very problematic.

Other than that, the system looks good...
 
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