17" 4:3 or 19" 16:10

Caporegime
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Ok, i get paid tommorow, and am going to buy my new monitor. I had decided on a Hanns-G HW191 19" Widescreen TFT to replace my cruddy 17" CRT, but now ive got cold feet.

The guy at work behind me has just grabbed a spare Dell 17" 4:3 TFt at 1280x1024 and it looks really nice. Im replacing my 17" CRT that i run at 1280x1024. the Hanns-G is 1440x900.

id love a widescreen, much nicer to use and more viewing for games and movies (ive fallen in love with the 20" widescreen white computer like thingy our graphic designer has, shame about the OS ;-)), but im now a little worried about losing 124 pixels in height, which is actualy quite a bit. Do i take the plunge and just go with my instinct and get the Hanns-G, or do i chicken out, and go for the safe like for like replacement and get a 17" 4:3?

basicaly, do i replace my 1280x1024 with another 1280x1024 or 1440x900?

Cheers
 
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Just to be picky, 1280x1024 is 5:4 not 4:3 :)

Personally I like the 17" 1280x1024 or the 20" 1680x1050, I find the 19" 1440x900 to be just a little lacking in vertical space.
 
is this from experience?

im stuck now. would be a lot easier if there was a sizeable price difference between the 2, but there isnt. if anyone knows where i can get a new 17" TFT for £60 then my problem would be solved!
 
any chance anyone could take a screenshot of a 1440x900 desktop and compaire to a 1280x1024?

hmm, im even more unsure now
 
Skeeter said:
is this from experience?

im stuck now. would be a lot easier if there was a sizeable price difference between the 2, but there isnt. if anyone knows where i can get a new 17" TFT for £60 then my problem would be solved!

Yes, I've got 17", 22" and 24" here.

Tried a 19" elsewhere for a while but couldn't get used to it.

If you mostly play games then the 19" would be fine, it is just when using documents that I notice the lack of vertical space.
 
so what? you know of a cheap decent 17" TFT?

im at uni so "should" be using documents (well, i will next year when i finish my placement). basicaly, i dont want to get a 19" WS and feel like ive downgraded from my 17" CRT (its probubly about 16" viewable at 1280x1024, wont go higher than 60 htz, and is a goldfish bowl!)
 
£100 or so will get you either a 17" or 19" 5:4 1280x1024 LCD from OcUK.

If you can't afford a 20" widescreen then I'd go for one of those.

Can't comment on the quality but I guess you can't have everything at the bottom end of the price range.
 
yeah, but the same money gets me a 19" widescreen, which is where my dilema begins.

real state wise they are very simalar (the widescreen is shorter but wider). Ideally id love a 20" WS but a) i dont have the money and b) gamming at 1680x1050 will be more strain on my 7800GT than the lower res of the 17 or 19
 
In the end only you can decide.

If you have a strong reason to want widescreen such as watching DVDs or you have games that will make good use of the widescreen mode then go for the 19" but recognise if you do that working on documents and the like may take a bit of getting used to.

I tend to view the 19" screens as great for entertainment but prefer the 20" for work.
 
nobody knows of a price cut in 20" Ws screens comming up do they? and how my 7800GT would cope with HL2:EP2 at 1680x1050?
 
hmm, thats a very tough one

i set myself £120 max, plus postage. im skint atm but heard that panel prices mite rise soon, and the Hanns-G has already started to creep back up. I definately cant afford the £175 for the 20" Dells and the like, but i have found an Acer AL2016Ws for £150

but honestly, i cant realy afford it. i get my student loan soon, £800, but my concience is making me save most seen as my student overdraft is maxed
 
froggle "Samsung 205BWWK47 20"Wide", and you can find it for only £149inc vat :eek: , that's pretty good, I'd much rather have the sammy over the Acer, it's worth more and it's a better quality screen,

tbh it's either that (or the acer), or a secound hand 19" 5:4 tft, I definitly would'nt go for a 19" widescreen, in fact I think I'd even rather have a 17" 5:4 panel than a 19" widescreen.
 
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ok, so it looks like 20" is the way to go BUT how will my games suffer from having to produce about a 3rd more pixels than i currently have on my 1280x1024 setup?

Many thanks
 
CSS last nite, 70fps on dust with HDr, 120+ fps on maps without HDR at 1280x1024. EP1 ran at about 60+ fps. Im using the recomended settings which is high everything, 4x AA, some AF (cant remember exacts). to me this is very good compaired to what i used to get on my 9800pro. the difference is, at the moment i can just turn the res down to 1024x768 if i struggle in a game.
 
well CSS should be fine, EP1 should be fine, I'd hazerd a guess your lose about 25-30% performance, you should be able to compensate though by lowering AA & AF and a few detail setting here and there, it'll die on newer games like Rainbow 6 Vegas and stalker etc which means you would have to lower the resolution also which will result in noticeable scaling.
 
seen as im not planning on upgrading my graphics card for a while i think the 20" is a no go. back to the 19" WS vs 17" standard. im going to go see if i can have a look at some this evening. seen as i spend all day stairing at a 15" 1024x768 writing word and exel docs, i think i mite be able to cope with the 900 pixel height on a 19" WS, but im going to have a look.

just a thought, what effect does changing the DPI on the screen have? if i changed the default (96) to the lower 75% rating of 72 or a custom would it reduce the text size, giving the illusion of a higher resolution?
 
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been to... uh.. a shop.... seemed to have a world of PC's, but the staff have no idea, but it did have a lot of 19" monitors attached to pcs so i could fiddle. Im going to go for the 19". i just love the widescreen and i fiddled with word a bit and its not to bad with the wide screen, just you lose a lot eaither side to dead space on a portait document, but i could comfortably tile 2 next to each other, which is great.

note to anyone with these and thinking of Vista, Vista looks loverly in widescreen format. the toolbars and menu bar and things are a littel thinner and so suite the widescreen better, and the sidebar comes into its own and it all just seems very nice and smooth and tidy. if i didnt know better id think MS designed vista to look good on widescreens.

paid tomorrow, so OcUK, here i come!
 
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