I'm considering buying either a Samsung 24" SM-245B or a Dell 24" 2407WFP. I've got a few main concerns though (mostly around gaming), which despite searching, I can't find mention of anywhere. I'll try to explain...
I currently have a 17" non-widescreen TFT with a max resolution of 1280 x 1024. My PC is high-spec including an NVidia 8800GTX. Games obviously look great at the moment.
1. I'm assuming a widescreen aspect will stretch games horizontally, unless the game actually supports a widescreen aspect. But, what if a game simply looks 'wrong' when stretched? Is there a way of forcing a 'traditional' aspect ratio? I'm picturing two vertical black bands either side of the screen, with a 4:3 game display in the middle. This is probably a silly question really, and people with widescreens are probably wondering 'What is he thinking?', but having no experience of widescreen gaming, this has been one of my concerns. I guess running the game in windowed mode would be a good solution, but only with games that support that.
2. I've seen a pretty cool benchmark tool which seems to illustrate that when playing games at the native resolutions of these two monitors, my FPS could well drop by 30% over what I currently experience. Presumably on an even bigger screen, the FPS drop will be even more noticeable too. I'm hoping that the 8800GTX will make this something of a non-issue at the moment, but doesn't such a large screen effectively 'age' the graphics card more quickly? That in itself doesn't particularly concern me, depending on the answer to the first question. i.e if I find performance drops to be too great in the native widescreen resolution, I think it would be great to switch to say, 1600 x 1200 or less, with the hypothetical vertical black bands I described above.
3. Also, I've not been able to determine whether both of these monitors feature picture-in-picture. It's something I know exists on another Samsung 24" and I'd really like to have that.
I know it may seem like I'd actually be better suited to a non-widescreen monitor, but I do use the PC for much more than gaming... it's just that I have no concerns at all about these monitors for everything else
Besides, it's not like I'd prefer not to play in widescreen - it's just that I'd like the ability to switch if performance degrades too much, or if things look strange when stretched.
Thanks for any advice you can offer... this is the one thing that's holding me back from buying the Dell or pre-ordering the Samsung (incidentally, it would be great to hear from people who favour one over the other, and why).
I currently have a 17" non-widescreen TFT with a max resolution of 1280 x 1024. My PC is high-spec including an NVidia 8800GTX. Games obviously look great at the moment.
1. I'm assuming a widescreen aspect will stretch games horizontally, unless the game actually supports a widescreen aspect. But, what if a game simply looks 'wrong' when stretched? Is there a way of forcing a 'traditional' aspect ratio? I'm picturing two vertical black bands either side of the screen, with a 4:3 game display in the middle. This is probably a silly question really, and people with widescreens are probably wondering 'What is he thinking?', but having no experience of widescreen gaming, this has been one of my concerns. I guess running the game in windowed mode would be a good solution, but only with games that support that.
2. I've seen a pretty cool benchmark tool which seems to illustrate that when playing games at the native resolutions of these two monitors, my FPS could well drop by 30% over what I currently experience. Presumably on an even bigger screen, the FPS drop will be even more noticeable too. I'm hoping that the 8800GTX will make this something of a non-issue at the moment, but doesn't such a large screen effectively 'age' the graphics card more quickly? That in itself doesn't particularly concern me, depending on the answer to the first question. i.e if I find performance drops to be too great in the native widescreen resolution, I think it would be great to switch to say, 1600 x 1200 or less, with the hypothetical vertical black bands I described above.
3. Also, I've not been able to determine whether both of these monitors feature picture-in-picture. It's something I know exists on another Samsung 24" and I'd really like to have that.
I know it may seem like I'd actually be better suited to a non-widescreen monitor, but I do use the PC for much more than gaming... it's just that I have no concerns at all about these monitors for everything else
Besides, it's not like I'd prefer not to play in widescreen - it's just that I'd like the ability to switch if performance degrades too much, or if things look strange when stretched.Thanks for any advice you can offer... this is the one thing that's holding me back from buying the Dell or pre-ordering the Samsung (incidentally, it would be great to hear from people who favour one over the other, and why).