Confused as to what size Monitor(s) to get. What would you do?

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

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I currently have a 17" CRT and owing to some good fortune, I am now in a position to purchase a new display setup.

My PC is used for gaming, watching videos on the computer, browsing the interweb and playing music. Regarding the games, I tend to play a bit of everything.. FPS, Sports and RTS occassionaly.

My original intention was to get TWO Samsung SM-931BW 19" Widescreen monitors:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-052-SA&groupid=17&catid=276&subcat

I liked the idea of having 2 screens:

More desktop area
More workspace
Gaming on one screen while having a video playing on another
Playing a video while browisng the net with the video full screen.
Supreme Commander Dual screen goodness

Having 2 x 19" Monitors seemed a great idea.

Now, I was all set to get these then while out and about this morning, I saw THE 22" SAMSUNG SM2232BW - WOW

Now I dont know what to do :(

Oviously, with one monitor I would loose the dual monitor functionality but it looks soooo nice.

So, what do you guys think?

2 x 19" Monitors
1 x 22" Monitor

Will the plusses of the single 22" outweight the loss of Dual screen functionality and less desktop space?

ALSO, my Graphics card is an ATI x1950 PRO 512MB

Now, from what I understand with TFT's, you have to game at the native resolutiion else its bad, right?

With the 22" monitor, realistically what performance would I get with gaming at 1680x1050? Would gaming at a none native resolution be such a problem?

I am unlikely to be able to afford a top of the range VGA card and my next upgrade will likely be a mid range one as well. FOR this reason, would I be better off with 2 x 19"?

Thanks all for any advice.

A Confused Gimp.
 
TFTs look sharper in native res, but gaming out of native res doesn't look that bad, just the picture is softer, more like a CRT picture. I've played loads of games in 1280*800 on my Dell 2007WFP (1680*1050) and they look fine. Playing Bioshock in that res at the moment and it still looks great. Of couse different screens may have different quality upscalers though so YMMV.

I've tried SupCom on dual screen and dissapointingly I didn't find the other screen useful. I found myself only ever looking at the main screen. If you could train yourself to look at the other one every 20s or so it could be useful for spotting experimentals approaching though.

I also find dual screen in general is rarely useful unless you have a particular use for it. I've got a 17" TFT next to my 20" w/s and they only time I ever turn it on is when I want to check CPU usage while gaming to check whether something is using both cores. It's not like you can use it to control apps while gaming.

I would go with the 22", but it really depends what uses you might have for dual screens.
 
After seeing the W2207 in the flesh, it made the 19" Widescreens look tiny and the screen looked soooo nice.

I think anything else would have been second best after seeing it.

Will they look better than my OEM 17" CRT? :p

Greebo said:
Lucky git.......dead jealous here :mad:
Click to expand...

Likewise with your dual core CPU, 8800 and dual Raptors :)
 
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