Gettting the most out of my new monitor

[SoapSurgeon]

Hi,

I'm a complete monitor noob and thought it would be useful for you guys to explain to me (and other noobs) how to get the most out of their monitors.

I recently bought a Dell 2007 and it looks fantastic! However, i've read lots of threads about people complaining about banding, dead pixels, bleeding and even some form of magical sparkling!! As im a noob i dont know what half of those even are. I also read that with a few tweaks you can make it look better.

What I want is a quick tutorial of any useful settings, software or other information that will help me get the most out of my monitor.

Obviously if you have some hints & tips for a different monitor feel free to post them.

Thanks,

Matt

 

[fish99]

If you don't know what the 'sparkling' is, it's probably best not to find out since it might bother you once you know it's there. I've got the 2007WFP and I don't mind the sparkling too much. I only notice it on static images, not when gaming.

As for banding, if you go into 'image modes' in the OSD you'll see it has three modes - desktop, multimedia and gaming. You get banding in multimedia and gaming modes, but not in desktop mode. The best thing is just to leave the monitor in desktop mode the whole time then. In gaming and multimedia mode the screen also analyses the contents of the display and adjust the brightness every second or so to bring out more detail in dark areas (since detail in dark areas and black depth aren't one of the 2007's strengths). I find that quite an unpleasant effect, it's like the screen flashes once a second, so another good reason to leave the screen in desktop mode.

Other settings I use - for web browsing I turn the brightness down to around 30, and when gaming turn it back up to 45-50.

It's a nice screen to use with a 360 if you have one btw, via VGA lead.

I run most new or demanding PC games in 1280*800 btw which is 16:10 but not as demanding as 1680*1050. I use the 360 in 1280*768 and set the screen to 'fill' so it fills the screen.

 

[SoapSurgeon]

i've just ordered a 360 so cant wait to see what that looks like. I havent changed any settings so might see what the multimedia and gaming mode look like, out of curiosity.

I have only really played 3 games so far and i played them in the highest res, CS:S was fine but on civ4 it did slow down so i might try turning the res down a tad!

Thanks for the advice.