Lack of non-widescreen monitors...?

Delvis

Delvis

Delvis

Caporegime
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Is it me...Or is there a definitive lack of monitors that are not widescreen?

I know everyone says: "Widescreen monitors are better" etc etc. But I always worry about that whole native res thing, and the way things look kinda pants if you venture out of it (apparently)...Or if my graphics card would be able to even handle the odd resoloutions of widescreen monitors.

Currently I'm on a 19" CRT from Samsung. It's fine, works 100% really...I did purchase a LCD once upon a time..It was a viewsonic one, and that came with a stuck pixel, and trying to get my money back for that was a right old fiddle :(

Since then I havent bothered thinking of buying a new monitor...But I'm curious, are there still loads of good non-widescreen 19 / 20" LCD monitors now?
 
I felt exactly the same about widescreen LCD's until I got one a week ago. I knew the extra horizontal space would be good for work (I'm a programmer) but I had concerns about games. Those concerns vanished once I actually tried it. If the game supports the native res of the monitor (in my case 1680 x 1050) and the graphics card is up to it, then it's truly superb. But when you have to play at a lower res, I found my monitor and my Nvidia cpl gave me three options:

1) Let the monitor/gfx card scale the image up. This looks pretty poor TBH
2) Scale up while holding the aspect ratio. In most games I've tried this works really well
3) Don't scale at all. This was offered by the Nvidia cpl and puts the image at 1:1 in the centre of the display, with black borders. Good to have but for me #2 is the better solution.

Anyway, regarding non-widescreen LCDs - they might not be so popular but they're still available. I bought a 17in Phillips for my GF at the same time as my widescreen. It runs 1280 x 1024 and its color was spot on straight out of the box ( had to callibrate my widescreen over and over before I was satisfied).
 
Delvis said:
Is it me...Or is there a definitive lack of monitors that are not widescreen?

I know everyone says: "Widescreen monitors are better" etc etc. But I always worry about that whole native res thing, and the way things look kinda pants if you venture out of it (apparently)...Or if my graphics card would be able to even handle the odd resoloutions of widescreen monitors.

Currently I'm on a 19" CRT from Samsung. It's fine, works 100% really...I did purchase a LCD once upon a time..It was a viewsonic one, and that came with a stuck pixel, and trying to get my money back for that was a right old fiddle :(

Since then I havent bothered thinking of buying a new monitor...But I'm curious, are there still loads of good non-widescreen 19 / 20" LCD monitors now?
Click to expand...
The native res thing is more about whether your video card can handle the resolution than a specific widescreen issue. Most modern games support widescreen. The reason why you would drop down resolutions is for better framerates, but the same thing would apply on a non-widescreen. 1600*1200 on a non-widescreen is equally demanding as 1680*1050 on a widescreen.

And for games that don't support widescreen, with an nvidia card or a monitor with aspect ratio controls you can use aspect scaled mode with borders left/right.

Also screens with good scaling don't look half as bad out of their native resolution as some people make out. I run plenty of games in 1280*800 on my Dell 2007WFP and they still look good.
 
fish99 said:
The native res thing is more about whether your video card can handle the resolution than a specific widescreen issue. Most modern games support widescreen. The reason why you would drop down resolutions is for better framerates, but the same thing would apply on a non-widescreen. 1600*1200 on a non-widescreen is equally demanding as 1680*1050 on a widescreen..
Click to expand...

This tends not to be true, actually, because the viewing angle is larger, there's more transform an lighting to be done.
 
The native res thing is more about whether your video card can handle the resolution than a specific widescreen issue.
Click to expand...

Exactly my point...If I have a graphics card that cant handle the resoloution...Then surely that's just...annoying to say it nicely?

I currently game at 1280 x 1024, no matter what game I play really, apart from 1.6 which I no longer play any more really.

If it's anything to go by my current setup consists of an x2 4400, 2 gb of ram, a x1900xtx, and an A8N-sli motherboard. I'm just thinking of the future, If I was to get a standard 19" LCD thing's shouldn't really change regarding performance...However If I purchased a widescreen variant, my performance in game WOULD drop on my current setup.
 
tbh with that rig I would probably say you're not making the most of that 1900XTX, I use a 1900XT at astock and it's great.
 
Yeah, the card's brilliant...Works in every game I've thrown at it really.

I'm just concerned about monitors really, as I wouldn't mind changing to an LCD whenI move house eventually.
 
Mr Jack said:
This tends not to be true, actually, because the viewing angle is larger, there's more transform an lighting to be done.
Click to expand...
True but that doesn't account for much of the workload these days, it's much more about per pixel effects. I'd be surprised if you saw more than a few percent difference either way.

To the OP, there still are plenty of 19" 5:4 screens out there. The VP930 is still widely available for around £220. If you want ultra quick the VX922 is still available for £175 or so. Non-widescreens are going rapidly out of fashion though.
 
Thanks for the replys.

Yeah I can see they're going out of fashion...Just seems weird to me, cause widescreens tend to be more taxing theoretically...And I'm someone who doesent upgrade his hardware very much.

So....1280x1024 on a standard monitor...What would be the widescreen equivalent? So it uses the same amount of system resources etc.
 
1440 x 900 = 1296000

is a lower res than

1280 x 1024 = 1310720

:D ws F>T>W !

you can pick up a sterling 19" ws for sub £100, I got lucky and grabbed a 22" for £120 incl del my X1800XL has no problems at all driving it
 
Only thing with 19" widescreens is the 900 pixel vertical resolution will be a good bit lower than the 1024 on your CRT which you may find annoying for web/apps.
 
The 'native resolution' issue will appy to all LCD monitors, not just widescreen ones. It's to do with the fact that the monitor is playing with actual pixels as opposed to scanning across a pane of glass with an electron gun.

Say you have a native resolution of 1280x1024 and trying to run it at 1184 x 864 (or whatever that wierd MAC res is) and suddenly whole pixels have to try and display fractions (1280 divided by 1186 does not equal a whole number), etc.

Now, why are widescreen monitors becoming more popular? It's actually something to do with the fact that making them is easier, believe it or not.

Manufacturers (all two of them or whatever) of panels can exercise a pretty precise degree of control over given/popular widths of panel, which has meant reductions in dead pixels and improved quality. However, increase the width (i.e. the height) of the panel. So it's easy for them to create a panel that is thin but long (hmmm...), i.e. a widescreen panel, than it is a much wider - but square - panel.

Add to this the fact that they can pimp the 'more immersive/wider FOV' and a manufacturing limitation turns into a selling point.
 
Mr Jack said:
This tends not to be true, actually, because the viewing angle is larger, there's more transform an lighting to be done.
Click to expand...
I don't agree, the lighting and transform overhead is per pixel,

1600x1200 = 1,920,000
1680x1050 = 1,764,000

those calculation are per pixel, so the WS will be faster, doesn't matter about wide angles, correct me if i'm wrong, though.
 
neologan said:
I don't agree, the lighting and transform overhead is per pixel,

1600x1200 = 1,920,000
1680x1050 = 1,764,000

those calculation are per pixel, so the WS will be faster, doesn't matter about wide angles, correct me if i'm wrong, though.
Click to expand...
Transformation are per vertex, so the more geometry visible (ie not being clipped by the view frustrum) the more transformation are needed, so Mr Jack is partly right. In games these days I would think it's per pixel effects (ie pixel shaders) which dictate framerates more than the number of triangles though, which is why I think the wider FOV won't give significantly lower framerates. Plus as you point out, 1680*1050 is less pixels than 1600*1200. Overall I don't see more than a few fps difference either way.

Lighting can be per vertex or per pixel.
 
fish99 said:
Transformation are per vertex, so the more geometry visible (ie not being clipped by the view frustrum) the more transformation are needed, so Mr Jack is partly right. In games these days I would think it's per pixel effects (ie pixel shaders) which dictate framerates more than the number of triangles though, which is why I think the wider FOV won't give significantly lower framerates. Plus as you point out, 1680*1050 is less pixels than 1600*1200. Overall I don't see more than a few fps difference either way.

Lighting can be per vertex or per pixel.
Click to expand...
thanks for that :)
 
Hmm I see people's points.

So if I was to just continue running games at the 1280x1024 widescreen equivalent (1440 x 900...?) I shouldn't see much of a performance hit?...

Or have I completely got the wrong end of the stick here? :p
 
Delvis said:
Hmm I see people's points.

So if I was to just continue running games at the 1280x1024 widescreen equivalent (1440 x 900...?) I shouldn't see much of a performance hit?...

Or have I completely got the wrong end of the stick here? :p
Click to expand...

You've not said what your gfx card is. It might be able to handle 1680 x 1050 in which case you can look at 20" and 22" ws
 
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