well, budget - £200 max i was thinking, although i could stretch further, but i was planning an overhaul of my pc so would rather not.
I use mine for gaming, was aiming for a resolution of 1920x1080 or so.
Another question, is it worth utilising the HDMI socket on my 5850?
2 of my flatmates have a rather nice
dell 23.6" (or so-called 24") 1920x1080 which looks quite nice. It is not LED backlit though, but as mentioned that alone doesn't make a notable difference. The horizontal viewing angles are quite good, vertically they are ok; well calibrated it has good colour and shading and a relatively clearer and better represented image than others in the price range. I do have to note though that since I have been using an ips screen TN panels never seem good, that is where the quality is the backlight makes much less of a difference. Also worth noting is every monitor, even of the same model and batch, will look a bit different - I was unlucky to get 2 really bad samsung SM2443BW TN monitors in a row, both looked totally horrible (when they would stay on!) - I returned them, but the reason was not the panel and it would not have been a valid reason so watch out. The dell monitor I suggest is almost guaranteed to come without dead pixels, if it does I don't think you are covered unless they agree they are unacceptably bad in some way - but pretty much 99% of monitors are not covered against dead pixels, and if you search for information it is usually outdated or incorrect, sometimes you might find an article stating a company has a good policy but they don't say where or when.
Theres a lot to think about when selecting a monitor.
edit:
take a look at
this dell monitor, it is essentially a newer and refined model of my initial recommendation.
also I see no issues with using the HDMI port, it is basically a different arrangement than DVI, with added capability for audio if you hook it up internally. DVI is the elitist option though ^_^ so it should be used for your monitor.
edit:
even with a 5850 that will likely be the bottleneck when gaming - you will need less cash than you think to do an overhaul, seeing as you have a good graphics card purchased already.
for other components, and i3 setup is brilliant when OCd to 4GHz, but a good monitor + gpu + mouse means pretty much the best gaming experience around.
I would expect the 5850 to become the benchmark for games in the next few years, like the 8800gt has been since it became popular. ie, developers test and produce their games to run smoothly on the 5850 and anything better is a bonus, yet they would want the games to run appropriately on weaker hardware eg the 5770. Also with larger resolutions coming into play more and more, I think they are looking at 1680x1050 as a good example - but depending on the way the graphics are implemented it could be that the bottleneck within the gpu does not relate directly to the resolution, ie different texture implementations, so don't worry about being on a higher resolution especially not with your gpu. An i3 rig I built not long ago with a 5770 runs bfbc2 on full settings (with 2xAA) 1920x1080 and the fps is consistently above 45 and often sits nice at 60; which surprised me as people usually experience lower fps with that card I don't know how it worked so well.
