Monitor sub £150?

JJXS

JJXS

JJXS

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Joined
28 Sep 2012
Posts
21
Hello All,

I'm after a little advice if I may...

I'm looking for a monitor, mainly for gaming, FPS, but I do a fair bit of Photoshop and Illustrator work, I could watch the odd HD movie on it too, so maybe a little bit of an all rounder.

I've been reading the forums and the sticky about all sorts, LCD vs LED, response rates, TFN, etc and to be honest, I'm totally confused. I'd like, if possible, to keep it under £150, but £190 could be achieved at a push.

I rebuilt my PC 5 months ago, but the old Dell 15 inch monitor is just not cutting it, if it helps but not sure it does, I've listed the GC below.

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560Ti OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
 
Well basically for the panel technologies it's something like this ASCII art
Code: 
TN      IPS/PLS           MVA/PVA
|      /       \         /
Gaming          Photoshop
TN is great for gaming, fast response times and 120Hz options. The colour reproduction isn't all that great and the viewing angles are horrible making it a bad choice for photoshopping purposes.
IPS/PLS has decent response times, the best colour reproduction and viewing angles. Unless competitive multiplayer FPS is your thing these will be good enough for gaming if there's a proper pixel overdrive implementation. Great for photoshopping.
MVA/PVA has the best contrast ratio's and very deep blacks you won't find on screens using a panel with one of the other technologies. Decent viewing angles, good colour reproduction but the pixel response time leaves to be desired. Wouldn't recommend these to gamers, good for photoshopping purposes and great for watching movies.

So basically you always need to compromise and for your purposes I would recommend a nice IPS panel such as the Dell u2312HM.

[edit]
There are some other cheaper options as well but it doesn't seem like OCUK sells any of them, they do have the 1" smaller and 10 pounds cheaper Dell U2212HM
 
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:O)

Hi Axeia,

Wow, thank you for the very in depth description, all becomes clear now :)

Due to the split between the different types of application, I'd agree the IPS seems to be the best option, giving the bridge between the two.

Reading the reviews on the Dell, it doesn't look like there are many, if any drawbacks, seems very solid with good performance.

I really appreciate the time you've taken to detail this, having read several reviews, I will be taking your advice, I think there may well be one arriving in the next few days...

Well there would have been, except it's currently out of stock, still, no great rush, I can wait...

Thanks again.

Sorry, one final question, what would be the best connector to use from Graphics Card to Monitor? Apologies if that seems a dumb question, been working in IS for 15 years, but still can't get hardware!
 
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As for connections
Digital > Analog.
Digital: HDMI, DVI, Displayport
Analog: VGA, Component

Displayport still has some little issues on some videocards and monitors so I prefer DVI/HDMI above it.
HDMI = Single link DVI+Sound. AMD videocards consider anything connected to HDMI to be a TV which may lead to the image not fitting properly in which case you have to fiddle with under/over -scan settings in CCP.
So basically as long as you don't need sound, DVI > HDMI > Displayport. In case of the Dell you don't have sound anyway so I'd recommend using it via DVI.
 
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