Replacing 8 year old monitors

Viscount

Viscount

Viscount

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Joined
21 Feb 2010
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19
New monitor advice

I'm looking to replace my existing two monitors but am a bit confused about which is the right type of monitor to go for so I'd like to see how other people have found theirs and to suggest what they think I should go for.

My existing monitors are a c.2006 Viewsonic VP920 and VP930 both are 19" 5:4 monitors with max resolution of 1280x1024.
The VP920 is slowly going and can't show blacks or whites any longer (more like greys) and the VP930 is distorting badly as is almost unusuable.

I'm looking at 24" monitors since I'd like to keep the same viewable height area i.e. 30cm.

My PC hardware is as follows:
Intel Core i5 4670k, 8GB 1333mhz memory and graphics is a Gigabyte AMD 1GB 6770 passive with HDMI, DVI and display ports.

Mostly I play Mechwarrior Online and a few FPS games like Crysis.
But otherwise it's internet browsing, and working on office documents.

I've read up about TN vs IPS monitors and looked at a few videos on Youtube, and it disturbs me that the modern TN monitors have poor viewing angles. If I look at the extreme edges of my VP920 (a 8 year old TN screen) and there are good viewing at all angles. Are they really this bad?

IPS monitors seem attractive to me given the better colours and viewing angles but again the reported ghosting affect disturbs me.

I don't think I've got any ghosting in my VP920, given what I like to do as described above it's possible that i'd never notice it anyway?

How does a IPS monitor with 8ms response time compare to my VP920 with 5ms?

If i'm replacing both monitors which were quite good at the time for my budget c.£180 I'd like the replacements to be better in all aspects for the type of activities I do.

What do you think I should be looking at?

Thanks.
 
one option is a 29 inch 2560x1080 panel, very nearly the same real estate as your two old/current monitors and they are all IPS I think. And windows 7 lets you snap windows to either side of the screen to use exactly half of it which is great for multi-tasking. As for gaming, I personally have the asus mx299q which is great, very responsive and in gaming mode I can't notice any ghosting. Playing on a single larger panel obviously would be a better experience but your GPU would definitely struggle at the resolution unfortunately. If you felt like it you could upgrade the GPU at the same time. Not sure whether the ocz modxstream 600w in your sig is in the same system as you mention in your post but it seems decent enough to easily handle a newish mid to high range gpu, and your 4670k will not bottleneck it. My 770 seems a good match.
 
If you are upgrading to 1080p then you are going to need a new GPU. The 1GB VRAM will limit you for starters. If you upgrade the GPU I would go for a cheap 1440p monitor at that price.
 
1GB for VRAM is gonna be perfectly fine on 1080P using a HD 6770.

He not going to be using max setting on that level of card to be worrying about vram limits.

Don't worry about poor viewing angles if you are happy with you current monitors.

I'd go for a fast 1 or 2ms TN panel with the inputs you require.
 
Viscount said:
If I look at the extreme edges of my VP920 (a 8 year old TN screen) and there are good viewing at all angles. Are they really this bad?
Click to expand...

I honestly don't think it is anything to worry about unless you know you will regularly view a monitor from a 'stupid' angle. I've had TN panel(s) where yes if I stick my head up against the bezel and look at the opposite edge it is distorted, but the solution is simple: don't do it! My opinion is if you are worried about distorted images then the first port of call should be making sure the monitor is suitably positioned for viewing as the number of people who genuinely need to view screens from these angles on a regular basis must be very small indeed.
 
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