Thinking of going widescreen (noob)

bliss · 6 Jun 2006 at 13:24

I'm starting to get tired of my current 17" tft and i'm thinking of taking the plunge and going for a 20.1" WS TFT. The ones i've been looking at are.

Viewsonic VX2025 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Silver/Black (MO-052-VS)
Belinea 102035W 20.1" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-003-BE)

I was also looking at the Benq one, but some reviews have put me off it. The price of the belinea is the max i'm willing to pay. I do have some questions though.

1. I mainly play bf2 at the moment. The image will be stretched as a guess. How does it look? Does anybody have any jpgs i could look at?

2. Is my current gfx card up to the job? and if it starts to show its age soon (almost certainly buying ut2k7) do the above TFTs look good at lower resolutions?

3. Are there any other monitors with a max of £311 that i should maybe take a look at?

4. Considering the high res of 20.1" TFTs should i also look 19" models to help put less stress on my gfx card.

Thanks in advance guys :cool:

pcknight · 6 Jun 2006 at 14:04

Viewsonic VX2025 has my vote.

toxic · 6 Jun 2006 at 14:13

your gona notice a huge difference 17" to 20" WS. Whats your grahpics card?

I would get the viewsonic (I did) but thats me...havent seen the others in opeation.

BillytheImpaler · 6 Jun 2006 at 14:24

Why would BF2 get stretched? Does it not support the new aspect ratio?

NeilF · 6 Jun 2006 at 14:28

BillytheImpaler said:
Why would BF2 get stretched? Does it not support the new aspect ratio?

Main question is do you need it and are you going to use it?

ie: Do you need more space on your desktop for Windows applications? Are you going to run your games at the higher resolution?

toxic · 6 Jun 2006 at 14:28

it doesnt naturally...but you can force it to play at the widescreen resolution

Most of the latest games....and I dare say everything coming out from now on will have widescreen support. HL2, CS:S, Oblivion, Tomb Raider: Legened etc. all have WS support...so I'm happy

bliss · 6 Jun 2006 at 14:36

@toxic
7800GT

@NeilFawcett
If it doesn't hammer my gfx card too much then yes i will run it at it's native res all the time. I do play other games that use WS like cod2 but i also do have a lot of apps running sometimes in windows. Video encoding, mozilla, irc, audio encoding, adobe PS, so it would be nice having the extra space.

Thanks for the replies so far guys. So far it's two votes for the 2025W. Any reason why you would choose this over the belinea?

Ps. Does anybody know if UT2k7 will have WS support? I haven't read anything but with die hard gamers playing it and all the WS isn't fair on FS players i'd say that it has a good chance of not being WS capable. I'll have a read around shortly.

Edit: Should i be put off by this?
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17584919

bliss · 6 Jun 2006 at 16:57

Hey baddass i wouldn't mind your input if you have the time

Baddass · 6 Jun 2006 at 20:14

bliss said:
Viewsonic VX2025 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Silver/Black (MO-052-VS)
Belinea 102035W 20.1" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-003-BE)

I was also looking at the Benq one, but some reviews have put me off it. The price of the belinea is the max i'm willing to pay.

Firstly, i think it's worth mentioning that the 102035W and the VX2025WM both use the same 8ms AU Optronics P-MVA panel and as such, performance is very comparable between the two. They both offer very good all round performance. The areas where there is difference is the design obvioulsy and functionality. Neither support 1:1 pixel mapping so games will either need to support WS res, or be stretched. The Viewsonic does offer more accurate colours out of the box, and sinve pretty much every user would not have access to a hardware calibration tool, this is worth noting.

The BenQ FP202W is using an 8ms CPT TN Film panel and is not as all round as the others in it's performance, being far more restrictive in viewing angles and movie playback most notably.

1. I mainly play bf2 at the moment. The image will be stretched as a guess. How does it look? Does anybody have any jpgs i could look at?

If you play it at normal 4:3 aspect resolutions, then since the screens dont support 1:1 pixel mapping, the image will be stretched. There is a patch over at widescreengamingforum along with a good thread about BF2 here

As said, i would imagine nearly all future releases will offer WS support anyway

2. Is my current gfx card up to the job? and if it starts to show its age soon (almost certainly buying ut2k7) do the above TFTs look good at lower resolutions?

it depends on what games you're playing and how much eye candy you have on. It should handle some gaming, but maybe best to ask in the GFX forum about the performance of your card. Just tell them you need to run it at 1680 x 1050 resolution

3. Are there any other monitors with a max of £311 that i should maybe take a look at?

The Belinea and Viewsonic are both very well priced and great performers too, there's a fair chunk of info about each in the sticky too if you haven't seen it already. The Philips 200W6CS is also very popular and worth a look, and also perhaps the forthcoming Dell 2007WFP which is bound to be popular.

4. Considering the high res of 20.1" TFTs should i also look 19" models to help put less stress on my gfx card.

well the 1280 x 1024 res would perhaps be easier, but then you'd lose out on a fair amount of space and res for other uses. I think a 20"WS would be nice to have and perhaps more future proof for when you inevitably upgrade your graphics card

bliss · 6 Jun 2006 at 20:46

Wow! Thankyou for that amazing reply baddass. I'm going to think about the 2 20.1 TFTs during tonight. Hopefully i'll have decided by then i placed an order.

Baddass · 6 Jun 2006 at 22:03

bliss said:
Wow! Thankyou for that amazing reply baddass. I'm going to think about the 2 20.1 TFTs during tonight. Hopefully i'll have decided by then i placed an order.

no problems bliss, glad i could help

bliss · 7 Jun 2006 at 01:00

I've decided to go with the viewsonic. Just hoping it doesn't have a lot of backlight bleeding, guess i could send it back within 7 days if i'm not totally happy. One question before i do. Does this monitor come with a DVI cable?

bliss

toxic · 7 Jun 2006 at 07:27

DVI cable...yes!

bliss · 7 Jun 2006 at 11:35

Thanks toxic.

Booner! · 7 Jun 2006 at 12:27

Badass, just a quick question. The Viewsonic has the same panel as the Belinea but i read somewhere that the viewsonic does not support high def content, in other words it wont support xbox 360 through VGA? but the belinea does? could you help me clear this up? :confused:

im confused lol

The $6m Dan · 7 Jun 2006 at 13:10

Well the Xbox 360 runs at 1280 x 720 which is a 16:9 aspect ratio, and as the monitor doesn't support 1:1 pixel mapping, all your 360 games will be a little stretched / tall.

As for the Veiwsonic not playing HD content, I can only assume they mean copy protected HD content as it doesn't have an HDMI connector. If it's only for the 360 and not HD DVD or BluRay then you should be fine, apart from the slightly stretched image that I mentioned earlier.

frogboy · 7 Jun 2006 at 13:20

The $6m Dan said:
Well the Xbox 360 runs at 1280 x 720 which is a 16:9 aspect ratio, and as the monitor doesn't support 1:1 pixel mapping, all your 360 games will be a little stretched / tall.

Could anyone tell me which 20" widescreens don't stretch the image?

toxic · 7 Jun 2006 at 13:29

the NEC and the Phillips have 1:1 pixel mapping..which means you can play a game at 1280x1024 ish with black bars down the side of the screen. To me this sux anyway...bacuase you pay for a big screen...so you want to play a game on a big screen. Most games you can puch to the widescreen res (if they dont have the option). BF2 (as its a bit old now anyway) doesnt have the option but you can force it different ways. Only playing old games you have to worry about screen stretch..and even then it isnt that bad. The difference between a 16:9 and a 16:10 ratio will hardly even be noticable TBH. Its only a couple of pixels.

Baddass · 7 Jun 2006 at 17:56

Booner! said:
Badass, just a quick question. The Viewsonic has the same panel as the Belinea but i read somewhere that the viewsonic does not support high def content, in other words it wont support xbox 360 through VGA? but the belinea does? could you help me clear this up? im confused lol

both screens use the same panel from AU Optronics, but other components will vary between the two, including interfaces, electronic components, the bezel and stand etc. Both screens (as said above) support a high enough resolution to display 720p content which is 720 lines so you can certainly play these from your PC fine. What you might be referring to is whether either of them support HDCP which is an HD encryption really. Some modern TFT's support HDCP over the DVI connection, but neither the Belinea or Viewsonic do afaik.

Booner! · 7 Jun 2006 at 20:32

cheers, so im thinking of going for a belinea 20.1" myself you see.. replacing my 19" viewsonic 924 3ms with the widescreen if its 16:9?

i have got a 6800GT and will be upgrading soon to a X1800XT or 7900GT for widescreen resolutions. so will be using the next monitor for 360 and counterstrike,video editing etc on pc. so i wasnt sure if the viewsonic could portray the 360 resolution as im stuck with 4:3 at the mo and its not nice at all

Thinking of going widescreen (noob)

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