Widescreen monitors and Gaming...

Sherm · 12 Mar 2006 at 21:16

Just a quick and simple one really. Are widescreen monitors any good for gaming, a lot of the 'good' monitors seem to be wide now, is this the way it's going to go and do games support the wide format for games (yes i could check i guess)

Cheers

quad · 12 Mar 2006 at 22:25

yes they're just fine

Messiah Khan · 12 Mar 2006 at 22:26

Yup, widescreen monitors are great for gaming. The only games yup might have slight problems with are really old games, although most of these can be fixed with hacks etc. Have a look on http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/ to see how games look in widescreen.

Jokester · 12 Mar 2006 at 22:31

I love my widescreen monitor, just seems better than a normal screen. Also works great with DVDs.

Jokester

fish99 · 13 Mar 2006 at 01:25

Yeah, if you play new or recent games the res shouldn't be a problem in most cases, although there's always exceptions. It's only once you go into the over 3 year old stuff that you run into problems, and as messiah khan points out, in some cases there's hacks to get round it.

If you want to know for a particular title - the widescreen gaming forum have a list- http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/masterlist.php

Chris Y. · 13 Mar 2006 at 05:32

widescreen is not only wonderful for games but its also great for multitasking...being able to place windows and pictures side by side at large sizes while also having your chat windows all visible is great too

Sherm · 13 Mar 2006 at 22:02

Thanks a lot guys for your answers. Pretty much cleared that one up i think. Means that i won't have any worries about geting one

AWPC · 14 Mar 2006 at 18:45

Only thing to really worry about is if you have enough computer horsepower.

Native 1920x1200=2304000 pixels to process. Usually 24" Widescreen TFTs
Native 1680x1050=1764000 pixels to process. Usually 20" Widescreen TFTs
Native 1280x1024=1310720 pixels to process. Usually 17-19" TFTs

As you can see if you go for a 24 or even 20" widescreen TFT there are a lot of pixels for your gfx card + cpu to process and this can bring the most expensive hardware to its knees.

High end cards like X1800/X1900 + 7800GTX512/7900GTX512 are only just fast enough to power a 24" TFT and even then you need to compromise with regards to disabling AA for most games and enabling vsync as on a larger TFT vertifcal tearing is easy to spot & be distracted by.

Sherm · 14 Mar 2006 at 18:53

Yeah i can well imagine that it would take a lot of beans to run some of those setups. personally i won't be getting a big screen for a while, other upgrades that i yearn for first and my trusty Sharp is way too nice to ditch just yet