widescreen or not?? cant decide

spinna

spinna

spinna

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at the moment im using a 17" monitor and i want to get a bigger one,
i cant decide to get a widescreen one or not :(
been looking at these two

Belinea 102035W 20.1" Widescreen LCD Monitor £293.69
Samsung SM-913N 19" LCD Monitor £187.94

i wont be using my PC for watching DVDs , playing games and surfing the internet etc

is it worth paying £100 more for a widescreen??

OCUK you decide :p
 
Im in the same boat, im going from a 17 inch tft @ 1280x1024 to either a Samsung 913N or a Acer 19" widescreen. Im really undecided, bith have excellent reviews, its just the native res on the widescreen tft thats holding me back.
 
yeah the res is holding me back as well for the wide screen monitors. i like playing games with loads of eye candy on. but when my X1900 start to gets to get old will i still be able to play my games on high settings?
 
Im farly certain my card ( 7800GT ) can handle all current games at 1440x900 and i can always drop another in when i find i struggling - by then 7800GTs will be going for paenuts. And i cant see a 1900XT struggling yet either for at least 6 months
 
Now i had a widescreen monitor i don't think i be able to go back to a 4:3 one again..The same with my widescreen TV.

But you need a 20" widescreen or bigger....On the 19" widescreen and below you lose to much height (1440 x 900)
 
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what monitor did you have before you got a widescreen one?
yeah i see what you mean about widescreen tvs, even playing games on a widescreen tv is far better then a normal tv.
but will a 20" widescreen be better then a 19" for playing games on?
 
I had a 19" lcd 4:3...before my 24" widescreen..

Here a picture of fear i captured in 4:3 and 16:9
96683c4e.jpg

8877bbf6.jpg
 
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chaparral said:
Now i had a widescreen monitor i don't think i be able to go back to a 4:3 one again..The same with my widescreen TV.

But you need a 20" widescreen or bigger....On the 19" widescreen and below you lose to much height (1440 x 900)
Click to expand...


Yep exactly what he said..Went from a 17" TFT to a 20" WS & was unsure! Would not go back now though..Love it :cool:
 
I disagree with the loss of height.....certainly, in-game, the viewable height remains the same (see the FEAR screenies above), but your field of view horizontally is increased.

In essence, playing CS:S against a non-WS player, you will see him come into your field of view just that wee bit earlier than he sees you :D

I'm on a 19" widescreen Acer, and loving it!
 
reddeathdrinker said:
I disagree with the loss of height.....certainly, in-game, the viewable height remains the same (see the FEAR screenies above), but your field of view horizontally is increased.

In essence, playing CS:S against a non-WS player, you will see him come into your field of view just that wee bit earlier than he sees you :D

I'm on a 19" widescreen Acer, and loving it!
Click to expand...

I look at it as the lost of height while web browsing would mean more scrolling up and down..A 19" widesrceen is going give you less height then a 17" 4:3 screen..
 
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I bought a Acer 20inch widescreen from oc a fortnight ago and i am really pleased with it,the picture is superb,max res is 1680x1050,i upgraded from a 19" crt and will never go back.
Only thing now the 24" Dell looks pretty tempting,but my partner has hid my credit card!!!!
Steve
 
Are there lower widescrren resolutions available.. the native 16x10 would put a bit too much strain on the vga card, and I like all the eye candy on in most games.

I usually play 1280x1024, or 1024x768, as to be honest, Ive never noticed much difference between these and full 1600x1200 res.. other than a big drop in fram rates....

Ideally, I would like to know if ther is a widescreen equivalent to 1024x768?
 
There are 15" widescreen's available but I am not sure at what res they run in, but I would imagine it's some widescreen version of 1024x768 if that's really what you want. 1440x900 is probably your best match and with the rig in your sig, you will be fine.
 
Hmm Im not convinced... for best results, in FEAR with full eye candy (all settings maxed)... on 1024x768 I get 100% above 40%, as soon as I increase scrren res to 1280x1024 this drops to about 65%.. with min 28fps which then causes problems in some scenarios...

If you check chaparral's sig, hes got a beast of a machine.. AMD 4400+ Dual core/ Leadtek 7800gtx SLI.. which can cope with widescreen resolutions much easier....

I think I will just opt for the BEST 19" standard format I can get for now... rather than get a widescreen ad lose gaming performance
 
I think you are mis-undertstanding the concept of widescreen. Widescreen in itself, does not burden your system any more than a standard res - it is all based on the total number of pixels your system has to render.

If you go for a 19" screen @ 1280x1024 = 1,310,720 pixels to render

A 19" widescreen @ 1440x900 = 1,296,000 pixels to render

So a 19" widescreen display will actually be less taxing on your system than a standard 19" display would be, although admittedly not by much.
 
I understand the concept of widescreen, however I was just comparing it to when I run games at 1600x1200, which slows things down, more than improving things, as you would expect... with the native 1680x1050 of the 19"+ widescreen, this would have the same effect. Which is why I was asking if there was a lower widescreen resolution.

These are the alternative resolutions of the NEC GX2

1400 x 1050; 1440 x 900; 1360 x 768; 1280 x 1024; 1280 x 960; 1152 x 870;1152 x 864;
1024 x 768; 832 x 624; 800 x 600; 720 x 400; 640 x 480

But as you point out 1440x900 would be the next res down from the native, and indeed have a smaller mp throughput... but I think this is the only other (16:10) widesreen format at a decent res, without having borders in games??

However, it is almost the same throughput as the 1280x1024, at which I would not play games... Ive never really noticed any improvements playing a game at 1024x768 or 1600x1200, in fact quite the oppostie.. even with eye candy turned off.

I have come to the conclusing that unless you have adequate hardware to play at native resolutions... its probably going to disappoint...
 
BubbySoup said:
If you go for a 19" screen @ 1280x1024 = 1,310,720 pixels to render

A 19" widescreen @ 1440x900 = 1,296,000 pixels to render

So a 19" widescreen display will actually be less taxing on your system than a standard 19" display would be, although admittedly not by much.
Click to expand...

The Belinea has 1,764,000 pixels though, which is 34.6% more pixels. Also a 20" widescreen still has less physical height than a 5:4 19" screen. Although you get a wider view in games, things on the screen are actually smaller. The pictures posted by chaparral above don't give that impression but that's because that's a 24" screen, and it's hardly fair to compare that against a 19" 5:4 screen when it costs 2 to 3 times as much. 20" is a lot smaller than that.
 
The Belinea has 1,764,000 pixels though
Click to expand...

Yeah.. same as NEC GX2... but that will put more strain on any gfx card..

I was merely asking what the lowest (16:10) widescreen resoltuion is... as I would prefer to have lower res, and higher framerate... the native 1680x1050 is too high to get good fps with full eye candy...

It would seem that 1440x900 is the lowest... which compares to the mp throughput of 1280x1048 on a crt.. but I wont plame games at this res either...
 
Think I may have found a solution.... looking on widescreegaming forum, there is talk of people using 1280x800 (16x10).. which sounds ideal!!!

I assume games set their own resolution, or if the monitor does not support this, like ths GX2 does not appear to.. then games will force it???
 
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