LCD help

[Starman Ghost]

So I've been looking to do a huge upgrade to my computer, pretty much all new components except for the case, and my dvd burner. I've been iffy about lcd in the past, but I know now they have made great strides in quality since then.

I did a quick froum search because I thought there was an lcd thread here but there wasn't. Can anyone recommend good lcd's, or a site that can recommend them? My main computer use is old-school gaming(i.e. low res games, which won't be native res), internet, with some new gaming thrown in there. I'm looking at 20' mostly because I want a native res of at least 1680 x 1050.

Thanks.

[DataPath]

I'm rather fond of the 22" Samsungs. Then again, lately I've found a lot of Samsung equipment to be quite sexy.

[DancemasterGlenn]

Yeah, I have one of those... the 226BW. There's a bit of backlight bleed, but I don't even notice it... and no dead pixels either. I got it off newegg a while ago, and I couldn't part with it now. Very much recommended.

[sweener2001]

if you want to dish out the cash, get a samsung with led tech. i know their televisions are doing it, not as sure about monitors.

but either way, i'd recommend a samsung. i'm rocking a 245BW (24 inch widescreen at 1920x1200) and it's amazing.

[Gil_Hamilton]

I can begrudgingly recommend a 2220WM... provided you never feed it after midnight*backspace* a non-native resolution. It looks like complete ass when it has to upsample.
Set your PC up so the vidcard does the scaling if you must scale something. This also gives you aspect ratio correction.


Mine also has an odd problem in that the top center portion of the display is darker than the rest of the panel. It's not really noticeable unless you have a lot of black/dark gray details... in which case it all disappears in a solid black mass.




*edit: typo

[Nightcrawler]

Here's a challenge for you guys while we're on this topic.

I want a 20" or larger 4:3 (1600x1200) LCD monitor. Widescreen is pretty useless when it comes to computers in my opinion. I want to run things from the past 10-15 years that uses 640x480, 1024x768 etc.. full screen.

It seems very few manufactures make a monitor above 19" that fits the bill for some reason. It seems there are only a few 20.1" monitors that meet this need and none of them look particularly wonderful.

Does anybody own any of these?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... 15&name=No

Do you know of any others not listed there?

[darkbenny]

Yeah, I have one of those... the 226BW. There's a bit of backlight bleed, but I don't even notice it... and no dead pixels either. I got it off newegg a while ago, and I couldn't part with it now. Very much recommended.

I have the same LCD! Absolutely beautiful, there is no way I could ever return to a CRT after using this one.

[DataPath]

Set your PC up so the vidcard does the scaling if you must scale something. This also gives you aspect ratio correction.

QFT

nVidia's driver-based resolution scaling on Windows is AWESOME. I wish they had something similar on Linux - allow any resolution and scale it in hardware to the monitor's native resolution.

[Starman Ghost]

So Samsung seems to be a plus then eh?

I agree with Nightcrawler though. A 4:3 would be preferable, as I like old games. Does samsung make any 4:3 large lcds?

Edit: Preferable something from futureshop.ca would be preferable, since I have about 125$ in gift card.

Edit 2: I've been looking at this one here. It looks pretty good and there are alot of positive reviews. And it's on sale too. Any opinions?

[Gil_Hamilton]

So Samsung seems to be a plus then eh?

I agree with Nightcrawler though. A 4:3 would be preferable, as I like old games. Does samsung make any 4:3 large lcds?

Dunno. But nVidia's graphics drivers allow you to ratio-scale or output so it's a moot point. You can let the monitor stretch it(highly unrecommended), let the video card stretch it to fill the monitor(slightly less unrecommended), let the video card stretch it as large as it can without changing the aspect ratio(recommended), or output it at native resolution in the center of the LCD(recommended).


http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y172/D ... ontrol.jpg

[Starman Ghost]

So Samsung seems to be a plus then eh?

I agree with Nightcrawler though. A 4:3 would be preferable, as I like old games. Does samsung make any 4:3 large lcds?

Dunno. But nVidia's graphics drivers allow you to ratio-scale or output so it's a moot point. You can let the monitor stretch it(highly unrecommended), let the video card stretch it to fill the monitor(slightly less unrecommended), let the video card stretch it as large as it can without changing the aspect ratio(recommended), or output it at native resolution in the center of the LCD(recommended).


http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y172/D ... ontrol.jpg

Well, I'm going with ati for this upgrade, so I hope they have that option. I'm not particularily fond of the catalyst control center, I find it bulky, slow and ugly. But I just like ati better.

But any opinion on http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/prodde ... &langid=EN ?

Reviews look good, it's on sale for 199$(site is slow to update, says 199$ in shopping cart) and i have 120$ in gift cards, so I can get it for only 80$. Sound good?

[Gil_Hamilton]

But any opinion on http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/prodde ... &langid=EN ?

Just this...

"Price to Performance this Monitor ROCKS.Got mine at the sale price they had last week.I have connected this monitor with a Dual Link DVI-D Cable.The Single Link cables do not have the speed of the Dual Link."

Single-link supports up to 1920*1200, and the display in question is 1680x1050.

Yes, dual-link can move more data, but only once you've saturated single-link.




In short, I laughed. I love user reviews, and thank you for linking the reviews page instead of the specs page.