Upgrading to Widescreen.

chief barker · 29 Jul 2006 at 16:58

I am sure this has been asked before, but I can't find an answer to this anywhere. I have been reading a lot about widescreen gaming on this forum for a long time now and I am Intrigued.

I currently own a Viewsonic VP171S TFT (1280x1024). 16 ms response time.

My questions are, would I gain or lose any FPS by going to higher resolution?, I have read somewhere that the higher the resolution the cpu doesn't have to work so hard and the gfx card does most of the work?. I have an Intel prescott CPU (3.2) 2gb of ram and a 7800GTX 256mb.

I am also considering this upgrade when Vista finally arrives and will use this new monitor for when I build my new P.C.

The monitors I am thinking of are the Viewsonic VX2025WM, NEC LCD20WGX2 and the Dell 2007WFP (any suggestions to which one I should consider)

Thanks In advance.

Edit: I have just spotted the VIewsonic VX2235WM That looks very nice.

Dark_Angel · 29 Jul 2006 at 17:22

Well, the difference in res on a widescreen 20" is 1680x1050. In other words, only a few more pixels vertically, but more horizontally. This means that you will lose a bit of performance if you play in the monitors native res.

I am using 2 different 20" monitors, the philips and the Dell 2007FPW... I have to say I prefer the Dell for the other inputs (s-video and composite) but they are both AWESOME. I have no backlight bleed, and no dead pixels with either.

The 22" viewsonic is going to be nice, but the res will be the same as the 20" models, so by going to a bigger size but same res, it will look a bit worse than a 20" model.

The NEC is the best overall monitor, apart from its not quite so good in very bright rooms, also for photo work, it can be a little worse, because of the brightness of the screen can make images a bit difficult to judge.

The Dell is a bargin at the moment TBH, is is the Viewsonic VX2025. The Dell + NEC + Philips all offer monitor scaling, which is great for the 360 if you happen to want to buy one.

LAstly, if you do want a 19" only, then you can get a few awesome 19" monitors for only around 150... the Hanns OCUK and the Acer 19" wide are the most popular. Be warned though, the res is a bit lower (about the same as your current monitor) at 1440x900 (more horizontal, less vertical) if you are just gaming, then you could well consider that

Ozzie Dave · 29 Jul 2006 at 19:02

I did some testing on the NEC 20.1" 20WGX2....it's my cousin's and since I'm in the market for one too I thought it worth a shot

Oblivion was the game on test. My cousin's system is very similar to the one in my sig, except the cpu was 3000+ and gpu an X850.

On my CRT rig I play OB in 1280x960 res, and get quite acceptable performance with many options on high. For the NEC I first tried at its native 1680x1050. Obviously this was somewhat slower fps but still playable except for fights in the forest areas where it chugged a fair bit. I put it down to 1440x900, looked quite good, the non-native res didn't make it blurry or anything and fps was very close to my rig. Went down to 1280x800 and the same nice picture but faster. Upshot is I felt quite happy about picture quality and performance in lower than native res

The NEC has good scaling too. The widescreen aspect is also a hell of a lot nicer for gaming, I feel the field of view in 4:3 CRTs was very restrictive in that sense....that extra at the sides makes a huge difference imo

Response times were excellent for this TFT also. As fast as I've seen really, and I've looked at quite a few including the Veiwsonic VX922. If you are in the market for a widescreen then you can't go wrong with this monitor I reckon. Colour reproduction on the NEC is also top notch for a TFT, very accurate....I still feel CRTs are the best when it comes to gaming/colour reproduction but the NEC comes very close and has a crisper display for general windows/net browsing etc

I am most likely going to order one for myself next week.

Baddass · 30 Jul 2006 at 11:35

chief barker said:
The monitors I am thinking of are the Viewsonic VX2025WM, NEC LCD20WGX2 and the Dell 2007WFP (any suggestions to which one I should consider)

certainly a good selection of monitors there. The 2007WFP is very well priced at the moment, an absolute bargain! They have all been compared by BeHardware here which might help, and this article might help with understanding the differences between the technologies used