Hello fellow racers:

I have the difficult decision of choosing a new display unit for my PC.
I wanna go widescreen but don't know which make, model, speed etc.

Should I get the highest res possible? 1680 : 1050
The highest contrast Ratio (non plasma) 1000:1
Lots of co0lours 16.7 million
BIg Size 21ins
Ave Response 8ms

I have heard that Dell & Samsung make nice ones.

Or Should I just stick with my good old 19" CRT which cannot be beaten when it comes to displaying acurate colours.

I could spend the money on higher spec mobo & proc instead?

Anyone who has upgraded from CRT to Widescreen TFT I wanna hear from you!

Merry Christmas:drink:

Stick with 19" and upgrade your PC, as 19" is enough for a PC monitor. However, widescreen monitors with 1080 vertical pixels are cheaper than HDTVs but will let you watch HD-DVDs/BluRay dics just as well as a 1080p HDTV will.

I also have the option of one of these:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayI ... 4899081&rd=1&rd=1

or these:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayI ... 9400648&rd=1&rd=1

I upgraded from a 17" CRT to a 19" TFT last summer, and definately don't regret it. The overall image quality is noticably better, and the colours are fine once you have the screen setup to your liking, and if necessary tweak the gamma a bit. The extra desk space and lower power consumption are nice too.

Don't cheap out on a screen or get the lowest priced big one you can find. 19 inches is perfectly fine for a computer screen I reckon, best to get a quality one. I have a cheap 19" on my other machine, fair enough it was 1/2 the price of the one on this box but it shows - the colours aren't accurate, and it sucks for games - the response time is higher.

http://www.sony.co.uk/view/Sho ... ype=Overview&category

I use one of these on my main system, and recommend it to anyone. I must have fiddled with 20-30 screens in different shops looking for a good one till I came accross it. The colours are great, its brilliant for games, its tilt system is well designed. Not a single dead pixel either, my cheap one has 1 dead pixel and 2 dead sub-pixels.

@Rtsbasic: That's not really a fair comparison. A cheapo 17" CRT vs. a nice 19" LCD. For one, the actual screen size on the 19" LCD is about 3 or 4" bigger and this can easily skew your perception. Second, cheap CRT's are just that, cheap. They're just as bad as a cheap LCD.

I personally love 21" CRT's, although my 24" widescreen CRT is even better (same size vertically as the 21", just a little wider). 21" CRT's are about the same size as a 20" LCD. They do tend to be rather heavy and big, though.

My old CRT wasn't el cheapo, new it cost not a massive amount less than my Sony TFT did. Of course that was going back a few years.

I know the size difference doesn't make it a great comparison, but hey the man asked for opinions..my point was don't buy cheap LCD's, or you'll be let down compared to a standard CRT of the same spec.

New TFT for hogswatch? just wait a few weeks and get the same screen you like for a discounted price in the Jan sales

thats what I plan to do.

SD.

Quote from anttt69 :

Anyone who has upgraded from CRT to Widescreen TFT I wanna hear from you!

I switched my 19" viewsonic p95f with a Dell 2405, and I never miss the 19". If you got a fairly good graphics card, I doubt you'll regret buying a ws tft.

Dell 2007 and 2407 are good choices.

I went from 19" CRT to 22" widescreen LCD and it's one of the best things I've done. Ofcourse it's the most expensive part of my system but totally worth it. I watch a lot of widescreen movies and tv on it so it has really paid off and LFS is great in widescreen It's 1680x1050 which is great res for this size with text not being too small or too big I can sit a fair distance away and still see everything clearly.

I first thought the colours wouldn't be as good on LCDs, but after sitting infront of an Apple cinema display at work and comparing it to my CRT at home there's really not much difference. The onyl thing you can notice is ghosting, but you soon get used to it and can;t notice it. These days you can get 2ms screens anyway whee ghosting isn't even a problem.

thanks for the feedback, I think I will get a 22in Wide screen in the sales

I have one of these and it's fine for LFS.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... duct.php?prodid=MO-006-BE

Best of all though it is only about £220 delivered which for a 22" screen is a bit of a bargain especially for 1680x1050 at 5ms.

I can't say how it compares to much else as my experience is limited. The extra space over the 17" screen it replaced makes the experience much better.

I have an AMD XP3700 and Radeon 1800XTX and can get over 100fps at this sort of resolution even when running everything at quality settings so the increase in resolution had little effect on my fps.


Maxim

I personally went from a 17" CRT to a 19" Widescreen TFT back in January, and it was a very welcome addition. The frame rate hit from the resolution change (1280x960 to 1440*900) was minimal (5 fps at most loss on a GeForce 6200 at the time) and the ability to see more at the sides is a godsend, I would recommend changing to widescreen for any LFS racer.

The particular monitor you mentioned is nice, the resolution is good as is the response time. The only problem you may encounter is the fact it only has an analogue input. If you have an analogue output on your graphics card all is well and good, if not a DVI>VGA adapter will be needed to connect it. I personally find no massive difference between the quality of digital and analogue output, so that is not a problem at all

Wide or not wide?
I think it depends on what you are doing with you computer.


I would rather get two 19” with pivot then one 22” wide because I use my computer for working (programming) and not only for playing games or watching movies. If you only play games and watch movies, I'm sure a 22” wide is great but not for working. I have a notebook with 1680x1050 and it's not really wide enough for putting two windows side by side.


If you want accurate colors you should get an EIZO S2110W-K (~ £460) or something similar that doesn't have a cheap TN panel.

Quote from MaximUK :

I have one of these and it's fine for LFS.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... duct.php?prodid=MO-006-BE



Maxim

Looks good but I hoping to get one with DVI input as it is supposed to be better.

CRT will always be better when it comes to image quality.
(I use a samsung 193p and am pretty happy with it... but nothing will ever be as much eyecandy as i had on my viewsonic CRT monitor)

If you have the space on your desk for a CRT... stick with that and upgrade your pc. Just my opinion.

nvm

nvm?

nevermind

Quote from anttt69 :

Looks good but I hoping to get one with DVI input as it is supposed to be better.

I felt the same but when looking around I was going to have to pay a lot for the DVI connector and I wasn't convinced it would make a lot of difference for lfs as it appeared to be only when looking at text and still images that you would be able to tell a difference. Like I said though I don't have anything else to compare it with so I live in blissful ignorance

Maxim

I have two cheap 17 inch CRTs and I've yet to see any affordable TFT look better than them only a few TFTs that cost more than my PC and Mac LCD screens look any better than cheap CRTs IMO. Of course you can get bad CRTs but you don't necessarily need expensive ones to get a decent picture and colour quality.

Dell makes great LCD's (one of the only things they do really well) and they are prefered by many of the techies.

Quote from Dennisjr13 :

Dell makes great LCD's (one of the only things they do really well) and they are prefered by many of the techies.

Not all of them the screen in my brothers laptop is shockingly bad.

Ok troops, here's the sitrep. Listen up!

I'm getting a free monitor of my choice. Taxed price over 800 euros is considered hostile but negotiable.

Following models/brands are out of question and are to be neutralized with ruthless efficience:

• Non-widescreen
  
• Under 20 inch screen size
  
• Anything with a TN-panel inside of it
  
• Less than 3 years of factory warranty
  

That's it, now make me proud and give me a good TFT I can write home about.

Any questions?

Good.

Dismissed.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... duct.php?prodid=MO-009-DE




563.99 British pounds = 836.293783 Euros

get negotiating


SD.

Quote from SparkyDave :

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... duct.php?prodid=MO-009-DE




563.99 British pounds = 836.293783 Euros

Can get it a lot cheaper this was the cheapest froogle result, although the site does look a bit dodgy, £514 inc vat. http://www.digitaltherapyuk.co.uk/