Widescreen Gaming Forum

I've been out of the PC gaming scene for a few years now and I'm just getting to grips with these widescreen LCD monitors.

I'll be buying one soon and I have a few questions that haven't been covered by my reading:


ASPECT RATIO

For widescreen, I understand that there are 2 main choices- 16:10 and 16:9

In terms of game support for resolutions; is there any reason for getting one over the other?

Also, about older games (i.e. pre-widescreen): would they work better with a particular aspect ratio? I'm only going to be gaming with the monitor, not watching movies.


PANEL

I've read that Twisted Nematic (TN) panels are the best panels for gaming as they have the lowest response times. Is this true? Again, I will only be using the monitor for games.


SIZE

I'm not a proponent of 'bigger is better' as I'm reluctant to buy a large LCD monitor for two reasons:

Firstly, I don't want to have to twist my head every time I have to look from one side of the monitor to the other. I'm currently sitting about 2ft (60cm) from my monitor and don't plan on changing that distance.

Also, I've read that larger LCD monitors put a greater strain on the graphics card, because of the higher native resolutions required. If this is true, then will buying a smaller monitor get more use from the card to some extent?

I will be getting a new gaming rig soon too so I will have a fairly recent graphics card.

What's a decent size for comfortable gaming?

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If anyone could help me with some of the above queries that would be great.

the average widescreen gaming monitor is usually a 19" 16:10. 16:10 has more support for older widescreen games like UT2K4. If you happened to play a nonwidescreen game with it you'd lose less monitor space due to the pillarboxing you'd have to do.

i suggest between 19" and 22" The best thing to do would probably be to measure with a tape measure how big 19" and such would be diagonal so you can get a feel for the sizes. Or else look at some at a local shop.

I had a 16:10 at one point, then i upgraded to a 16:9; I thought it was worth every penny. 16:9 games are usually more like an HD TV than a monitor. From my understanding they are more geared for movie watching. But the gaming world has been catching on with them because they are wider than 16:10.

the higher the monitors native resolution the better. You can always turn the resolution down in games if you'd like.

I can't really give any input on the paneling thing. But I'd prefer not to have anything with over a 5ms response time.

TNs being the best for gaming is pretty much not true anymore. Non TN panels are coming down in price and fast enough in response time to not ghost or blur. The fact is at the 60Hz most LCDs run at, the screen doesn't refresh faster than 8ms, so those displays with 2ms response are still limited by that in most cases.

I would go 22" on size. It's not too big for the distance you're viewing from and big enough to not outgrow easily. Many are saying the Dell 2209WA is now THE best 22" monitor. It's an e-IPS 1680x1050 in a TN price range ($230 USD). They have sold so many of these they are currently not available online. I think you can still call to order though.

A 4:3 game will show fine on either aspect ratio, as long as the display has aspect correct scaling, which means the game will fit top to bottom with black pillars on the side. You just get slightly wider pillars with a 16:9. Perhaps the biggest tradeoff with the Dell 2209WA is it not having 1:1 pixel mapping as one of the scaling options. That is generally more of a movie watching feature though. For the most part 1:1 scaling doesn't serve any purpose in gaming.

Interesting.

Thanks for the replies guys.