Widescreen Gaming Forum

the answer is.........in short YES you will see a degredation in video quality, however small, depends on the quality of the lcd in question

but i must say that a 700:1 contrast ratio is pretty good for a 19 inch tft display imho!
my Viewsonic is only 500:1 and i feel like i can easily live with the black levels i get, but that is all in the eye of the beholder

my personal plan is to stick with my 19 inch until i can get a nice dx10 card and vista, then i will upgrade to a 20-24 inch monitor

the answer is.........in short YES you will see a degredation in video quality, however small, depends on the quality of the lcd in question

but i must say that a 700:1 contrast ratio is pretty good for a 19 inch tft display imho!
my Viewsonic is only 500:1 and i feel like i can easily live with the black levels i get, but that is all in the eye of the beholder

my personal plan is to stick with my 19 inch until i can get a nice dx10 card and vista, then i will upgrade to a 20-24 inch monitor

Morabu - someone on this site told me that there is no fixed standard for such specs - in other words, 700:1 is whatever Gateway chooses to say it is. Thus it's possible that your Viesonic has the same or even better contrast than my Gateway. The LCD I had before this was a Mag, which claimed a 500:1 contrast compared to the Gateway's 700:1, and I think the Mag had a better picture ...

Yeah, I'd say you'd regret it. I went 1680x1050 while it's great for gaming... I want a bigger desktop resulution, I need the room. So make the choice count, and take into consideration all of the aspects not just gaming.

Maherie - you're saying it IS great for gaming, right? Or are you saying it's not so great for gaming, but there are other aspects besides gaming that you use it for?

I was saying that it's great, but my system specs (back then) limited me going bigger. I Really Really need a 24" + screen for the desktop rez.

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I still visit occasionally.

A little update everybody:

I ended up taking the $260 19-inch Gateway back and emptying my piggy bank to get the $500 21-inch Gateway ... and ...

I think I made the right decision. It's not so much a matter of bigger is better, but the quality of the picture is much, much better, at least in terms of clarity, sharpness, detail, blacks, etc. Text is much easier to read. Games definitely look better, even if I have to lower the res to play them ...

It's not perfect by any means - there is serious "screen flash" with this monitor, which is a big drawback, and I am missing that faster video card, but I still think I made the right choice.

Full review to come!

Thanks again everyone who weighed in.

Screen flash?

Screen flash?

Yeah, I don't know where I came up with that one :) ... The term I was looking for was "color wash," not "screen flash" ...

My understanding is that this is a problem common to S-PVA screens. When looked at straight on, the way you would normally do with an LCD, the center of the image is much darker than the sides, meaning you lose a lot of detail in darker images. If I open up a dark window and then move it around I can see the image becoming brighter/clearer as it gets closer to the edge of the screen.
If you look at the monitor from the side, the image is even, but who wants to spend all their time looking at their monitor from the side?
Also, gray/darker images can have a kind of "glittery" reflective look to them which proves distracting.

Several posters at the hardforum describe the problem with this monitor/screen here

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=960883&page=1&pp=20

EDIT: Yikes. I just noticed that on gray colored web pages, I am also getting an effect that I would describe as "screen flash." I'm going to post about it in the hardware forum, since I seem to be drifting away from the topic of gaming ..

Glad to hear you're enjoying your fpd2185w. I have the fpd1975w and I experienced the dark effect you described as well, at first. I used the color calibration tool that came with my video card (nview component) to calibrate the image and it resolved the issue. Now its quite enjoyable to look at.

So cool that you could raid the piggy bank and pick up the 21" model, though. :D So many wonderful inputs.

Glad to hear you're enjoying your fpd2175w. I have the fpd1975w and I experienced the dark effect you described as well, at first. I used the color calibration tool that came with my video card (nview component) to calibrate the image and it resolved the issue. Now its quite enjoyable to look at.

So cool that you could raid the piggy bank and pick up the 21" model, though. :D So many wonderful inputs.

Well, rosoboy, I raided the piggy bank, then went back and raided it again ... I ended up buying a 20-inch NEC, far more money than I ever expected or wanted to pay ... It's like an addiction, this stuff.

As for the color wash (color shift?) issue with the Gateway - that only affects the 21-inch Gateway, because it is an issue with PVA panels. The 21-inch Gateway has a PVA panel, but the 19-inch Gateway is a TN panel, so you should be spared from having to deal with that particular problem ... That doesn't mean you didn't improve your image/black levels with that calibration tool, however - the factory default settings usually need to be tweaked anyway..
The screen wash effect with the 21-inch model that I mentioned, can be lessoned slightly, but it will always be there: it can never be completely tweaked away.