Widescreen Gaming Forum

I'm new to this widescreen thing and am unsure what to pick as well as edit or hack into my games.

16:9 or 16:10. what is better for gaming?

I don't think there's any definite answer, however the decision is sort of made for you, based on the types of display that use these aspect ratios.

You don't really see dedicated PC monitors in 16:9, they're almost all 16:10. HDTVs (most of which you can use as a PC monitor) are of course 16:9.

So the question is really do you want to play XBox360/PS3 games and watch HDTV on the display you get or are you interested in using it only as a PC monitor?

I, for example, could only afford 1 high end display, and I wanted to play XBox360 on my screen in addition to my PC, so the choice was made for me, I had to get a 16:9 HDTV. Works beautifully as a PC monitor.

20" 16:10 for PC; 32" 16:9 for XBox360

BTW, another big concern is native resolution. The native resolution of dedicated widescreen PC monitors is pretty high. Typically 1440x900 for 19"s and 1680x1050 for larger displays. Unless you've got a really high end video card, you'll struggle to run cutting edge games (Oblivion, FEAR, R6:Vegas, etc) at those resolutions.

The native resolution on most TVs under 40" is 1360x768, which is much more managable for playing high graphics intensive games. However, that's not the best resolution for net browsing and work, at least for displays 32" and over, since it results in huge text and not as much "screen space" as you could potentially use. At 26" and below it's fine though.

Like I said, no perfect answer. You're better off posting a list of your criteria and asking for recommendations. Here are a couple of good things to specify, more or less based on what I said above:

1. How much do you want to spend?
2. Do you want to use this for PC only, or possibly for TV/DVD or game consoles as well?
3. How big a screen would you like?
4. How far away will you be sitting from the screen?
5. Do you do a lot of work on your PC or do you use it mostly for gaming?
6. What's your video card?
7. What games do you play?