I'm thinking of getting a new monitor since my current one is crap. It's a 19" CRT monitor that I've had for about 3 years now. The display really hurts my eyes when viewed at a res higher than 1024x768 because the clarity of small text is absolutely horrible.

I'm thinking of getting a LCD monitor because CRTs are too bulky for my tastes and I've always wanted those sleek thin monitors. The computers at my college use LCD monitors in the labs and I've grown accustom to them.

The question(s) I want answered is if it be worth to get a wide screen or stick to the standard 4:3 ratio monitors. If I go wide screen, how would older games that don't support wide screen resolutions work? If I run a game at 800x600 or 1024x768, will there be black bars on the sides of the screen or is the display stretched out? What is the typical resolution for a wide screen monitor (both low and high) for use with a game/program that wasn't designed with a wide screen option?

Spend a lot of money on your LCD, otherwise it'll suck. Go wide screen, too. Black bars are the only issue you need to worry about.

I wouldn't go widescreen--you'll have to play games in your native for them to look even decent and, with your setup, you're looking at some really bad performance in any decent LCD's native.

You don't have to spend a lot of money on it necessarily, just find one that's good. You can find nice deals sometimes.

I don't know of many games that don't support widescreen anymore, even Jedi Knight has support for widescreen monitors. But like said before, if you get widescreen it will only put black bars along the left and right sides of the monitor.

Ok, I guess I can put up with black bars, as long as the monitor is big. If I go wide, I think 22" would probably suffice. Really depends on the price though.

I've got a Gateway 22" LCD (Samsung makes the panel) and it's got inputs for DVI, VGA, Component, Composite, and S-Video. Plus I can do PiP, which is pretty badass.

I love it.

Dell makes a really good widescreen monitor as well. I'm enjoying my 20".

I've got a 20" Gateway widescreen. It's pretty cool.

hmmm. for me, games that don't support widescreen have to be stretched, so everything looks kinda fat in-game. for example, warcraft iii looks stretched horizontally whenever i play it (but i'm used to it by now). however, like stormtrooper said, the newer games these days support widescreen so it's all good.

Any decent LCD should do black bars for 4:3 resolutions.

I like my Samsung 215TW. It's expensive, but also has component/composite for your gaming needs.

Very few monitors do this. The feature you are looking for is called "1:1 pixel mapping". It's also a good idea to get an HDCP compliant monitor if you ever plan on using it to view HD media in the future (Blu-ray, PS3, HD-DVD etc).

My laptop has a wide screen, but I've never noticed it as a problem in games. For the few games I have without a wide screen setting the only time I really notice the stretching is when I'm looking straight up or down and turning. Then shapes will morph.

I have a 19" HP widescreen. Non-stretched games look strange to me nowadays.

Like Yoshi said, you don't have to. I only spent about 500 bucks on mine and it's just fine. 17inch samsung 915N. I just wish I had a second one so I could stop using this stupid HP CRT as a secondary display.

I have this monitor and all I can say is...ITS BRILLIANT.

the depth of colour on it is amazing compared to my previous samsung 172x, no ghosting that I can see (HL2, Quake, WoW, F.E.A.R. tested), inputs for anything you'll ever need, fully adjustable height, swivel.

better stop now I'm sounding like a samsung rep...

But seriously, the monitor is very good, I like the 21" size as at its optimal res of 1680*1050, the 21" size means the pixels are slightly bigger than usual which helps a lot reading text at that res. I'll stress again, colours are amazing, brightness is good also, although the stated spec's are way over the top (as normal, dell only seem to ever tell the truth).

I've also seen the LG L204WT up close and used it quite a bit on a friends computer (and mine briefly). The panel is great, very similar in quality to the 215TW with good colours and response time but thats about it. Extras like height adjust, swivel and a range of different inputs are lacking. Saying that, the monitor will be cheap in comparison.

I've been using my widescreen for about a year now and I wouldn't give it up for the world.

It's a 19" Viewsonic VA1912wb, which I bought on NewEgg for ~$205 USD.

GO WIDESCREEN

You will never go back. Seriously. Infact, whenever you use a computer without a widescreen monitor you're going to struggle with how unproductive the environment is.


Any graphics card worth it's salt will allow you to force native for ANY resolution.

(So for example, a game doesn't have a widescreen. I can play it in my native at 4:3 ratio with black bars at the side)

I have a 20'' widescreen monitor, which was only abour $400, and I cant live without it.

Your monitor doesn't need to do it if your graphics card can pull it's head out of it's ***.

Oh that's cool. I don't have any widescreen displays so I wasn't really sure. I know good HDTVs do it, though.

Yeah, it's a pretty handy feature.

I know all Nvidia 7 series cards do it.

Yeah, that's how I have mine set.

is there any way of having a widescreen 16:10 desktop, and then having the monitor switch to the black bar setup automatically when it detects a game running at 4:3 resolutions?

Yes.

I don't know how the setting is arranged on XP, but for me it's in my nvidia panel and in the scaling options I pick "do not scale."

Anything you don't play in your native will be forced into VIA black bars. So you still need to max out your resolution vertically (Normally not a problem anyways)

i enjoy by samsung 941bx. its 19 inches of goodness.

A few things to keep in mind:

-20" and 22" WS LCDs both run at 1680x1050. The only difference is the dot pitch (size of the pixels) is higher on the 22". The benefit to this, is there is no performance hit going from a 20" to a 22". The downside is you don't get any extra screen real-estate either.


-There are two main ways to get black bars. 1:1 pixel mapping means literally what it sounds like. If you do 640x480 on your 1860x1050 monitor, you're going to have a thick black border on both the horizontal and the vertical, with a small 640x480 window in the middle. The other method is aspect preservation. With this it fills as much of the screen as possible, while still preserving the aspect ratio of the original. So, to use the previous example, the 640x480 window would now fill the vertical portion of the monitor, and leave only black bars on the sides. It won't look as good as 1:1 because it's being upscaled, but some people prefer it because the image is larger.

-Some monitors, like Dell's 2007WFP have built in 1:1 pixel mapping. Many do not. If your monitor doesn't, you can almost certainly do it with your video drivers. The only downside to this is if you plan on playing a game console (like the xbox 360) you don't have that option. The importance of that feature is up to you.

-It's wise to try and get a monitor with HDCP if you can, since nobody knows what the future holds. I wouldn't let it stop you from a great bargain, but it's nice to have.

-You're going to love having an LCD. I put off getting one for a long time (now I have a Dell 1907FP and an LGL204WT), but now I realize my eyes really start to bother me after I've been staring at a CRT for a long time. LCDs are much easier on my eyes. Don't know if anyone else experiences this, but that alone makes it worthwhile IMO. Not to mention it's almost impossible to find a good CRT these days, and even if you did your friends would probably make fun of you.

The other downside to this is in gaming, more anti-aliasing is needed because the pixels are bigger.

That's true, I suppose.

I rarely play games with anti-aliasing on so that wouldn't be an issue with me.

Maybe my current monitor just sucks but I can rarely ever see a difference between anti-aliasing and none on the games I play. The image quality boost is so minor that I don't even think it's necessary enough to give up some game performance for something I can barely notice. My monitor is naturally blurring anyways so it sorta has anti-aliasing built in, lol.

Yeah, that's how my old CRT was (blurry).

I'm going to sum up this thread;

You want a widescreen monitor.

Heh. I remember having a CRT. "AA? What's that do?" :p

AA is usually less obvious even on a brand new CRT because the resolution to screen size ratio is smaller, a 19" CRT is usually 1600x1200. A 19" TFT is 1280x1024, the pixels are larger on the TFT so anti-aliasing has a more noticeable effect.

For this reason (amongst others) I still prefer CRTs for gaming.

Sounds like a ****ty CRT.

Thank you Captain Obvious!

Caption obvious?

I didn't caption anything.