Thinking of buying an LCD...

[wambulance]

One thing you may take into consideration, is the native resolution of the LCD in question. I'm not expert so anyone here... feel free to correct me.

The native resolution is going to get you the best possible image, quality wise out of all of the resolutions for the monitor. What I've noticed is that the larger the LCD, the higher the native resolution.

For example, on my 19" Westinghouse, the native resolution is 1440x900. If I choose another resolution, there is a noticed hit in image quality (blurry, distortion, etc.) and while these lower resolutions still rival the quality of some of the best CRT monitors, when your desktop is at the native resolution all the time, you will definitely notice if you change to another res.

Now, having said that, you must consider your graphics card's performance at the native resolution of the monitor you wish to buy. While about every graphics card today is capable of displaying images at the higher resolutions, there is the issue of performance as the resolution gets higher (speaking on the video card here).

So for example, if you get a larger monitor that has a native resolution of 1920x1200, playing games at the native resolution is going to be a performance hit over playing on a smaller screen at 1440x900 which would be native (best quality). So just assuming you have a graphics card that plays ho-hum at 1440x900, if you go with a bigger screen it's going to be even worse at the 1920x1200 and you'll find yourself possibly playing at a lower resolution and sacrificing quality for performance.

But this may all be a red herring. If you're looking at 17" and 19" monitors, the higher native resolutions probably won't be a factor to consider. But just wanted to throw that out there.

edit; also, I encourage you to use the DVI connection if at all possible and forget about the analog one. There is a noticed difference. If you use the analog connection, you'll likely be on par with CRT monitor quality.

[nemowolf]

Originally Posted by eagle1

aarrghh,,, ... it seems this one is not HDCP compliant (I can't find anywhere on the Viewsonic's web site so it's probably not compliant) so I will not be connecting my PS3 here!

Anyway... still have my trusty Plasma so not a big deal..
Just a heads-up if someone was looking at this LCD to connect their consoles...

I have to say though, that it looks good! (currently using it for testing purposes! )

My dell has a component connector, i just use that for my 360.

[eagle1]

Agree with what you said.
I just got an 8800 GTS 512 video card so hopefully it will perform well with the games I play (I don't game much on the PC though!). And yes, I definitely noticed the quality difference when I got the LCD to its native resolution. At first it was all kind of blurry and stretched, once I changed the res.... bliss!!

I will probably use both connections though.
Analog for the non-gaming computer and DVI for the gaming one. I noticed that on the menu I have an Input select so I would just switch between displays on the fly!! (like a KVM without the keyboard and mouse!!!) So it's all good.
Thanks for all of the info.
A lot of people are not aware of those bits you posted!

Thanks.