Suggest a new monitor?

[BaldEagl]

...

Of course what you say is true.  I have a Dell 17" CRT (no longer in use) that's actually a Sony Trinitron.

Funny that you mentioned Samsung as a manufacturer.  Samsung designs their panals but outsouce the actual manufacturing of them.  They have had some bad raps at times due to their manufacturing partner choices and it's not uncommon to find two, three or more manufacturer's panals in the same model of Samsung monitor.

Regardless of all of this, each marketer attempts to gain a market niche, whether it be high end, value or low price to build their brand around.  Over time the cream rises to the top as some marketers in each category consistently choose better partners than others.  I'm only suggesting sticking to the cream and leaving the milk behind.

[TequilaChaser]

Of course what you say is true.  I have a Dell 17" CRT (no longer in use) that's actually a Sony Trinitron.

Funny that you mentioned Samsung as a manufacturer.  Samsung designs their panals but outsouce the actual manufacturing of them.  They have had some bad raps at times due to their manufacturing partner choices and it's not uncommon to find two, three or more manufacturer's panals in the same model of Samsung monitor.

Regardless of all of this, each marketer attempts to gain a market niche, whether it be high end, value or low price to build their brand around.  Over time the cream rises to the top as some marketers in each category consistently choose better partners than others.  I'm only suggesting sticking to the cream and leaving the milk behind.

yes is why I threw out examples, was just an adhoc reference for I did not want to or take the time to go through and dig up information on every individual company. I am sure alot of manufacturer's "out source" alot of their workload to different processing plants and then builds the componets together into a finished product....

my bad on the Samsung thing and for not mentioning about the out sourcing of manufacturing of the different components.

I have a good example of buying the Lady an  Openbox Sceptre 19" LCD monitor..it cost $179.00 3+ years ago on newegg..it outperforms my Dell UltraSharp 19" LCD monitor that at the same time cost nearly $499 three years ago.....

with this I say. don't knock the off brands there are bargains and good performance to be found here........if you forgo buying NAME BRANDS on some items

[Delirium]

Okay, would you gents recommend getting the biggest resolution I can find (1920x1080) or something a bit smaller?

I may not run at the bigger resolution now, but I think in the long run it may be nice to have. What do you gents think?

[Chalenge]

What is your graphics card again?

[BaldEagl]

Okay, would you gents recommend getting the biggest resolution I can find (1920x1080) or something a bit smaller?

I may not run at the bigger resolution now, but I think in the long run it may be nice to have. What do you gents think?

Get the most pixels you can for the specific monitor size but make sure your video card can push them because LCD's are best run at their native resolutions.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

1920x???? resolutions or higher will demand at least a medium level graphics card (ATI4870, Nvidia260,280) to run games smoothly.

Remember that the higher the resolution the more oomph is needed from your computer. Running LCD's on lower than native resolutions kinda negate the point of getting a new monitor - the picture will be crappy.

[hyster]

to the point TequilaChaser made.

personal i dont care on the make. what i do is find a product that sounds good then spend a few days at least searching google for reviews on the product.
originally i was going to get a viewsonic monitor till i noticed that the place i was going to buy it from had a deal on samsung monitors so i researched them as well.
the price for the 24" was withen my budget so i read up on it and found it was 5ms but the 22" was 2ms. about a week later after reading god knows how many reviews
i decided to get the samsung T220 as 95% of the reviews were good and the negative points i could live with.

basically my advice is spend a few days looking for reviews (not reviews by company's but user reviews).

the way i do it is using google and the search string would be +"samsung t220" +review

[Chalenge]

1920x???? resolutions or higher will demand at least a medium level graphics card (ATI4870, Nvidia260,280) to run games smoothly.

Remember that the higher the resolution the more oomph is needed from your computer. Running LCD's on lower than native resolutions kinda negate the point of getting a new monitor - the picture will be crappy.

Not true. 8800s even a single one can easily handle FSAA at 16x and 1920x1200 res. In fact when I used it with FSX the fps went up moving from 1280x1024 to 1920x1200 and on a single card not even SLI. In a lot of way AHII uses more of your hardware then even FSX so it might be different depending on cpu etc (YMMV) but in my case at least it was all good.

[Fulmar]

Not true. 8800s even a single one can easily handle FSAA at 16x and 1920x1200 res. In fact when I used it with FSX the fps went up moving from 1280x1024 to 1920x1200 and on a single card not even SLI. In a lot of way AHII uses more of your hardware then even FSX so it might be different depending on cpu etc (YMMV) but in my case at least it was all good.

This makes no sense at all.  Check out benchmarks charts, such as Tomshardware where they'll compare a card in a game vs several quality (AA, AF, and resolution), I'd say a good 95% of the time (with the 5% being 1024x768 vs 1280x1024), the higher resolution will post lower FPS.  The reason for the 5% could be driver related or game related.

[Chalenge]

Tomshardware is where I learned this. A post there suggested the newer cards (post-7950) were designed not for standard resolutions of 640x 800x 1024x 1280x but instead were optimized for widescreen high resolutions and would be choked at the lesser resolutions. Appears to be true considering what I have experienced.

Here are some general guidelines from my experience with Intel E8400 cpu and above:

17" and 19" (1280x1024, 1440x900) - Radeon HD3850 or 7950/7900

Up to 22" (1680x1050, 1600x1200) - GeForce 9600GT or Radeon HD3870 (or 3850)

Up to 24" (1920x1200, 1920x1440) - GeForce 8800GTS 512MB (or 8800 GT)

30" monitors (2560x1600) - 2X (SLI) GeForce 8800GT or GTS (512MB) or the new Radeon HD4870 X2 maybe

The 4870(x2) and 280 cards are overkill except in the case of the 4870 and FSX where the performance is less then that of the 8800 GT (there is something that doesnt make sense). Before you ask yes the 8800GT performs better at the higher resolutions (2560x) then the GTS but I was never able to try the GTX or Ultra.

[Delirium]

1920x???? resolutions or higher will demand at least a medium level graphics card (ATI4870, Nvidia260,280) to run games smoothly.

It will be a 260 vid card.

[Delirium]

1920x???? resolutions or higher will demand at least a medium level graphics card (ATI4870, Nvidia260,280) to run games smoothly.

It will be a 260 vid card.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

It's true that a 8800 can run most games fine at 1920x but it's getting old fast and will be outdated soon.

[TequilaChaser]

I can atest to the comment about using a higher resolution helped and improved my FPS in game significantly, refering to here in Aces High II

I was using 1024 x 768 Screen Rez and using the 1024 High Res Texture pack

I wanted to see how big a hit I would take bumping to 1280 x 1024 and actually saw a significant improvement in game play and FPS overall

YMMV

I 1st learned about this improvement using a Ati 9800 Pro 128 meg AGP slot vid card

then it still showed improvement when I went to an Ati 800/850 256 meg AGP card

and now with my New AMD 6400 X2 and ASUS EAH3870 512 meg PCIe video card

all show a better performance using 1280 x 1024 and High res Texture package vs using 1024 x 768 and High rez pack

[Getback]

I run the game at 1920 x 1200 using an ATI Radeon 3850 OC. It seems to do the job.