Building New System, Should I get a Widescreen monitor???

go for it i say, i don't know of a reason not to unless everyone of your games is made by EA of course.

I say go for it! I absolutely love wide screen. I have a 21 inch HP f2105 wide screen flat lcd and it rocks!! I play games at 1680x1050 wide resolutions wonderfully! and if my system cant play at those resolutions due to say my graphics card not being able to handle a graphic intensive game like say oblivion or fear at those resolutions etc... then...

i'd set it down to 1280x1024 and the monitor plays it fine... it'll scale it down to fit to your wide screen... if you dont like the way it looks because it stretches it alittle bit... (i dont notice it at all really.. so its super to me)... you can have the monitor scale to the actual resolution instead of trying to fit the screen etc etc! hope I made sense... ive forgotten all the technical terms and such for this... haha

Oh ya. Widescreen goodness all around. I switched form a 19" 4:3 to 19" wide-screen a year ago and I'll never go back.

For a 19" monitor I was dissapointed with widescreen. I thought the same thing as everyone else here was saying before I bought one but it makes the monitor feel like a 17". If you are going to go widescreen you need to go with a bigger monitor. I was VERY pleased with a widescreen 22" monitor by Acer. In my opinion, if you are set on the 19" don't get a widescreen, but if you can afford it, you should definately invest in a widescreen 22", I use it for gaming and I couldn't be happier!

Here are some things to note (I've owned WS monitor for a while now):

1. Some games don't support widescreen aspect ratio. But, I have a monitor with 1920x1200 res, so if I run in 1600x1200 and tell my monitor to not stretch (it has a bunch of different modes for handling non-native and non-WS resolutions), it's still in it's native res with bars on the sides. So, you can easily get around this.

2. The native res on most WS monitors is pretty hefty. If you are trying to run games at 1920x1200 you are going to need a pretty expensive gaming box. I think 1680x1050 is probably a better gaming resolution, so you could always stick with something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6824014105

But, it's not going to be as easy to power as a 19" gaming monitor (something to consider). Anyway, that being said, I love my monitor. After using WS I wouldn't go back (especially after seeing DVDs on it and downloading some WMV HD content).

Ok so I have $300 to spend on a monitor Widescreen which one should I get??
Im not spending a dollar over $300... If I can spend less its even better

Trust Me Youll Like A Widscreen, In Fact I Run 2.... 22" Septer And A SiliconGraphics 17.3" In A Dual-Monitor Setup

Absolutely, a widescreen is much nicer than the reqular type. Some old games like Diablo 2 only work at 800x600 and don't look so good, but newer games and movies are fine. Make sure you get something with 5 ms or less response time. 8 ms is probably OK too but I can't confirm it from personal experience. I use an LG204WT (20", 5 ms, $300 Canadian at Future Shop right now, $400 regular price) and I'm extremely happy with it. I have a Viewsonic VX2025WM (20", 8 ms, also 1680x1050) at work and I'm happy with it. I don't know how it behaves in games though, I haven't tried it.

I did a lot of research and it seems that Samsung is one of the best, along with Viewsonic. Not happy about their prices though. Acer has great prices, especially on their 26" widescreen model, but the reviews weren't great.

If your graphics card has something like a VGA and an S-Video output and you're interested in a dual monitor setup then Samsung is good, it has some models that accept S-Video input.

When you buy make sure you pick a store with good return policies. That is, if you get dead pixels on a monitor from FutureShop you can return it and get your money back or a similar model without defects.

Good luck!