Advice on gaming with a 24inch tft

[xinebessa]

After a bit of advice, Have just finished building my new pc, specs as follows:

q6600 quadcore
2gb pc1066
asus striker extreme
bfg 8800gtx oc

my next purchase needs to be a decent tft for gaming. I am currently trying to decide wether to go for a 24inch or not. My main worry is that I would need to run at 1920 x 1200 to get a good picture on the 24 and after having spent loads on my pc hardware I would hate to see it performing at a low framerate once coupled with a large tft. My other option is to go for a 20.1inch 1600 x 1200 screen as I know this will look fine even if i have to drop to 1024 x 768 or 1280 x 1024 (plus most things will run at 1200 x 1200 anyway ). I guess really my questions are:

1) what kind of frame rate difference will i notice between say 1280 x 1024 and 1600 x 1200 and 1920 x 1200. Is my pc going to struggle to run the 24 at full res?

2) If i went for a 24, is it possible to output at 1280 x 1024 or 1600 x 1200 and maintain ration so end up with black borders ?

3) Do the 24inch tfts look ok when outputting a lower widescreen res to them ?

Any help, advice or experience would be greatly appricaited as im currently in a hole

 

[Maziar]

8800GTX will handle every game @ maximum quality in all of those resolutions , but the more reolution goes up , the FPS drops, for example :

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/enemy-territory-performance_5.html#sect1

as u see the score in 1280x1024 is higher than 1600x1200 and 1920x1200

 

[ethel]

1) what kind of frame rate difference will i notice between say 1280 x 1024 and 1600 x 1200 and 1920 x 1200. Is my pc going to struggle to run the 24 at full res?

A lot of difference - 1280x1024 = 1310720, 1920x1200 = 2304000 - so nearly twice as many pixels to push around. However, as Maziar says the 8800GTX will run virtually every game at highest quality at 1920x1200 (I have this set up).

2) If i went for a 24, is it possible to output at 1280 x 1024 or 1600 x 1200 and maintain ration so end up with black borders ?

Yes, you can do that easily and is for me is the preferred solution for a non-widescreen game.

3) Do the 24inch tfts look ok when outputting a lower widescreen res to them ?

If the screen interpolates (stretches the image) rather than maintains the aspect ratio, it tends to look a bit blurred. For me if you do this what is the point of having a nice monitor / graphics card?

My advice would be to go for it. It is a great setup.

 

[notherdude]

Get the 24 and don't think twice. Buy it now!


And if you end up running somefuture game at a lower rez or unscaled with borders you will not be dissapointed. There isn't anything terribly annoying by a small black border. The image will be the same size as on a 20" if you run it without the sacling. I do it on Bioshock on my 24" and don't even think about it.

 

[xinebessa]

thanks for the advice so far, think im convinced Current looking then at the Samsung SM245B for £339.99 Seems a lot cheaper than the infamous Dell 24 and gets some good reviews. What do you think ?

 

[Kamrooz]

I skipped a lot of posts so I apologize for that..If I covered something already stated my bad..

Regarding the black borders..SOME monitors can do this. Make sure you nab a monitor that can. It's called 1:1 pixel mapping.

Regarding your monitor choices...There are three types of panels...TN, PVA/MVA, and IPS. For a breakdown on differences check out this link..

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1039222

Most people who really care about lag/response times would grab a TN panel. For those who want to game on a huge screens with beautiful colors they grab a PVA/MVA panel although they cost more...PVA/MVA can have ghosting issues thanks to their higher response times...Then there is IPS which has the best color of all but isn't as fast as TN..faster then PVA/MVA though..

I can go on for hours talking about the difference in panel types but I don't think I should...lol...If you want some help I discussed all the issues in this thread here which you can check out..

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/244893-33-which-wide-monitor#t1745459

It's a bit to read..also ignore the one computer list I put together..But this will atleast cover some major issues.

Regarding gaming though. Some games are built for widescreen so it'll work perfectly. Some aren't though which it would scale. If you get a quality monitor with 1:1 pixel mapping you can just center it for the upmost quality possible. If you want to read reviews on the most popular and used LCD's...Check out that first link I gave you..Just go back to the display section before that thread and you'll see tons of reviews. Hardforum has one of the most active display forums on the internet. Tomshardware isn't really the best place to get talking on displays..You might want to give it a shot as it'll enlighten you quite a bit..

The downside to LCD's are pretty vast..But they have upsides also. One problem though is that there is no perfect LCD monitor..They have strengths and weaknesses..The main ideal is to find a monitor that suits your strengths. Hardforum should help out out there ^_^....

If you have any questions feel free to ask ^_^.

 

[Maziar]

sorry soldier37 but i have to disagree, 8800GTS 640 is an awesome card , and plays everything maxed out , no doubt about it , but 8800GTX isnt 10FPS faster , there are many games that 8800GTX is ALOT better than 8800GTS 640 due to its more memory bandwidth , more VRAM , more stream processors ...

 

[Kamrooz]

the 8800 GTX is indeed a nice card...so is the 8800 GTS...

But do keep in mind guys when you go up as high as 1900...you start hitting a performance decrease. SLI has one purpose...High res gaming. When you play at 1900 or 2560 resolutions SLI becomes an option even though it is pricey. But with 1:1 pixel mapping it doesn't really matter.

But on the subject of the 8800 GTX..There is more to it then just 10 frames. The GTX has 128 Stream Processors compared to the GTS 96...It also has a higher Core clock, shader clock, memory clock, actual memory, and a 384 bit interface compared to the GTS' 320 bit interface...There is a difference of roughly 10-50 frames depending on the game....

 

[badger101101]

I play at 1920x1200 on the dell 24" and I only have a 7900gs! Most games play surprisingly well, but an 8800gtx would rip the pixels right off the screen.

 

[Kamrooz]

lol..indeed it would. But SLI is only considered useful if you play at 1900 or higher. That's one of the only moment where you will see an increase in frame rate with SLI...

 

[Mousemonkey]

lol..indeed it would. But SLI is only considered useful if you play at 1900 or higher. That's one of the only moment where you will see an increase in frame rate with SLI...