- Nov 21, 2012
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If you wish to avoid the wall of text just read the sections titled Requirements and Questions, and possibly Goals if needed. 
Intro:
Hey all,
I've never really paid attention to specifics of monitors before, as the last time I built a new system it was simply a case of buy the one with the biggest screen you can afford.
I've been reading as much as I can on this site, as I only found it a couple days ago, and there's a LOT of information available. In some ways it also seems a bit conflicting.
Now I'm trying to build a really great gaming machine and parsing through all the information on the latest monitors is pretty crazy.
Goals:
So I've decided to build my machine by choosing a monitor first, then a GPU that will take advantage of the benefits of the monitor, then a CPU and PSU to support the GPU, and so on.
My overall goal is to have a high performance machine that will last as long as possible before I need to start upgrading things again. To this date I've always upgraded everything at once (changing GPUs and hard-drives only as they burn out), where as now I am planning to upgrade components as I need in order to maintain high level graphics on the latest games, but I want to make sure that I won't need to for quite awhile after building it.
Requirements:
Currently the most demanding games I'm playing would be Guild Wars 2 and Arkham City. The majority of what I play is along the same lines, MMOs and open worlders like Assassin's Creed and Fallout. That said if a FPS grabs my attention like Left 4 Dead or Borderlands 2, I'll certainly pick them up and I do occasionally play titles like Call of Duty.
I currently run dual monitors, usually watching movies or shows if I'm doing something grindy in an MMO, and I often have Guild Wars 1 running in the background to buy and sell stuff.
So I'm looking at spending a lot on my main monitor and keeping one of my current LCDs as my second.
Confusion (Or what I think I don't know):
So I just need to straighten out some of the info I've learned about monitors and figure out what exactly my priorities are with them.
So the first thing I found out is that I need a 1920 x 1080p 120h monitor if I want to properly view HD media and learned that I want as small of an ms ratting as possible for game performance.
Next I looked at size and figured I wanted either a 24" or 27" screen.
I was leaning towards the 27" but I then read that 1920x1080p 120h didn't look as good on a 27" as it does on a 24", as it gets stretchy.
So I was then leaning towards a 24".
Then I read that the best resolution for a 27" was 1900x1200, so I figured I'd go with that instead.
Next I read that a 2560x1440 monitor would apparently blow my mind with a high PPI mark if I was willing to dish out the cash for it, and was thus tempted by the HP ZR2740w.
Then I think (as I'm a bit confused with info overload) I read that resolutions above 1920x1080p will not be 120h. Which had me leaning back towards the 24".
Then I read a few people saying that they didn't notice any distortions with 27" 1920x1080p monitors and that they looked fantastic, so I was leaning back towards that.
Then I read that the 2560x1440 monitors were called XD monitors for Extreme Definition, which I thought must then be better than HD even if it isn't 120h.
Then I read that IPS panels are apparently a lot better than TN panels even at lower hertz and the HP ZR2740w has an IPS panel, which would seem to confirm that the XD monitors could still be better even at 60h.
And finally to put the nail in the coffin I read about the NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 3D monitors at the following site:
http://www.squidoo.com/best-3d-gaming-monitor
I imagine the XD monitors wouldn't be 3D ready.
I then also noticed that the HP ZR2740w has a 14 ms response time and doesn't come with an HDMI port, where as the Dell UltraSharp U2711 does and has a 6ms response time.
So yes I'm a bit confused with it all. Though I know it's likely partly due to the difference between image quality and performance.
Which leads me to
Questions:
1) Are 16h IPS panels as good as or better than 120h TN panels?
2) Does the difference between them have more of an affect on the image quality, gaming performance, or both?
3) If the GPU is good enough, how much of a realistic (noticeable) difference will there be between a 14ms and 6ms response time (I'll likely have this monitor through multiple GPU upgrades)?
4) Would a 1920x1080 120h monitor with a 2ms response time be significantly better for gaming?
5) Does a 1920x1080 resolution noticeably look better on a 24" than it does a 27"?
6) Would a 27" at 1900x1200 provide a noticeably better image quality, but run games worse than a 1920x1080 due to it not being 120h?
7) Which of the following would seem to support my needs best if I went for an XD monitor:
http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/hp-zr2740w/4505-3174_7-35044348.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/dell-ultrasharp-u2711/4505-3174_7-33913833.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/samsung-syncmaster-s27a850d/4505-3174_7-35018743-2.html
8) How much difference will it make if an XD monitor doesn't have an HDMI port?
9) I'm living in Australia so prices over here are a bit weird, how do the three XD monitors above compare on this site:
http://www.shopbot.com.au/
I tried looking them up myself but the results showed multiple hits that looked similar and I can't tell the difference...
Thanks a heap, especially if you bothered to read the whole lot!
Intro:
Hey all,
I've never really paid attention to specifics of monitors before, as the last time I built a new system it was simply a case of buy the one with the biggest screen you can afford.
I've been reading as much as I can on this site, as I only found it a couple days ago, and there's a LOT of information available. In some ways it also seems a bit conflicting.
Now I'm trying to build a really great gaming machine and parsing through all the information on the latest monitors is pretty crazy.
Goals:
So I've decided to build my machine by choosing a monitor first, then a GPU that will take advantage of the benefits of the monitor, then a CPU and PSU to support the GPU, and so on.
My overall goal is to have a high performance machine that will last as long as possible before I need to start upgrading things again. To this date I've always upgraded everything at once (changing GPUs and hard-drives only as they burn out), where as now I am planning to upgrade components as I need in order to maintain high level graphics on the latest games, but I want to make sure that I won't need to for quite awhile after building it.
Requirements:
Currently the most demanding games I'm playing would be Guild Wars 2 and Arkham City. The majority of what I play is along the same lines, MMOs and open worlders like Assassin's Creed and Fallout. That said if a FPS grabs my attention like Left 4 Dead or Borderlands 2, I'll certainly pick them up and I do occasionally play titles like Call of Duty.
I currently run dual monitors, usually watching movies or shows if I'm doing something grindy in an MMO, and I often have Guild Wars 1 running in the background to buy and sell stuff.
So I'm looking at spending a lot on my main monitor and keeping one of my current LCDs as my second.
Confusion (Or what I think I don't know):
So I just need to straighten out some of the info I've learned about monitors and figure out what exactly my priorities are with them.
So the first thing I found out is that I need a 1920 x 1080p 120h monitor if I want to properly view HD media and learned that I want as small of an ms ratting as possible for game performance.
Next I looked at size and figured I wanted either a 24" or 27" screen.
I was leaning towards the 27" but I then read that 1920x1080p 120h didn't look as good on a 27" as it does on a 24", as it gets stretchy.
So I was then leaning towards a 24".
Then I read that the best resolution for a 27" was 1900x1200, so I figured I'd go with that instead.
Next I read that a 2560x1440 monitor would apparently blow my mind with a high PPI mark if I was willing to dish out the cash for it, and was thus tempted by the HP ZR2740w.
Then I think (as I'm a bit confused with info overload) I read that resolutions above 1920x1080p will not be 120h. Which had me leaning back towards the 24".
Then I read a few people saying that they didn't notice any distortions with 27" 1920x1080p monitors and that they looked fantastic, so I was leaning back towards that.
Then I read that the 2560x1440 monitors were called XD monitors for Extreme Definition, which I thought must then be better than HD even if it isn't 120h.
Then I read that IPS panels are apparently a lot better than TN panels even at lower hertz and the HP ZR2740w has an IPS panel, which would seem to confirm that the XD monitors could still be better even at 60h.
And finally to put the nail in the coffin I read about the NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 3D monitors at the following site:
http://www.squidoo.com/best-3d-gaming-monitor
I imagine the XD monitors wouldn't be 3D ready.
I then also noticed that the HP ZR2740w has a 14 ms response time and doesn't come with an HDMI port, where as the Dell UltraSharp U2711 does and has a 6ms response time.
So yes I'm a bit confused with it all. Though I know it's likely partly due to the difference between image quality and performance.
Which leads me to
Questions:
1) Are 16h IPS panels as good as or better than 120h TN panels?
2) Does the difference between them have more of an affect on the image quality, gaming performance, or both?
3) If the GPU is good enough, how much of a realistic (noticeable) difference will there be between a 14ms and 6ms response time (I'll likely have this monitor through multiple GPU upgrades)?
4) Would a 1920x1080 120h monitor with a 2ms response time be significantly better for gaming?
5) Does a 1920x1080 resolution noticeably look better on a 24" than it does a 27"?
6) Would a 27" at 1900x1200 provide a noticeably better image quality, but run games worse than a 1920x1080 due to it not being 120h?
7) Which of the following would seem to support my needs best if I went for an XD monitor:
http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/hp-zr2740w/4505-3174_7-35044348.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/dell-ultrasharp-u2711/4505-3174_7-33913833.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/samsung-syncmaster-s27a850d/4505-3174_7-35018743-2.html
8) How much difference will it make if an XD monitor doesn't have an HDMI port?
9) I'm living in Australia so prices over here are a bit weird, how do the three XD monitors above compare on this site:
http://www.shopbot.com.au/
I tried looking them up myself but the results showed multiple hits that looked similar and I can't tell the difference...
Thanks a heap, especially if you bothered to read the whole lot!
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