Help Choosing a budget monitor

September 2, 2010 5:41:43 PM

Hi,

Where I live I have limited choice on computer hardware

This will be for gaming,movies and normal pc work.

It will either be a 20'' or 22'' inch monitor. My main concern is how much would gaming performance dip when playing at 1920*1080 compared 1600*900 resolution(seems like a weird res.).

Main 3 components of the rig im buying.
Athlon II x4 635
Ddr3 1333mhz 4gb
Gigabyte GA-880GM-ud2h
Graphics card will be purchased after a couple of months. In the meantime I will use the IGP.

Now, I know you can set the resolution of the 22inch screen down to 1600*900.....but how noticeable would the quality drop be? I don't mind black bars. I just don't want things to look fuzzy/blurred. I've read the full hd monitors look quite bad at non-native resolutions unlike other res. monitors.

Also movies.If I watch a dvd on a 20'' 1600*900 monitor how much worse would it look on a full hd 22inch?

These are my shortlisted monitors(after converting into US $:
Dell ST2210 21.5(with hdmi port)-191$
Dell S2009W 20"-140$
Dell 22" S2209W- 196$
Benq G2220hd 22" -161$
Samsung B2030 20"- 138$

How would a ps2/ps3/360 look hooked upto a monitor without an hdmi port? If the difference in visual quality is pretty huge then should I get the ST221O instead? The difference is nearly 30$ for the hdmi port alone.

Will be buying very soon(this week). Need some advice.

Thanks.

More about : choosing budget monitor

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TheAnonymousMan

September 3, 2010 12:17:17 AM

Anyone?

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TheAnonymousMan

September 3, 2010 9:05:45 AM

Someone has got to have some idea.

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Emperus

Monitor Expert

September 3, 2010 9:49:26 AM

The HDMI port does nothing greater than carry audio along with video.. The image quality depends all on the monitor.. Having said that, look out for the BenQ E2200HD.. It has a HDMI port and its image quality is better than the Dell ST.. The viewing angles are bad though as the colors seem to look washed off and/or tint when viewing from the sides..

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TheAnonymousMan

September 3, 2010 11:09:48 AM

Emperus said:

The HDMI port does nothing greater than carry audio along with video.. The image quality depends all on the monitor.. Having said that, look out for the BenQ E2200HD.. It has a HDMI port and its image quality is better than the Dell ST.. The viewing angles are bad though as the colors seem to look washed off and/or tint when viewing from the sides..

Thanks emperus. If the hdmi port is not that important then would the g2220hd suffice. It was my first choice. I only added the other options....incase the res. was too high to play games on smoothly....or if hdmi was worth the extra dough.

The g2220hd is the cheapest 22'' full hd monitor by nearly 20$.

Btw.....there are some 20'' monitors I saw that had a 8million:1 contrast ratio. That's several times more than all the other monitors. Is it a marketing gimmick?!

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Emperus

Monitor Expert

September 3, 2010 12:31:15 PM

Manufacturer like to market DCR (dynamic contrast ratio) which is a useless term in practical situation.. The SCR (static contrast ratio) is what you should look out for.. It also depends on the type of panel used.. The IPS panel monitors exhibit better contrast but cost high.. The TN panel monitors display are the poorest on contrast but cost less and thus form the budget choice.. As for the screen size, its always bigger the better with LCD's.. My recommendation is to get atleast a 22" display.. The BenQ G2200HD is a good monitor (good image quality) with a very decent price.. But i'd still recommend the E2200HD over it (if its available and you can afford it obviously).. Should not be much costly though..