Monitor and TV question.

[FreakyFerret]

I have done several searches on this, but could not find an exact answer for my situation.

My current monitor is a 20" Dell 2007WFP (about 5 years old.) Not awesome, but it still looks good and it does its job. I game a lot on this monitor on both the PC and XBox. I feel like it is time for an upgrade, and naturally, I want to go bigger. How big? Not sure. 27" seems to be within my price range (a few hundred, give or take) and is considerably bigger than my current monitor.

Here's the dilemma: while spending hours searching for info, several people were suggesting using a LCD TV instead. These days, there are a few models that are good quality and cheap. I think I would be happy just continuing to use my current old monitor for PC stuff, and use a new TV for my XBox. However, I am concerned with possible ghosting and input lag on a TV. I play a lot of fighting games on my XBox, so it hurts to have any technical difficulties like visual lag. Also, since the XBox resolution is nowhere near my PC, I feel like it would not even benefit from a nice new monitor.

What do you all think? Am I better off with getting a nice new 27" monitor, or keeping my old 20" for PC stuff and getting a new LCD TV for gaming? Thank you for any input.

 

[hang-the-9]

There is no answer for you, it's what you want to do. There is no "better off" situation. A TV 27" or bigger will be much cheaper than a monitor for that size. I wold not get such a large monitor for PC use, you will sit too close to it, and the image field will be too large to see comfortably. Get a 22" monitor or so, and get a larger TV for the game system. LCD TV for regular PC use are so-so, the resolution will be lower than a monitor, so unless you want large images and text, stick with a monitor for PC use.

 

[FreakyFerret]

Thank you for your reply.

This is probably a better question for me to ask: will upgrading my 20" Dell 2007WFP from 2005 to something more modern really make a huge difference in my gaming screen? I know this older model has lower response time and whatnot, but it isn't noticeable very often. Should I just hang onto this screen until it dies, or is it worth getting a new monitor?

 

[jaguarskx]

A larger monitor can make games more immersive since it fills more of your vision of view. Your Dell is a 1680 x 1050 monitor, the largest monitor with that resolution is 22". A little more immersive, but not by too much.

The next step up would be a 1920 x 1080 or 1920 x 1200 monitor, they span from 22" up to 27". Needless to say, a 27" monitor can be quite immersive. The problem is higher resolution monitors requires more powerful video cards to achieve the same gaming frame rate as smaller resolution monitors. You would need to upgrade your video card if that is the case.

You can always play games at 1680 x 1050 or 1600 x 900 on a higher resolution monitor to maintain the same performance, but there will be a small decrease to graphics quality. The smaller resolution will be stretched to fit the screen. While this may sound bad, it actually isn't.

Consoles games like the PS3 and XboX 360 can be played on an HDTV. In fact, that's what most people do. However, most console games (if not all) are designed at lower resolution, then scaled up to fill a 1920 x 1080 resolution HDTV. You don't really hear many people complain about bad graphics quality due to stretching.

If you are happy with your Dell 2007WFP, then keep it.

 

[FreakyFerret]

Thank you! I think I am starting to make up my mind. I feel like my monitor is still okay for PC stuff. So what I might do is look for a cheaper but decent 32" HDTV and use that for my console.

Consoles seem to look better or the same on HDTV's than they do on nicer, higher resolution monitors. Assuming you're not sitting too close to the TV, which you shouldn't do anyway. I guess this is because consoles don't have that high of a resolution, like you said. Now I just need to find a good TV that doesn't have any ghosting/input issues with fast games.

 

[FreakyFerret]

Best answer selected by FreakyFerret.