Advice on big monitor

[LazloZ28]

I am building a new desk which will put my monitor about 2.5-3 ft away from me and want to get a bigger screen. I am thinking going with a 32" hdtv due to price. I have done some searches and have been reading that text can be a problem with a bigger screen due to the bigger pixels. This leads me to believe that the new screen should be 1080p, however I'm not sure my rig can handle 1080p on newer games but net surfing on a 720p screen might be an issue. I could (I think) run a 32" HDTV for gaming and dual display my 21" monitor for net surfing/text type use but not sure if this would tax the video card too. Price is obviously the biggest concern, but not sure if the step down to 720 would be ok (double whammy lower res and bigger screen). I have been running 1680x1050 but 1280x1024 seemed to do just fine for me also (on my 20" monitor that died). I play alot of games, latley its been diablo 3, guild wars 2, swtor, and I still play alot of older games like ME3 and dragon age origins. I need the option to play newer games smoothly but I don't need ultra setting or anything, more just going for a bigger display. I do surf the net but don't use it much for multi-media or anything, I have a 50" home theatre setup for that stuff.

I do have an older gaming rig, kind of becoming out of date but doubt there will be much of an upgrade soon. It has an E6550 @2.33GHz, 4GB ram, GTS250 1GB(2 hdmi out and 1 DVI) and I run XP. Do you think this could handle 1080p on newer games with medium settings, it seems to do fine on 1680x1050? Or if I did 720p on the tv and run dual monitor for net surfing would that tax the GPU more? I'm looking at some LG models(found some off brands a little cheaper but the quality concerns me) for the TV $330 for 1080 $250 for 720, is it worth the difference or should I be looking in a different direction entirely? Any advice is appreciated

 

[coolhandlukeboy]

I had a 50" Sony high-end LCD a few years back. I thought hooking up my pc to it would be pretty sweet. However, it looked horrible on many resolutions. I hate having anything besides games and movies in 1080p... or any high end resolution in the 16:9. Everything looks so tiny. Yes, you can zoom in your browser and the like, but it just gets to be a constant chore... then again, I didn't spend too much time fiddling with the settings.

First, 36" would be waaaaay too big for a maximum of 3 feet away, imho. I don't think I'd ever go above a 24" that close. I mean, 3 feet away isn't very far... I would be four ft. or more if I had the means to do so with my setup (mouse cord length... yes I love my Mx528 non-wireless).

I don't know enough about graphics cards to answer that second question for you. I have been a radeon user for the past ten years and never kept up much with the nvidia specs and differences. It does take more out of your gpu to dual monitor, but I can do that for minor stuff with my radeon card:. This was/is a great card for what I needed and seems to be similar in specs to yours... can't remember the ratio of cuda cores to stream processors. Mine can handle a netflix on one and a web browser on the other (more of an issue with my outdated cpu than gpu). I hated my 50" Sony LCD in 1080p and 720 from the computer... but that might just be me. Everything looked so blocky with very sharp edges... if that makes sense. Fiddling with the calibrations didn't help much. Maybe you'll have better luck.

As for games... I usually run what you were saying: 1280x1024. It does Skyrim alright... though the cpu bottlenecks like nobodies business. I think this last year was the maximum I could push my gpu while getting a playable (worthwhile for me) resolution.