Wide screen monitor or 4:3 monitor?

My next monitor will be a wide screen.
WinXP does not have a problem with them, as long as the correct driver is installed, and it will look better with wide-screen content.

As for Vista ready, I am not sure I will EVER be Vista ready.

Before I upgrade to Vista, I will be checking out newer Linux versions very seriously.

Only problem with wide screen monitors are that they offer less viewable area compared to their 4:3 brethren. Go and compare 19" wide screens with 19" 4:3 monitors and you'll see what I mean. I guess if you game and watch a lot of media, that's fine. But if you work with a lot of docs, you'll find yourself scrolling a lot more. That's the only con, pretty much, with wide screens.

Edit: oh yeah, you might want to hold off on Vista unless you're buying a new PC. And if you're getting Vista, make sure you have at least 1 Gig of RAM, preferably 2 GB - and plenty of HDD space (10-15 GB for Vista alone).

I'll NEVER go back to square screen. WS is simple the way to go. EVERY game looks better and more games are coming with WS support than ever.

More immersive, etc.

That's only really true if you go between similar sized LCDs. I switched from a 22" CRT to a 24" widescreen and have noticeably more viewable area. And my desk is no longer bowing due to a 70lb monstrosity. Like going from a 19" 4:3 to a 19" widescreen LCD won't really gain you much - and to me would be a downgrade. But going from a 19" LCD to a 22-24" would be a nice jump. 24" widescreens are painfully expensive. A 22-23" generall cost noticeably less. But 24 IS gloirous.

I was skeptical of widescreen at first, and it took an hour or two to get used to it, but once you get used to it, it seems completely natural and you'd never go back. My 19" CRT at work is painful to use when I have a 24" widescreen at home.

Gaming is incredible on widescreen. A game like GalCiv2 is awesomeon widescreen. UFO: Afterlight is awesome. MMORPGs are sweet. WoW looks great in widescreen, and so does EQ2, etc. It's a much more natural feeling view.

The only true problem, IMO, and this goes for any LCD, is the native resolution issue. Some of the performance hog games, especially those with horrible optimization and crappy graphics engines, can have serious problems at higher resolutions and widescreen resolutions, even if you have the PC oomph to usually push your native resolution. With a widescreeen you can run games in 4:3 with black bars (if your card supports it vs stretch) but it's a drag compared to the usual widescreen glory.

So for me, a consideration when going for a larger sized widescreen, is to make sure you have a beefy PC too, or you may be disappointed in how some games perform.

i have a Dell 24" wide screen, and i have no regrets about it in the slightest. people think it's a TV.

JonSarik is correct that the same "size" in a widescreen has less vewable area; this is because monitor sizes are measured on the diagonal.

however, i assume if you're debating this and asking this question, you might have some money to spend. the 24" Dells are going for less than $700. Dell sucks on most accounts, but they make damn fine LCDs.

with a driver download, it'll work in portrait or landscape mode. i have my Dell monitor at work in portrait because it allows me to keep two open windows on my desktop; handy for jumping between apps when you need info from both. Dell also adds 4 USB ports and 2 multi-media card readers standard on their newer monitors - a very nice perk IMO.

i wouldn't recommend the 30". they're very expensive, and their resolution is funky. the 1920x1200 is perfect for most media transmissions. it's about interpolation ratios. TV broadcasts match up to a perfect ratio of 3; standard DVD and most current HDTV (720i/p) line up to a ratio of 2, and 1920x1200 is essentially the next standard for HD broadcasts (ESPN hopes to switch to 1080p by the next football season). the larger size of the 30" monitors creates ratios of non-whole numbers, which leads to interpolation artifacts. see: this article.

now, if you wanted something bigger than a 24", before getting a 30" i'd recommend considering an HDTV. the Sharp Aquos is one of the few TVs on the market that's truly 1080p ready (it comes with 2 HDMI jacks). DVI to HDMI converters are cheap, they shouldn't really compromise data flow, and HDMI cables are a lot smaller and more flexible than DVI cables, which is nice if you want the room to not look like a mess of wires. windows XP MCE should have no problem using one of these puppies as a monitor with an easy update. they run at 1920x1080; i was looking at the 40" model for about $2k, which is cheaper than 30" monitors and only a bit lower quality resolution (i mean seriously, you probably won't even notice those last couple megapixels). and since they're LCD instead of plasma, you can game to your heart's content without feeling like you're sucking up your screen's limited lifespan (and probably do it from your next door neighbor's house).

just my thoughts on the issue. i love gaming, but i bought my system as a home entertainment PC primarily. if you'd like your electronics to work double time, i'd definately recommend a widescreen monitor - it's the standard that'll be here for years to come.

Actually, most 17-19" screens are 5:4, not 4:3. That's the reason they have more pixels than a 16:10 screen (1280x1024 > 1440x900 > 1280x960).

okay, so i mis-remembered the article and info about interpolation ratios. my bad. but i'd still go with a WUXGA over WQXGA.

Reminds me of another discussion where someone said that math can be deceiving

Despite of the fact that 16:10 monitors have slightly smaller viewable area when compared to the same size 5:4 monitor they actually are much better in working with documents because of one simple reason - 16:10 monitor can easily have 2 documents open side by side because it's wider. It's meaningless to be forced to scroll few percentages more but having the program code and browser (with language reference and other usefull pages tabbed) viewable at the same time is a bliss. After having used 16:10 monitor I'd never even consider going back to 5:4.

So IMO 16:10 is better if you're using your computer to gaming, programming, surfing the web, betting sports, writing, watching movies, etc. - in fact I can't think of any use where 5:4 would be better. 20" and 22" widescreens are already quite cheap so in most cases even money shouldn't be a problem.

IMHO you get the best of both worlds with dual monitors. A pair of 19" 1280x1024 monitors run you about $400 these days. This gives you an effective size of 2560x1024 and an effective width of 32" versus a 22" 1680x1050 widescreen with a "real" width of about 19" for the same $400. The only application that the widescreen is better at is showing movies which I could care less about.

Few opinions about dual monitors (used such setup at a friend's place for few times):

- in most uses it's just like having one 19" monitor (most uses referring to situations when you have only one application in use)

- when using multiple applications it becomes personal, my friend obviously likes his setup as he bought it after long consideration (and I believe some testing at his work place) but OTOH I find the "gap" between screens really annoying and the for me the viewable area is too wide from such a close distance anyway

- in addition to videos dual monitors aren't very optimal for games. I don't actually know if you could split some TBS/RTS or simulator games between monitors in some sensible way but with any other kind of games you're just playing the game with one 19" screen.

So my 2 cents, if you're even considering dual monitor setup try it beforehand 'cause it isn't for everybody, and remember that games and videos do benefit more from one larger widescreen monitor.

wide screen, definitively.

better with most applications, because the WS is more adapted to our vision (we embrace much more horizontally than vertically). Issue only under microsoft word (the format of a letter is traditionnally vertical: the WS is worse than the 4:3 from that perspective).

and in galciv2, despite my low-end, outdated graphic card (GeForce 5200), graphics on my 20" WS look perfect. And I feel I can see more of the galaxy at a glance.

NB: I have taken one with DHCP compatibility... so as not to be forced to change in a few years

Thanks for all of the replies thus far, hope there will be more to come. Unfortunately I do not plan to spend more than € 350 on a single screen. Do all games, also the ones from 2 years ago, support widescreen monitors?
Which manufacturer do you prefer? Besides galciv2 (of course) I wish to play fps on this screen.

Even if a game doesn't support Widescreen, there are way to force it.

Check here: http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/index.php after your purchase.

I use dual monitors and have run GCII at 2560x1024 across both. The menus pretty much split just right and after a few minutes I didn't really notice the small gap in between, but like Pahis said, It isn't for everyone. I now just run it windowed at 1024x768 in one monitor most of the time, so I can browse and control winamp in the other. A widescreen view is great, whether you get it from one monitor or two.

What's Vista have to do with running a widescreen monitor? I have a 22" Acer and I have no problems running it on XP. You just need a graphics card that supports that resolution, it has nothing to do with the OS.

Anyway, I swear by my widescreen. I actually have both types, for those programs that don't support widescreen, but I rarely use the 4:3.

You can't compare the two based on that number alone, you need to consider the overall dimensions. My 22" widescreen is exactly the same height as my 19" 4:3, but a few inches wider. That figure is based on the diagonal of the screen, so trying to compare the two using only that as a basis is like comparing apples and oranges.

HDCP support. Vista will downres HD video unless both your video card and monitor support HDCP, as I recall.

Most games these days do support widescreen monitors. Even games as far back as Neverwinter Nights 1 will support them. And if they don't, they simply stretch the graphics to fill the screen. This might cause a bit of distortion, making them appear wider than they should be, but quite often the effect is acceptable.

You shouldn't have any problems finding a widescren to fit your budget. I'm not sure of the monetary conversion to the Euro, but my 22" cost me around $400 Canadian. A 20" is about $100 less than that. The prices having really been dropping lately, so they're not that expensive anymore.

You must have a pretty decent video card to pull that off. I tried it with Civilization 4 using an ATI X800 and the game ground to a halt in no time. Though my new GeForce 7950 might have better luck with it. How do you get those kinds of resolutions anyway?

I see. Which is only an issue for videos then, and not much of one. There aren't very many HD titles out there yet, and who really cares whether your favourite TV show gets downgraded, if you're connected to a tuner card. It's even less of an issue here in Canada. It will be several years yet before our television is being broadcast in HD, aside from a few speciality channels. I guess we're letting the U.S. iron out all the bugs before we jump onboard. We did the same thing when colour first came on the scene.

I'm looking at a 24" widescreen to replace my current 19" LCD. Specificly the BenQ FP241WZ. Not strickly for gaming though, more for general usage like surfing and working on spreadsheets. There should also be enough real estate to place a small video on the screen to watch while surfing or doing whatever.

I tend to avoid 22" LCD monitors because they are all 6-bit TN panels. Good for fast first person shooters, but overall bad color quality, limited viewing angles and some visible image artifacts since in some still images and video.

24" widescreen LCD monitors not only offers more real estate than a 22" ws LCD, but they are all 8-bit panels and the advantages / disadvantages are opposite of 6-bit panels. However, I have read that 24" ws LCDs will probably use 6-bit TN panels to make them cheaper.

I bought a 22" wide a few weeks ago, i can never look at 4:3 TFT ever again, im too spoiled now.. seriously, buying a 4:3 (in 2007) for games should be outlawed.

Actually my PC is pretty dated. It's only an XP3000 512MB ram and a geforce 6800 OC. I haven't tried that setup with DA only DL, but didn't really run into to much slowdown. If it started to slow late game I would turn off a feature or two at a time to maintain a decent framerate.



It's a setable resolution from the menu, but I usually just open the pref.ini file and manually set the res. I want. I had desktop set at the same resolution with horizontal span.

I have the 24" Dell widescreen and it's amazing.