New Monitor Advice

[wismas]

Looking to get a monitor for my new system. Just received a promo from New Egg for the following Acer, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009534&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL032014&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL032014-_-EMC-032014-Index-_-LCDMonitors-_-24009534-L0B. Is this a decent quality? Other recommendations around the same price point?

 

Alternatively, instead of buying a monitor what about purchasing a smaller LED HDTV?

[FMod]

It will cost a lot more, but a good 32" 1080p HDTV will be miles better than a monitor, at least as far as games go.

 

But it will cost a lot more. At $140 it's nice that they have anything at all.

[Rennn]

It will cost a lot more, but a good 32" 1080p HDTV will be miles better than a monitor, at least as far as games go.

 

But it will cost a lot more. At $140 it's nice that they have anything at all.

 

Yes, but who wants to stare at a 32 inch 1080p screen? The DPI is way too low. Unless you sit a meter back from your monitor, you don't want a 1080p or 1200p screen larger than 25-26 inches. I have a 24 inch (23.6 inches of actual screen) monitor and it's almost not dense enough. As you mentioned, there aren't really any good HD TVs for $140 either. The ones larger than 20 inches start to get acceptable around the $300 range.

 

 

 

Looking to get a monitor for my new system. Just received a promo from New Egg for the following Acer, http://www.newegg.co...-_-24009534-L0B. Is this a decent quality? Other recommendations around the same price point?

 

I would recommend this monitor instead. It's a couple inches smaller, but it's an IPS panel of reasonable quality, which you'll really appreciate if you care at all about color accuracy and viewing angles. Normally the advantage of a TN panel monitor like the one you posted is a quick refresh rate and response time, but it's not very good in those aspects, meaning it doesn't really have any advantages over an IPS panel.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236363

 

Edit:

What video card are you using for your new system? 1600x900 or even 1360x768 might be a safer resolution for a video card like a GTX 750 or r9 250, etc.

Edited March 20, 2014 by Rennn

[FMod]

Yes, but who wants to stare at a 32 inch 1080p screen? The DPI is way too low.

Anyone who isn't doing CAD or pre-printing work?

 

It's just fine for games, you don't really benefit from more resolution - finer detail it could show doesn't exist to begin with. It's perfect for movies, they don't even get higher resolution. It's all right for everything else.

 

Anyway, quality TVs really begin at 32".

[Rennn]

 

Yes, but who wants to stare at a 32 inch 1080p screen? The DPI is way too low.

Anyone who isn't doing CAD or pre-printing work?

 

It's just fine for games, you don't really benefit from more resolution - finer detail it could show doesn't exist to begin with. It's perfect for movies, they don't even get higher resolution. It's all right for everything else.

 

Anyway, quality TVs really begin at 32".

 

 

It's not fine for games, imo, unless you're several feet away. From 1-2 feet away the DPI should be near 100 or it's easy to see pixels, which ruins the image quality, even with antialiasing.

 

Older gamers are probably happy with lower DPI, which makes sense as resolutions used to be like 380x240, but new games are meant to be played with a DPI of at least 80, preferably higher.

Daggerfall for example, wouldn't benefit at all from a resolution higher than 480p, and most of the quality is present at its locked resolution of 240p or whatever the 4:3 equivalent was. PS3 games are made to run at 720p, their LoD is all set up for that. PC games, however, have pretty extreme detail. Running at a DPI lower than 80-90 steadily decreases that detail.

 

Of course, DPI doesn't even matter if the screen is so big that the game simply doesn't have enough detail to fill the space.

Edited March 20, 2014 by Rennn

[wismas]

Edit:

What video card are you using for your new system? 1600x900 or even 1360x768 might be a safer resolution for a video card like a GTX 750 or r9 250, etc.

 

 

I went with a Gigabyte Nvidia GeForce GTX770 4gb.

 

I was out at Best Buy today and found a nice $99, 24" HDTV. It's made by Insignia, http://www.insigniaproducts.com/products/televisions/NS-24E40SNA14.html, it has VGA, DVI and HDMI ports. The video that was running on it looked nice. The only apparent drawback is that the base and stem don't swivel, it's fixed.

 

I will take a closer look at that Asus. It's only $20 more and if it's better that isn't a big investment.

[Rennn]

 

Edit:

What video card are you using for your new system? 1600x900 or even 1360x768 might be a safer resolution for a video card like a GTX 750 or r9 250, etc.

 

 

I went with a Gigabyte Nvidia GeForce GTX770 4gb.

 

I was out at Best Buy today and found a nice $99, 24" HDTV. It's made by Insignia, http://www.insigniaproducts.com/products/televisions/NS-24E40SNA14.html, it has VGA, DVI and HDMI ports. The video that was running on it looked nice. The only apparent drawback is that the base and stem don't swivel, it's fixed.

 

I will take a closer look at that Asus. It's only $20 more and if it's better that isn't a big investment.

 

 

Oh, yeah. Definitely go for 1080p. A 770 will handle it easily, but I'm sure you already knew that.

 

The problem with judging screens is the companies that make them create their own rating systems and just assign flashy names to whatever they want. Some companies have contrast ratios of 1000:1, make it partially dynamic, and call it 100,000,000:1. The most consistent way to determine monitor or TV quality is too just look at it. The second best way is to find a company with a good reputation and get one of their highest reviewed models. :s The TV you found may be good, but I can't help but be very suspicious of a $100 TV, it just screams "will die in a week".

Edited March 20, 2014 by Rennn

[wismas]

I'm actually still learning, lot's of folks on this forum and others steered me to what I hope is a very nice gaming machine. Having said that, I spent more than I planned for the system and still have to get a monitor/keyboard/mouse and I would like to keep that all under $300, less if possible. So I'm looking at budget monitors and modest gaming keyboards.

[FMod]

It's not fine for games, imo, unless you're several feet away. From 1-2 feet away the DPI should be near 100 or it's easy to see pixels, which ruins the image quality, even with antialiasing.

DPI is a meaningless metric with regard to computer screens. DPI only has meaning for paper. Games aren't really designed with any sort of dpi or ppi in mind.

 

On computer screens, the relevant meaningful metric is angular feature size. Given a ~1 radian FOV, human eye's horizontal resolution is ~4,000 for pairs of white and black lines and less as the contrast decreases.

 

You should sit about as far from your screen as the screen is wide, a little closer or a little further is fine; jamming a TV 1 foot from your face like a laptop is not only bad for your eyes, it also looks silly. Even if it's a 4K TV.

 

What a large display allows is somewhat greater FOV without excessive eye strain (which putting a screen too close results in) and with generally better immersion. It's just better in games, once you go to a bigger screen, going back feels disappointing.

 

 

I went with a Gigabyte Nvidia GeForce GTX770 4gb.

I was out at Best Buy today and found a nice $99, 24" HDTV.

Let me begin by saying that if you drop $300 or so on a video card, which will serve you for a couple years, it's probably not right to budget next to nothing on the display that will stay with you for a decade.

 

Anyway, the problem with small cheap TVs is that they are likely to have more lag than a monitor, while offering nothing in return. I don't know anything about this particular TV.

 

It's probably not likely to die in a week, or in a year, or much sooner than a $1,000 TV would. What it is likely to be, though, is a cheap TN+ panel with unknown electronics that may or may not display a PC image correctly.

 

Any TV that hasn't been dug out of a scrapyard will look nice in a store. Quality can't really be determined there, you look at a TV and see juicy colors... well yeah, all LCD have juicy colors, all LCD are perfectly sharp, it's inherent in the technology.

 

To look bad even in the store one has to have a broken screen or dirt spilled over it.

OR, it can simply have its color saturation or brightness set lower than the TV next to it - the brighter or the more saturated TV will always look better on the shelf, even if it's much worse in actual quality.

 

Anyway, back to the point, I have no idea if it's any good, you probably don't either. So why take the risk?

Edited March 20, 2014 by FMod

[Rennn]

You can usually get acceptable keyboards and mice $20 each. Like these, just as an example.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3SD1E68992

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826146010

They're not great, but they're still practical and should be reliable.

 

The monitor is actually quite important (why have a strong video card if it's going to be displayed on a faded screen?), but if you only have $150 to work with, Asus and Acer have some okay monitors for that price.

Of course, always be sure to connect to the screen using a DVI or HDMI connection. Displayport isn't supported on most screens, and VGA is blurry as hell.

Edited March 20, 2014 by Rennn