Time to replace my 17" CRT monitor....need advice

Well after 13 years it seems my old trusty 17" Samsung CRT monitor is ready to be put out to pasture. I'm getting half-screen black-outs and color problems these days.

I'm looking for an excellent 19" or 20" LCD Monitor thats great for gaming and costs less than $300....any advice?

Well after 13 years it seems my old trusty 17" Samsung CRT monitor is ready to be put out to pasture. I'm getting half-screen black-outs and color problems these days.

I'm looking for an excellent 19" or 20" LCD Monitor thats great for gaming and costs less than $300....any advice?

AFBrat77

Under 300 is easy. Grab one of the Asus 2ms monitors. This 21 inch is just over 150 with the rebate...you could go with an even bigger monitor for that price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236051&cm_re=asus_monitor_21-_-24-236-051-_-Product

This is the exact monitor I have...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236059

I love it.

go with two 20 inch acers. They are between $120 and $140 on newegg with 1600x900 pixels each. In terms of productivity, I could never go back to using single moniters as so much more can be accomplished with two.

If near perfect color reproduction and almost 180 degree viewing angles are important to you, you can look into IPS panel monitors which tend to be a bit pricier than the traditional TN LCD monitors. Here's an example on saleGeneral_X

Damnit, beat me to it, yeh well anyway TC, get a IPS panel, it does cost more, but it will last longer and the colour reproduction will be better.

[QUOTE="General_X"]If near perfect color reproduction and almost 180 degree viewing angles are important to you, you can look into IPS panel monitors which tend to be a bit pricier than the traditional TN LCD monitors. Here's an example on saleGTR12

Damnit, beat me to it, yeh well anyway TC, get a IPS panel, it does cost more, but it will last longer and the colour reproduction will be better.

This seems like a good choice, i can't believe the sale on this thing.

Will my older PC games look horrible on this or is that the purpose of playing games in a window, so that they can look much better on larger screens. Say Fallout 2 or many of the games on Gog.com for instance.

Well after 13 years it seems my old trusty 17" Samsung CRT monitor is ready to be put out to pasture. I'm getting half-screen black-outs and color problems these days.

I'm looking for an excellent 19" or 20" LCD Monitor thats great for gaming and costs less than $300....any advice?

AFBrat77

(popular screen resolution today) 1920*1080

is THREE times as many pixels as the

(popular CRT 17" resolution) 1024*768

...is and without a good graphic card you won't be able to run the same games you can run fine now.

[QUOTE="AFBrat77"]

Well after 13 years it seems my old trusty 17" Samsung CRT monitor is ready to be put out to pasture. I'm getting half-screen black-outs and color problems these days.

I'm looking for an excellent 19" or 20" LCD Monitor thats great for gaming and costs less than $300....any advice?

swehunt

(popular screen resolution today) 1920*1080

is THREE times as many pixels as the

(popular CRT 17" resolution) 1024*768

...is and without a good graphic card you won't be able to run the same games you can run fine now.

video card = 9500 GT, which I'm happy with

1152 x 864 or 1024 x 768 is what I game with using the 17" CRT, unless the game does not permit so high.

I can run say Crysis at 1024 x 768 with a decent enough framerate and some bells and whistles, but I have tons of games I still need to play up to 2004 that I'm more concerned with. The video card is fine for those, i just want an ideal 19" - 22" monitor for this PC.

[QUOTE="swehunt"]

[QUOTE="AFBrat77"]

Well after 13 years it seems my old trusty 17" Samsung CRT monitor is ready to be put out to pasture. I'm getting half-screen black-outs and color problems these days.

I'm looking for an excellent 19" or 20" LCD Monitor thats great for gaming and costs less than $300....any advice?

AFBrat77

(popular screen resolution today) 1920*1080

is THREE times as many pixels as the

(popular CRT 17" resolution) 1024*768

...is and without a good graphic card you won't be able to run the same games you can run fine now.

video card = 9500 GT, which I'm happy with

1152 x 864 or 1024 x 768 is what I game with using the 17" CRT, unless the game does not permit so high.

I can run say Crysis at 1024 x 768 with a decent enough framerate and some bells and whistles, but I have tons of games I still need to play up to 2004 that I'm more concerned with. The video card is fine for those, i just want an ideal 19" - 22" monitor for this PC.

[QUOTE="AFBrat77"]

[QUOTE="swehunt"] We need to know what GPU you got and the resolution you game at now, without that info we could recomend a very, very bad screen for you.

(popular screen resolution today) 1920*1080

is THREE times as many pixels as the

(popular CRT 17" resolution) 1024*768

...is and without a good graphic card you won't be able to run the same games you can run fine now.

General_X

video card = 9500 GT, which I'm happy with

1152 x 864 or 1024 x 768 is what I game with using the 17" CRT, unless the game does not permit so high.

I can run say Crysis at 1024 x 768 with a decent enough framerate and some bells and whistles, but I have tons of games I still need to play up to 2004 that I'm more concerned with. The video card is fine for those, i just want an ideal 19" - 22" monitor for this PC.

Just like i read betweeen the lines, you really need to replace that GPU to run new games fluidly with a new higher resolution monitor.

A 9500GT IS all to weak to take a higher resolution, even a 9600gt (witch is almost twice the performance) will have trouble running games at the native resdolution of a 1080p resolution (most 20-24" monitors are) even a HD4850 witch i used previous my currently GPU had trouble running few games 1080p.

With the resolution you use the GPU is a match, anything higher will need a new better one, getting a higher resolution monitor do need a better GPU.

-sorry

Thanks for all the responses, though I'm pretty sure a 9500GT would have no problems working well with a 19" or 20" LCD monitor.

If anyone else has suggestions please chime in.

Thanks for all the responses, though I'm pretty sure a 9500GT would have no problems working well with a 19" or 20" LCD monitor.

If anyone else has suggestions please chime in.

AFBrat77

Benchmarks:

CoD4

28fps @ 1280*1024

19fps @ 1920*1200 = unplayable!

----- ------- ---------------

Crysis

23fps @ 1280*1024

15fps @ 1920*1200 = unplayable!

----- ---------- -----------------

Frontlines Fuel of war

24fps @ 1280*1024

17fps @ 1980*1200 = unplayable!

----- --------- ----------------

S.T.A.L.K.E.R shadow of chernobyl

28fps @ 1280*1024

17fps @ 1920*1200 = unplayable!

---- -------- -------------------

F.E.A.R

51fps @ 1280*1024

23fps @ 1920*1440 = barely playable.

:roll: you can safely assume your gaming experience to be very bad if you keep that 9500GT and get a new monitor!

Review you can find HERE!

Seems to me you could get a 250gts 1gb and a decent 20" or so monitor that will run 1680/1050 for about 300. I know I did when I built my sons computer.

ps. Just looked and even 1920/1080 monitors are in that price range. The only thing then is a PSU. The 9500 probably doesn't pull much power does it?

dell u2211h

21.5 inch 1920x1080

IPS panel

take a peek at this one..its pretty nice

The dell 2209WA is the best budget IPS monitor, it goes for about $300. It is 16x10 so for the TC that is the best option since he doesnt have a good card.

TC you can get a really good card for about $100 which doesnt draw too much power so if you have a decent PSU then it will be enough. If $300 is all you have then I would say get a $200 monitor and a $100 card.

Thanks all for all your advice, I'm probably going to stick it out with this monitor (which apparently just had a kink in the wiring) until my next PC.

But you guys gave me good ideas for my next monitor.

Thanks again.