Widescreen -- used often?

[John Crichton]

I have a Dell 24" Widescreen.

It's awesome for reading .pdf files becasue I can get 2 pages on the screen. Also, I work with a lot of spreadsheets, so the added size lets me see so much more of the spreadsheet than my previous 19" standard monitor.

I wouldn't go back either.

Yeah, I've got the same thing.

The hard part is my work computer has a screen about half the size. Forget looking good, I'd love a WS for work to improve productivity.

 

[Thanee]

One thing I'm curious about concerning WS monitors, since I havn't used one myself and do not plan to do so in the near future...

Do the monitors have a 4:3 mode as well (blanking out part of the screen left and right), in case a game, for example, does not support WS, and only runs in full screen mode? Or is the picture always distorted then, as it is displayed on the full (wide) screen?

Bye
Thanee

 

[John Crichton]

One thing I'm curious about concerning WS monitors, since I havn't used one myself and do not plan to do so in the near future...

Do the monitors have a 4:3 mode as well (blanking out part of the screen left and right), in case a game, for example, does not support WS, and only runs in full screen mode? Or is the picture always distorted then, as it is displayed on the full (wide) screen?

Bye
Thanee

I don't think my monitor has that "mode" you speak of but there have been a few games I've played where it will change the resolution to put the black bars on the side.

However, I usually just look for a hack or code change to enable WS mode on games that don't have it built in.

 

[trancejeremy]

My monitor is starting to die (CRT) and I need to get a new one, but all I can find these days is widescreen. I guess it's progress, but I wish they gave a choice.

 

[John Crichton]

My monitor is starting to die (CRT) and I need to get a new one, but all I can find these days is widescreen. I guess it's progress, but I wish they gave a choice.

In my mind, there is no reason for a choice as WS is quite superior in all aspects to the 4:3 models. Why anyone would want one is beyond me. If one wanted a "regular" sized monitor they can be had on the secondary market as very low prices.

 

[Lazybones]

I have had the same Dell 24" (the 2407FPS) for two days now, and it is incredible. Every game I have tested, even the old venerable NWN1, has been able to accommodate the monitor's native 1920x1200 resolution (but I haven't done anything older than NWN1, so I cannot testify as to how older titles might look). But you need a beefy video card to push that many pixels (I have an 8800gtx, and even so I still get low fps on some games, admittedly when I try to max all the graphics settings).

For Word and PDF I never realized how much better it was to look at two pages side-by-side without having to shrink them.

/one more not going back

 

[Aus_Snow]

(. . .) [Y]ou need a beefy video card to push that many pixels (I have an 8800gtx, and even so I still get low fps on some games, admittedly when I try to max all the graphics settings).

Mind if I kill you and take your stuff? It'll go to a good home, honest.

OK, OK. I'll see if I can reach for the 7900GS (the next performance to price ratio of note, IIRC) if someone talks me into it. It's only marginally more than the 7600GT, and apparently worth the difference. True?

-- and I heard that the 8500 and 8600 are horrible. Also true?


God I hate being on a seriously limited budget. . . must buy fewer RPG books. . . (mutter mutter). . .

 

[Mercule]

I splurged on a WS with my last desktop purchase. I neither game (much) or watch movies on my computer, but me still likey. It's really, really sweet for editing code, especially Visual Studio that has way too many dockable bars. It's great for Word and Excel, too.

I've got two 4:3 monitors at work, which I'd rather have for coding, but the widescreen is probably closer to two standard screens that it is to just one, in terms of usefulness.

 

[Kaffis]

The 8600 isn't horrible.

I run my 1920x1200 24" Dell on a GeForce 6800GT, and it's fine in older games (Half Life 2, etc) at full resolution so long as I don't get aggressive with my shadows settings. Newer stuff, I can back off to a more modest resolution like 1680x1050 and let the monitor scale it up and it looks pretty good.

As for the earlier question about 4:3 display modes -- the good monitors have them. My Dell will let me choose 3 modes: fill (stretches everything to fill the screen -- what you'd use in my above 1680x1050 example, slightly annoying for signals designed for TVs -- like from DVD players or consoles over component inputs -- because it stretches the 16:9 HDTV resolutions to 16:10. My one gripe with my monitor is that this is the only option available for 1080p signals), 4:3 (stretches the signal, maintaining the aspect ratio, until it hits the max dimensions on either axis -- useful for aforementioned HDTV signals if they're 720p), and 1:1 (which centers the signal on the screen with no scaling. Good for appreciating just how tiny 800x600 or, god forbid, 640x480 really are now).

 

[Thanee]

I don't think my monitor has that "mode" you speak of but there have been a few games I've played where it will change the resolution to put the black bars on the side.

I just found out, that the current NVIDIA drivers do support that kind of mode switching. They actually give you the choice betwenn various possible methods. Quite nifty.

Bye
Thanee