Monitor recommendations.
 

I'm looking at upgrading my monitor, which is a Compaq 7500. I'd like something which isn't widescreen, which means 4:3, supports DVI and has a very, very low response time.

The reason for this is that some of the games I play (well okay, touhou) look horrible if they're stretched on a widescreen monitor (or so I've been told by a bunch of friends), but "I can get used to it within a week". I don't know whether I will or not, because there's a bunch of lag when I play games like Pop'n Music and IIDX, or fighters, on my HDTV, so much so that I ended up resorting to using my older 29" CRT for those games.

It could be different for monitors, but the input lag I experienced was pretty horrible. I've been recommended this monitor, which I kinda have my heart set on. The only problem with this is that it's widescreen. It looks great, although I'll have to get it off eBay or something considering Amazon and Newegg don't ship internationally. :gonk:

I'm not interested in some insanely high-end expensive monitor, but just something which I can get good use out of. The Compaq 7500 has served me well, and I don't really need to upgrade, but it would be nice. Please recommend me some monitors.

I have an 8ms monitor, and I get minor ghosting. Looks like text and details get blurred a bit.
It's something I can't get used to when gaming, but it's not really that bad either.
It has to do with how LCDs and eyes work, even with a ridiculously low time you'll see ghosting anyways since your eyes are actually at fault.

Apparently some monitors have a feature to work around human eye deficiencies: BenQ's New AMA Z LCD Monitor - No more ghosting and blurring - Softpedia

Also, I wouldn't touch widescreens with a 10 foot pole. The whole concept is vile and resulting in P2P being polluted with cropped videos. =(

For me I use this one: ViewSonic: Products: Desktop Displays: LCD Displays: X Series: VX922

I'm really not a expert on this subject but I have this monitor for more than a year now and really it was perfect for my gaming need. You can't really go wrong with the 2ms respond time, I never experienced any ghosting. Since I never had problem with it and I use my computer mainly for games, I recommend it. (I'm just not sure if you still can easily find it :\)

If you're willing to fork out a bit more money, you can get a widescreen monitor that supports proper 1:1 pixel mapping. That is, it won't stretch your 4:3 content at all. I have a new BenQ FP241W with a native resolution of 1920x1200. If I load up a game in 1280x1024, the aspect will be preserved and there will be a black box around the viewable are. Best of both worlds.

Yeah, my HP w2207 does that too. It's quite nice for the few games I play that don't have widescreen support.

And to be honest, widescreen is the future. Almost all new games can do widescreen resolutions, and it's a huge improvement in just about every way. I can't imagine not gaming in 1680x1050 anymore.

nVidia and ATi cards also have a feature within their drivers to do this. "Center timings" is what it's called. So, it really isn't a big deal at all if the monitor doesn't have this support.

I am going to give another vote for Widescreen. 22' currently is the sweet spot in price these days. As stated before, you can either get one that supports 1:1 pixel mapping, use driver central timings, or like me when I played older games (fallout etc..), just play them in window mode.

Back a few years ago when I played WoW, I would have it in windowed mode at 1280x1024, with my vent/browser opened beside it on the 22inch monitor, and a movie playing on my secondary. Widescreen monitors give you so much more desktop retail space that after a week of using it, you will wonder how you managed without.

There are a few good price/performance ones out there... That Benq you linked to is somewhat bland at 8MS and 650:1 contrast.

Here are a few examples of 22inch monitors at descent prices.

Newegg.com - BenQ FP222W Black 22" 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 700:1 - Retail
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG 2220WM Black 22" 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 1000:1 Built in Speakers - Retail
Newegg.com - Acer P223Wwd Glossy White 22" 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 2500:1 - Retail

A friend told me his monitor had both a VGA and DVI input, so I was wondering, can you use them like AV1 and AV2?

I might hook a console up to it too if possible.

Dell 22 inch monitors do have component and composite cables in the back. That's what I use mine for gaming consoles. I have one of the older ones and even that has a 1:1 pixel, aspect ratio, and stretch modes. The new ones are even faster and far cheaper. I'd recommend one of those. But if you can find anything similar that's cool too.

I meant using VGA (vga is obviously superior over component) for say, a Wii, while using DVI to connect to a PC. How would you switch between the two (assuming you have both plugged in at once)? I figured since the PS2 doesn't upscale, it's going to look like crap on a monitor unless I buy an upscaler too, so I'll just use my Wii if I can.

Also, how do consoles like the Wii know you're using a monitor? I remember the menus of the Wii only showing a few options, none of them which allowed you to tell the console you were using a monitor.

VGA is better? Are there VGA cables for the Wii and every system? Does VGA do 480p, 720p, or 1080p or whatever? I don't know the limits of VGA. All I know is that DVI is superior to VGA and since HDMI pretty much is DVI and component usually gets close to those I wonder where it stands against VGA.

Er, this doesn't exactly answer my question.. but I'll try to help. VGA is, obviously, for a monitor. Monitors that are capable of resolutions of 1280x720 and 1920x1080 are capable of displaying 720p and 1080p, although it isn't true high definition because you're going to be playing on a 16:10 monitor, not 16:9.

VGA cables are pretty much a great thing if you can't afford a HDTV. Even on a CRT, you can get these results. Although it isn't "true", it still works well.

I have a HDTV which I bought myself, but I rarely use it, and personally I'd prefer to have a console easily accessible near my PC. My desk is big enough, so if I can't find a solution to using a console with a newer monitor without hassle, I'll just use the monitor I'm currently using beside my newer one for a console.