Dear Luzcrifier,

What you found on the forums are quite true. The Viewsonic VX2025wm does use a better quality panel compared to the VX2235wm. In fact it uses a full 8bit panel which makes better colour reproduction. The VX2235wm uses only a 6bit + 2bit dithering which makes colour reproduction slightly less accurate than the former. The difference might not be big if you're just a regular user. The reason I state this is that modern dithering method has gained much improvements so the gap is closing. Also 6bit panels enables slightly better pixel response.

I'm currently using the Viewsonic VX2235wm and I'm very satisfied with its performance, at least in my area of application. Believe me that 22" of desktop space does open a lot more multitasking possibilities especially if you're coming from a smaller monitor. It has the same resolution as the 20" LCD but the extra 2" make reading text an easier task. Video reproductions are good and PC gaming is superb. You do need a higher-end graphic card to run at the native resolution (1680x1050) in order to see the real thing. Of course you could run at lower resolutions, just remember to maintain 16:10 aspect ratio. Running this panel with XBOX360 will result in washed out colours but I think this is another issue with the XBOX360.

Also remember that the VX2235wm do not have DVI-HDCP just like the Acer AL2216w. The VX2025wm also don't have HDCP, unless you go the Samsung way. Again you need to maintain a HDCP compliant graphic card as well. But again, HDCP isn't the thing yet. Right now, the PC industry is going HDCP over the DVI interface while the AV industry prefers the HDMI. But in the future, DisplayPort is going to replace DVI so it will never end. So HDCP or not is up to you if you plan to still use the panel few years from now in which DisplayPort could be taking over.

Samsung do have a 20" panel 205BW, which is comparable with VX2025wm in quality. There's a 22" Samsung panel and a Dell brand coming around the corner, so I suggest you wait a little more.

Hope this helps.

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any idea how much Viewsonic VX2235wm cost?

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The Viewsonic VX2235wm should cost you not over RM1300. Try shopping around the 3rd floor of Low Yat and you should be able to get a fair deal. Do wait a little longer, if you want to look for a Samsung model though.

If you're looking for a 19" LCD monitor with both DVI and VGA analog connections together with DVI-HDCP with a 4:3 aspect ratio (non widescreen), the Samsung 932B should be a good choice.

Its design is similar to the Samsung R7 LCD TV series with sleek white piano finish. Price should be slightly below RM900 if I'm not mistaken but please do check around.

Here's a link to the product specification:

http://www.samsung.com/my/products/monitor...terlcd/932b.asp

If you want a widescreen, I guess the Samsung 940BW should a good choice. But there's no R7 style design.

Oops, thanks for the correction. Anyway this is a good monitor. There's some good reviews over the internet. Happy shopping then!

[quote=Luzcrifier,Jan 2 2007, 02:28 AM]
any idea how much Viewsonic VX2235wm cost?

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The Viewsonic VX2235wm should cost you not over RM1300. Try shopping around the 3rd floor of Low Yat and you should be able to get a fair deal. Do wait a little longer, if you want to look for a Samsung model though.

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u know how much samsung gonna cost? my budget is around 1.7k

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Your budget of RM1700 should be more than enough for the 22" Samsung LCD widescreen. I guess it should be around RM1500 during introduction. I'll be glad if it debut at a price similar the Viewsonic.

[quote=Luzcrifier,Jan 2 2007, 07:38 PM]
u know how much samsung gonna cost? my budget is around 1.7k

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Your budget of RM1700 should be more than enough for the 22" Samsung LCD widescreen. I guess it should be around RM1500 during introduction. I'll be glad if it debut at a price similar the Viewsonic.

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thx u for the info. any idea when it gonna come out?

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Frankly speaking, I'm not sure. The model should be releasing right now. Its just the matter of bringing it into our shores by the local distributors. So its up to them. The 22" could be the next sweet spot.

The Samsung Syncmaster 960BF is good LCD monitor. It has height and pivot adjustments, plus the 4ms (Grey to Grey) response is great for gaming. The only down point here is the 5:4 aspect ratio. More and more games are going over to the 16:10 widescreen ratio.

So if you'll be playing the latest and greatest games, assuming that you'll be upgrading your graphic cards every now and then, a widescreen monitor would be of more value to you. Also of course, if you're into watching movies in front of your PC.

This is not to say that 5:4 would be useless, every game would still support this aspect ratio so its just a matter of preferences for now. If you're doing productivity work, a widescreen would definitely increase your efficiency since you could put up two documents side by side or working with two software side by side without the need of minimizing.

Geesh, I never knew the 960BF cost RM1500. Thats too expensive if its really a TN panel. The specifications seems pretty normal too. Any idea why it is priced as such? That way, the 940BF could be better then.

Anyway I know that even a RM900 LCD TN panel could give you a 2ms response time but usually they fall under the 6bit panel with/without dithering. That usually explains the fast response. I'm not sure if the 960 is a 8bit panel but its definitely overpriced if you're just interested in gaming and the usual PC experience.

Anyhow, thanks for the heads up in the pricing.

Dear ah fui,

Well without adding much confusion to your doubt, lets just say the lower a LCD panel's response time, the better it'll be. So get the lowest LCD response time your money can buy. Unlike few years back, the common LCD response time is around 25ms and the 16ms panels were quite expensive. 25ms is considered ok for movie but for very fast gaming situations, ghosting still occurs.

Right now, it is safe to say that any common LCD panel would have satisfactory LCD response time. I'll say you get any LCD panel within your means that are below 16ms, probably less than 8ms if possible.

If you're following this forum, there are a few more categories to worry about. The type of panel, the panel color bit (6bit/8bit), etc. So its best to let the experts here explain, if you require any,

Hi there,

For a budget of around RM1000 and 19" LCD requirement, here are the choices:

Samsung Syncmaster 932B, 940BF (Non-widescreen)
Samsung Syncmaster 940BW (Widescreen)
Viewsonic VA912BW (Non-widescreen)

There are of course a lot more choices like Acer, Benq and LG available at the stores but I'm not familiar with them. I've seen and used the above mention panels before which I find quite good. You'll have to try them out to make a choice. Read back the threads about LCD because they mention some good explainations about the type of panel to choose and various other parameters.

Playing PC games on a widescreen shouldn't pose much of problem provided the game supports the 16:10 aspect ratio resolutions. You might need to update some of your games to enable the resolutions. With older games, I guess you'll need to set your monitor to maintain the aspect ratio. Thats when you'll see the 5:4 ratio on your screen while the rest will be covered in black bars at the side.

With PC gaming, you are not necessarily required to utilize the native resolution. You could choose a lower resolution that is not so taxing to your graphic adapters as long as you choose a resolution that maintains the aspect ratio - 5:4 for non-widescreen and 16:10 for widescreen. Of course, if you have a good graphic adapters by all means play at its full glory since LCD panels look the best in their native resolution.

Your graphic card drivers should not have much of a problem supporting the native resolutions on desktop. Playing DVD movies should be fine while playing VCDs or movie medias that don't support widescreen you'll have to tweak your media software to maintain the aspect ratio and not fill up the screen. Some LCD have a setting to maintain aspect ratio which prevents it from resizing the media and fill up the whole screen.

Hope this helps.

This post has been edited by davidmak: Jan 3 2007, 09:17 PM

Hi there,

I think there shouldn't be much of a problem. The graphic drivers should be able to sort out the difference and compensate. Honestly speaking, I haven't try this setup before.

If you plan to use the widescreen monitor as an extension in windows, this should not be much of a problem. Playing games on such a setup would be a little confusing as the two monitor have different aspect ratios. However mirroring should be fine. Again this is just a guess, you'll have to seek a second opinion on this one.

Your 6600GT should be good enough to power both displays on windows provided it has 128MB of onboard RAM. Text should be blur free on both analog and DVI at the native resolutions. Playing games using both displays would be tricky though.

I guess if the RAMDAC is high enough, things should be fine right? The older MX were running on lower RAMDAC clock right. Plus the termination and filtering were of a lower order setup.

Keep your geforce3, its still a good card for regular desktop, movies and occasional games. I still keep an old geforce 2mx 32MB onboard RAM, and I could still run a 17" LCD with 1280x1024 native resolution on windows which is value for money.

Then you're good to go. It would be good to have your widescreen as the new primary monitor and retire your 17" LCD to be the secondary monitor. Quite a lot of new games support the 16:10 aspect ratio so you should be fine. For older games, you could have the game run on your secondary monitor.

Anyway its a matter of preferences. :-)

I second your recommendation. I'm currently using a 22" Viewsonic and thats also because Samsung hasn't released a 22" model yet. I would have purchased a Samsung anytime over Viewsonic. Then again, my old 17" Viewsonic is still running strong and bright as ever, so Viewsonic has its own strong points. Too bad it isn't that well received in the local community.

This post has been edited by davidmak: Jan 5 2007, 09:12 AM

I also agree on your recommendation. If you plan to use your panel mainly on computer games and on PC desktop environments, its better to get a proper LCD panel rather than a LCD TV panel due to a higher native resolution. Then again it all depends on preferences and what you do with the panel. If you plan to use it mainly as a media display, watching movies, console gaming and a little bit of surfing while sitting on a couch far away, then LCD TV seems not that bad an idea after all. If you decide to surf internet/reading text at a very short distance from the panel, usual a monitor does the job. A LCD TV would not be an optimize device unless you're viewing from a far. The brightness would kill your eyes.

Do take note that an LCD TV has more connectivity options, including a simple internal scaler and also tuner functions. A monitor LCD usually only have VGA and DVI video connections unless you go for a higher end LCD monitor like Dell that has connectivity for component, S-video as well as an internal scaler.

Also, there are two type of contrast ratio measurement, dynamic and static. Most LCD monitor uses the static contrast ratio so the numbers usually lower than dynamic. If I'm not mistaken LG rate its contrast ratio differently so you see higher than usual numbers which could be a little misleading to consumers. I'm not sure if LCD TV uses dynamic contrast ratio either so you got to check.

Then again, it all depends what you're doing and what are your expectations.

Contrast ratio is actually the ratio of luminosity of the brightest and the darkest colour a monitor is able to produce. It can be simply explained as how white is white and how black is black as well as other colours. The higher the the contrast ratio, the bigger the difference between them.

When you watch a movie, sometimes you could see the blacks aren't as black but rather greyish and the white isn't that white but rather beige. That is the result of a lower contrast ratio. A good monitor with high enough contrast ratio should display black as in pure black including the different shades of black and also white and its shade accurately.

So YES, get a monitor with the highest contrast ratio your money can buy. Take note that there are two types of measuring contrast ratio that is denoted as dynamic or static. Monitor contrast ratios are usually denoted as static contrast ratio. If I'm not mistaken, LG denotes its contrast ratio as dynamic. That is why its contrast ratio is usually higher than the competitors. This could be a little misleading.

In my opinion, you could put Samsung as a reference so that you could make comparisons better and accurately. You should also take other parameters into consideration when choosing a LCD like panel type, colour reproductions, response time, etc.

Totally agreed. The DNie engine is something like a colour reproduction optimizer which tries to reproduce more natural colours and boost contrast ratio. Sadly this usually adds unwanted components to the reproduction itself like loss of detail and unnatural colours. For a LCD to have a real high contrast ratio, the brightness itself have to be of sufficient number too, so expecting a panel with 300cdm2 to perform more than 1500:1 sounds too good to be true.

I have an old Viewsonic VE710b-2 which have a declared brightness of 300cdm2 but in actual fact it is much brighter compared to other panels to a point of uncomfortable to the eyes. The brightness levels in their respective menu were pushed all the way to maximum but the Viewsonic seems much brighter and the contrast were better. Of course, on regular usage the brightness have to be tuned down to a comfortable level.

So it is best to go see for yourself and make comparisons of your own. Some shops might not have all the models on display so shop around till you see all the models in your consideration.

Yes just like CRT TVs of those days. They put all them in a long row and each of them in different brightness and contrasts. Even the TVs of the same range but different sizes were showing different 'picture'.

But anyway the 940BW is a good entry level widescreen LCD. Well, its good enough for the price you're paying for. I was considering solely on this panel until I walk around and saw other panels. Then I decided to do some reading on the internet. 19" widescreens were the sweet spot in terms of value for the last year. Then again, the more you look at it, you'll feel that a 19" widescreen is a little on the short side, in other words a little small. So I'm beginning to feel that the 20" would come down in price to replace 19" on this spot. Well, its only 1" difference but the native resolution will be higher. 21" might come but its kinda rare so people would usually go straight to 22" since there are more panels being introduced, if they can't afford a 24".

Dear all,

For those of you who are interested to see an alternative choice on panels in the 22" widescreen range, here's a review on the Samsung Syncmaster 225BW. Please point your browsers to the link below:

http://www.thetechlounge.com/article/326/S...Widescreen+LCD/

For the price of RM1200 maybe, currently there are only 22" panels. I think the 2" difference should make minimal difference unless you're talking about the jump in native resolution and pixel pitch. Give it another year, who knows it could very well come true. Then again, 27" will be replacing the spot on 24" for those who can't afford a 30" - just like how some of us couldn't afford a 24" then go for a 22".

Cheers!