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.

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.

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. :-)

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. :-)

it's totally up to u.
1. watching a widescreen movie (dvd-video) on a normal display will give u black bars at the top and bottom. but with widescreen, pictures fit perfectly.
2. open 2 my computers or programs and drag and drop your files easily.
3. for windows vista, leave your sidebar there without interfering much of your real desktop space.

It will highly depends on the model you are comparing to but not brand. Different model come with different specs and panel.



Pros
1. You will had better viewing space while watching dvd movies
2. You can open 2 browser side by side and still wont feel that its too small
3. You can enjoying a wider viewing angle while playing driving simulation and games which support wide screen resolution
4. You get alot more desktop space

Cons
1. You will hate it if you dont like it
2. Make all your chars game looks fat if the games doesnt support wide screen resolution
3. No matter you like it or not, most to all large lcd monitors are build base on wide screen ratio/ format

coz widescreen is cool...
open ms word and ie for example and then make tile windows vertically..it still fits
Wide Screen thread

Samsung is similarly guilty with it's DNie engine. Anyway, expecting average LCD's to perform more than 1000:1 is very demanding indeed. Even if the boast the paper specs no one will know. So it's a mistake to judge LCD's on contrast, better go see it for urself. To tell u the truth, my 940BW has the worst contrast among all my LCDs which coincidentally matches the paper spec sheet 

i wonder o2jam support widescreen anot since you like it so much..

nowadays those new games mostly support widescreen already..

normal LCD outdated soon.. it's time to say 'bubye'.. since the LCD prices will continue dropping as well..

The 960BF should sport a better panel I guess. The published contrast ratio seems to be much higher than its entry level models. I think should be a 8 bit panel as it covers more than 92% of the color gamut in the color space. So its more for the graphics intensive users.

I think the 932B should cover most common user expectation, with the less expensive 940BF included.

No no, don't get me wrong. Its just that I can't give recommendations for something I haven't seen yet and not sure how it would look like. The specification sheets are just numbers but what you see is really the value here. I myself is using Viewsonic LCD monitors. In fact my very first LCD was a Viewsonic VA 17" series before I upgraded recently to a 22" from the same brand as well.

So as for Viewsonic brand, I don't know any of its 19" are ok or not because I haven't seen them. But I guess they should be pretty ok. For 20" however, I know the Viewsonic VX2025wm is a good panel.

I do recommend people to look for other alternative brands instead of concentrating with Samsung brand like LG, Acer, etc. But for an easy recommendation for usual expectations usually Samsung would do the trick. Not that I'm anyone from Samsung trying to manipulate sales, thats the most important part of the recommendation process. So don't get me wrong ya!

Cheers!

Guys.. do you all feel that LCD backlight degrade very fast??? My LCD just almost 1 year old and not as bright as before.. I use to be tune down the brightness and contrast to 0 and still very bright.. but now i set to 50 contrast only yield same as the 1st day i use it at 0 brightness and contrast..