22" LCD too big for gaming?

[marcplante]

I just bought a viewsonic VX2235 22" LCD as part of a computer I am building for my mother. I plugged it into my desktop to check out its performance.

Athlon64 3000+
1 Gig PC3200 RAM
MSI 6600gt 128MB video card
running native resolution 1680x1050

For web surfing, the screen is very nice. Moving on to videos and video games it seems to pixelate. Even running BZ Flag, a freeware game with fairly basic graphics, the monitor blurs seemingly unable to move the pixels around fast enough. Does a monitor like this need a faster card? Am I overlooking some settings to improve performance?


My usual monitor is a 20" Trinitron CRT.

 

[SickBeast]

Gaming on my 24" 2405FPW is nice.

So...in a word..."NO".

 

[Sniper82]

if your trying to play games thats come out in the past couple years at the monitors native res using a 6600GT then yeah its likely the video card. You need at least a 7600GT IMO for that res. Of course faster the better. You must run everything at its native res if you want things to look their best.

 

[Shortass]

Er, if it's blurring then it's probably because the panel is ghosting, which won't be fixed by a new video card. If it's lagging then it'd help.

 

[Sniper82]

Originally posted by: Shortass
Er, if it's blurring then it's probably because the panel is ghosting, which won't be fixed by a new video card. If it's lagging then it'd help.

true but its hard to say if the games are just running slow or ghosting the way he described the problem. What games are you trying to run and at what res/settings? That will likely tell us what the problem is.

 

[chizow]

Make sure you're running the games/videos at your LCD's native resolution. If you're running some freeware game from 1992, chances are its not running at 1680x1050, more like 640 x 480 or something. So ya, that would look like a big pixelated mess on a 22".

There's the other issue of pixel pitch/density, which I found to be a little bit too high for my tastes on the 22" panels. But that's probably not as much of a problem as running in a low non-native resolution.

 

[marcplante]

I'm running the screen at native resolution 1680x1050 using drivers updated from the Viewsonic site.

Game is BZFlag (BZFlag.org) though I haven't run others. The game's origins are old, but it's patched fairly frequently to keep it current. The game's setup screen includes a 1680x1050 resolution setting.

I have copies of HL2 and Doom3 that should serve as good benchmarks, though I suspect I lack the GPU horsepower to properly run them.

I also ran a DVD whose resolution was a bit pixelated. I suspect using a DVI card would help this.

I started with a VGA connection since the PC I'm hooking this to will only have a DVI port if I plug in an extra video card. I was trying to keep the costs down as this is a basic surfing machine for my mother that will only serve occasional video and video conferencing duty.

All of the games testing is my speculation as I consider buying another monitor for myself.

I'm betting that the problem is Lag from a too slow card. I'll consider people's recommendations in this thread and possibly hand my 6600GT down to my mother to make her surfing a little more pleasureable.

Thanks,

Marc

 

[videopho]

This monitor runs perfectly fine with my 7900GTO, both for gaming and photo/video work.
You need a much higher card to match the monitor.