Dual Widescreens or Big Single Screen

[alkalinetaupehat]

I've played around with monitors which have stands that allow rotation of the monitor and base pivoting, and recently noticed on Dell the presence of a Professional line of monitors which have a $50 premium and the aforementioned stands.

Now that ATI has their Eyefinity technology on the market allowing multi-monitor aggregation, I've been interested in getting a second 22" @ 1680x1050 to accompany my current 22". Before that I was considering a 42" 1080p set which I could use for movies, gaming consoles, and TV alongside my PC gaming habit, and thinking about simply waiting for an affordable OLED set offering a similar feature set.

In favor of the second 22", I like the thought of a 2nd widescreen LCD which can be rotated to accomodate long lists of text and the overall cost of purchasing a 5850+22" (~$450) would be lower than a 42" 1080p set (~$600). OTOH however the 42" seems to be more multimedia-friendly and I would still have my current 22" which I could build an inexpensive frame to hold it vertically.

Rig in sig as always, and this purchase should be sometime next summer so prices on the 5850 can settle and I can make a rational decision

Thanks!

 

[LCD123]

Your GTX285 should handle your 22" or 42" monitor just fine. Go for it and get a 42" and use that as your primary monitor! I love my 32" 1360x768!

As for OLED, that will take 20 years for them to become cheap. A 15" OLED is $5000 today!

 

[Red Storm]

I had a 42" 1080P display that I used to game on for quite a while. I've recently switched to a 24" monitor (going 30" soon) and I find the higher resolution count far superior over sheer size.

 

[Tempered81]

I've used 22" lcd's, a 9" dell mini 9 8.9", 42" samsung, 37" insigina, a 70" projection 1990's toshiba, a projector screen, 4:3 17" lcds, 14" ws laptop screens. My favorite is a high quality 32-46" HDTV with surround/subwoofer. Samsung & sony look very nice.

You can't beat a large screen 1080P with AA on your favorite pc game. I voted for the 1080P HDTV

 

[0roo0roo]

yea... super low pixel density on a large screen is pretty awful for anything but video...and thats sitting back a bit which is unlikely if you are running dual setup. a single bigger monitor is better if you keep pixel density to computing levels.

 

[alyarb]

tempered is right. low pixel density is mitigated because you're sitting 24-36 inches farther away than you would sit from a 24" monitor, and 2x AA has minimal performance hit these days. if you have a dx11 card you'll be able to run 4x or 8x without much of a hit.

 

[Ben90]

Why dont u just move ur 22" closer? Fixes everything

 

[thilanliyan]

Either 3 monitors or one big monitor. Having 2 monitors means you'll always have a big bar in the middle of everything (depending on what you play).

 

[aequasi]

all i have to say is 1080p can go climp up a tree and do something disturbing to itself, for a little bit more money, you could get a 30" dell with 2560x1600 (a higher resolution than 1080p) and use that (especially for gaming).

i am personally disgusted witht the fact that a lot of these companies are switching to the HD resolutions...

 

[alkalinetaupehat]

Originally posted by: aequasi
all i have to say is 1080p can go climp up a tree and do something disturbing to itself, for a little bit more money, you could get a 30" dell with 2560x1600 (a higher resolution than 1080p) and use that (especially for gaming).

i am personally disgusted witht the fact that a lot of these companies are switching to the HD resolutions...

I'm not personally a fan of the 16:10 panels in the slightest, it freaks me out when I walk into a lab and see all these 1080p 22"s. My budget maxes around $600, so what do you mean by "a little bit more"? $1000 is ~67% more than $600.

 

[Wreckage]

I would rather have a large monitor, can't stand the separation between 2 monitors for gaming.

 

[Concillian]

I use 2 monitors, but it only really works well for WoW, where you put the viewport on one monitor and all the chat windows, maps, meters, etc... on the second. Any other game, I pretty much stick to just the one monitor.

 

[aequasi]

well then stick with a 24" with a 1900x1200 for 300-600, or get two

 

[djnsmith7]

I voted for the 1080P option. I game on a 58" 1080P plasma & don't have any complaints.