Is it worth buying a 19" Widescreen or Should I stick with the good ol' cube?

[Therk]

As the title suggests, I'm wondering if tis worth buying a widescreen 19" LCD monitor or should I just stick with the old cubezoid?

Do most games support 1440x900 and does it look any good?

Can you suggest me a monitor under $400? Since I live in New Zealand, prices are different here since the currency is worth less so use this website which lists the cheapest prices: http://www.pricespy.co.nz/cat_5.html

Just scroll down to the 19" LCD part, thanks

 

[keeleysam]

95% of games will support it, unless you are playing Doom 95 or something.

I'd personally go for a 20" widescreen, but that cheap Haans G is going to have the same panel as the rest.

 

[KJ42]

I have a cheap Hanns G 19" widescreen and it works fine. No dead pixels, good response time, my only complaint is the amount of backlight bleeding at darker levels.

 

[peter2679]

i bought my little sister an 19" WS for christmas. i have a 20" myself. big difference. personally, i would buy a 19" FS before the widescreen. it just seems too small to be useful. the only thing it's good for is movies where you actually benefit from the shape of the screen. for regular stuff like work processing and web browsing there is too much blank (wasted) space on the sides. that's just my opinion. she's never really complained about it but she went from a 17 inck tube, so she's just happy about all the desk space she has now.

i've never actually done any gaming on her computer but even on my 20 inch sometimes i feel like i would benefit from more vertical resolution. i would get an even stronger feeling about this on a 19 inch WS monitor.

 

[StopSign]

I prefer 5:4 because it's much more suitable for general computing stuff. I mean, you'll be doing more than just playing games or watching widescreen videos on your computer.

 

[Fraggable]

I love my 19" WS. I haven't seen a current game yet that it didn't work with. BF2 you have to set a few parameters on the shortcut icon to get it to work, but HL, HL2, CS:S, Far Cry, and AOE3 have 1440 X 900 in their list of supported resolutions.

 

[BassBomb]

Try naming more games that dont stretch

BF2 HUD stretches
Doom3 HUD + image stretches

Anything under Source engine works wonders!
Far cry works well (crosshair stretches, but not HUD)

Any of the EA sport games dont support it
NFS MW or Carbon both can use that res but you will lose some vertical

 

[Fraggable]

I never noticed stretching being an issue on BF2. The HUD might look different than on a 4:3 screen but who cares? As long as it's not distorted or anything you would never know the difference.

I've played BF2 on many 4:3 screens and I can honestly say I prefer a widescreen even if it's not 'right'.

EA has never done anything right, don't expect them to support widescreen resolutions anytime soon.

 

[Therk]

Thanks guys, but do you have any reccomendations from the link if I was to buy one?