Which monitor to top off my new rig?

[joesixpack64]

I recently built a rig with these components:
Visiontek GeForce 4 Ti4600
Intel P4 Northwood 1.6 @2.14
Asus P4T-E w/ ICS DRCGs
512 MB Rambus PC800 @PC1066
SB Audigy Platinum
IBM 60g 60gxp
TDK 24x burner, DVD, etc.

Presently I am still using my old monitor- a 17" Sony 200 ES 1024x768 @85 Hz. I have my old rig networked to the new one, but no monitor on the old rig so I definitely need another monitor of some kind.

I'm guessing I want something that will run at 1600x1200 @85hz for gaming, correct?.

I've looked at three 19 inchers that will do so- Samsung 900nf, the Sony g420 and the Cornerstone p2460. They are all aperture grill monitors like my 17" Sony. Will any of these do justice to this rig, or do I need to dig deeper than $300, $400 or so? With the 350Mhz RAMDAC on the G4, how important is the pixel clock on a monitor to get all I can out of my G4? For example, the cornerstone has a 297 Mhz pixel clock for $289.

 

[SuperGroove]

Samsung 900NF hands down.

 

[jaeger66]

Sony. It's uniform grille pitch is a nice upgrade from the aging Samsung, which has been known to have suspect quality in the corners and at the edges.

 

[joohang]

They're all excellent monitors.

Perhaps Sony because of the colour saturation, since it looks like your primary use for the monitor will be games.

 

[Gstanfor]

Philips 109P20. Easily the equal of any 19" Sony monitor I've ever seen with better refresh rates, a short neck, very sharp, bright and well focussed. It is a professional class monitor and you can tell too. No brightness shifts, no screen shrinkage when shifting from bright to dark screens no color impurities, just a nice clear picture at a reasonable price.

Greg

 

[jaeger66]

That Philips lists at $100 more than the Sony G410R. For $470, it better be good.

 

[Gstanfor]

It certainly is. It has a Mitsubishi Diamondtron flat shortneck tube, supports refresh rates of at least 100Hz or more up to 1280x960 and 85hz out to 1600x1024, 75hz for 1600x1200 and tops out at 1920x1440 (60hz). It has BNC coonectors also.

Philips has been in the monitor game for a long time. As I've posted here before they are the name behind the old Commodore Amiga monitors, most of which are still in active service, a large number of them in TV studios to boot. The last of those produced would be a decade old now and the earliest going on 15 years.

I've sold plenty of the 109P20, use one myself and it is good enough that I'll be replacing my old 17" fishbowl on the spare system with a second one.

Greg

 

[Gosharkss]

Pixel clock is extremely important, especially if you want to run higher resolutions and refresh rates. There are three components to video timing, the pixel clock, the horizontal refresh rate and the vertical refresh rate. The vertical refresh rate, also called the vertical frequency.

The pixel clock is the amount of time it takes to draw on pixel on the screen. The horizontal refresh is the time it takes to draw one line. The vertical refresh rate, also called the vertical frequency, vertical scanning frequency, or simply refresh rate, is a measure of how many full screens the monitor draws per second and is given in hertz (Hz).

When you increase the refresh rate both the horizontal refresh and the pixel clock increase. In order to draw frames faster you must draw lines faster, which means you must draw pixels faster.