24 inch vs 19 inch

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smith94672

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
153
My current display is a 19 inch Samsung 940BX. It's about 5 years old.

I'm thinking of upgrading this monitor with something like a 24 inch led. The 24 inch screen would be purchased with an appropriately fast gpu. My reason for wanting to upgrade is because I think my monitor is old and everyone else seem to have larger lcds. I don't know if these are the right reasons for an upgrade but you get my point.

Although I want to make the change, I'm hesitant because I don't know what it is like beyond 1280x1024 res. I'm also concerned about scaling because I sometimes play DOS games, preferably in full-screen. I also don't like to see black vertical lines on the sides of the screen when either watching TV/video or playing games.

Should I stick with the same monitor or should I really upgrade to a 24 inch? Is there anything that a 24 inch can't do that my 19 inch does well?
 
cabech984 said:
If you upgrade from a 19", anything will more than likely be breathtaking. Idk what your budget is but here is a good monitor for the price! I have the VH236H ASUS 23" but this one is a 24".

Youll likely be asked for a budget on the monitor, and budget for a video card. Then plenty of people would be more than likely to help!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236049
Click to expand...

What about the quality of scaling? And will I be seeing anything like empty vertical lines on the sides of the screen when watching videos or playing (sometimes old, sometimes even DOS ) games?

My budget is about $300 for the monitor, and up to $300 again for the video card. That said, I prefer to spend as less as possible.
 
I think you would definitely enjoy the upgrade. The interesting thing about upgrading to widescreen monitors is that for similar diagonals you get much reduced actual square inches of real estate.

For example, you typical 19inch 5:4 monitor is just under 12"x15" with about 175 in^2 of screen to feast your eyes on.

Moving to a 24inch 16:10 monitor gives you 13"x20" with about 260 in^2 of screen to feast your eyes on.

So as you can see the difference in height is actually less than an inch, but you gain about 5 inches in width. Your ppi would climb slightly from about 86 with the 19incher to about 94 with the 24 incher.

In my opinion 16:10 is really an optimal resolution for a monitor as the increased peripheral vision provides for better immersion when gaming. As far as watching tv goes, it should work fine. Lost of people of widescreen televisions and most tv signal is still not widescreen and everyone does just fine.
 
smith94672 said:
What about the quality of scaling? And will I be seeing anything like empty vertical lines on the sides of the screen when watching videos or playing (sometimes old, sometimes even DOS ) games?

My budget is about $300 for the monitor, and up to $300 again for the video card. That said, I prefer to spend as less as possible.
Click to expand...


Tbh, the only way to know if you will be happy with the quality of scaling and such is for you to pick one up and test it out. If you don't like it return it. The fact that the trend is definitely moving people to bigger monitors shows that most people prefer them.
 
I recently went from an eight year old 19" CRT that I ran at 1280x854 / 1152x864 / 1024x768 to a 24" 1080 monitor. Mind = blown. Totally. The extra screen size and resolution is amazing. Not to mention various increases in image quality due to all this fancy new technology. Thought I would struggle with crappy black levels but that has not been the case.

My exact model is in my sig. I love it and whish I would have upgraded a long time ago.

So I say yes, go for it. :)

As for scaling and old games, that is a concern of mine, too. I'm a big fan of older games, and have spent some $$$ on Good Old Games and Steam. I go back to Blood, Redneck Rampage, Interstate 76and so on. I haven't tried any of them yet though, probably because the newer games look so awesome.

I can say that "newer" old games like Half Life 2, Bioshock 1, FEAR 1, Crysis 1, and Stalker 1 look fantastic.
 
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what about watching videos and movies? Any chance that the videos would be displayed with vertical black lines on the sides?

To my knowledge, 24 inch screens are widescreen. On widescreen monitors, is there a chance of having videos or games appear stretched out horizontally?

Also, coming from a 19 inch monitor, is there any point in me upgrading to a 20 inch or 22 inch screen rather than a 24 inch?
 
Only 4:3 movies will display black bars on the side. 16:9 is the standard formart, nothing will be stretched.

20" is pointless and will seem tiny. 23-24" LCD's costs around 250$ and are tested to have good performance typically. No one tests the tiny models.
 
smith94672 said:
What about the quality of scaling? And will I be seeing anything like empty vertical lines on the sides of the screen when watching videos or playing (sometimes old, sometimes even DOS ) games?

My budget is about $300 for the monitor, and up to $300 again for the video card. That said, I prefer to spend as less as possible.
Click to expand...

I'm in the middle of the same upgrade myself, after borrowing a friend's 24" for a few months. I'm looking for a video card at the moment (which is what brought me to hardforum). I just got my Samsung 24" BX2440X a month ago from Amazon. They hover around $250, which is well within your $300 limit. Going from 19 to 24 is going to be a huge change for you. If you're like me, you'll find yourself running two windows side-by-side using Windows 7's snap feature (assuming you're on win7) A LOT.

If the monitor you get has a high contrast ratio, you won't have to worry about being distracted by the backlighting of the black bars when watching 4:3 media. If you're saavy enough to be running a DOS emulator for older games, you'll be able to tweak the resolution to keep the aspect ratio and avoid stretching. The positives far outweigh the negatives when upgrading to 24". Almost all videos made these days are widescreen, whether it be youtube or bluray.
 
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what do you all think of a Samsung BX2431, paired with a 6950 2 gb card and an i5-2500k ?

I'm afraid the 6950 gpu would become obsolete relatively quick for modern games on the native res of a 24 inch screen.
 
@smith94672

Just out of curiosity, what games do you play on DOS?
What OS are you running?
 
joeshmoe said:
@smith94672

Just out of curiosity, what games do you play on DOS?
What OS are you running?
Click to expand...

Mostly adventure games from the very early 90s on a DOS emulator, on Win XP.

The graphics are obviously horrible by today's standards.
 
Just my opinion, but I wouldnt base a monitor purchase around DOS games! You're missing out by not having a high-res monitor, at least thats what I thought after upgrading myself!
 
What do people here think of a Samsung BX2431 24 inch LED? Are there any better suggestions?

The BX2431 is the one I'm contemplating but I couldn't make an outright decision because I'm unable to see it in person. As I also said before, I'm afraid of seeing old games that won't fill up the entire screen. Same with video files. Scaling is also important because I understand that 1920x1080 res will require relatively more gpu power to the extent where it's better to play certain games at a lower res for a higher fps. All of the above is what I'm very worried about. I don't want to have to purchase a monitor and then return it.
 
+1 on a 30 inch monitor.

30's are proabably the last step before getting/using a LCD TV/Plama/Projector as a primary PC monitor.

while working at a desk, 30's pretty much fill your field of view.

where to get one?
i assume Dell still makes them. mines a Samsung but not sure they still make 30's
they (30's) use the older 16:10 (2560x1600) res which i think is the superior ratio, compared to the newer 16:9
 
realised the question was for a 'LED' monitor, not for a 'CCFL' LCD.
i know samsung made one and probably NEC (tho that isn't going to be cheap)
 
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