My dilemma with selecting a monitor

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Swede88

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My dilemma is that I'm in med school and it's like living Groundhog day over and over in a bunker without much time to do anything else but study. As a result I don't have the time to research stuff as much as I would like and I need some help.

With that being said, my CRT monitor is dying (vertical collapse) and I'm moving towards making the switch to an LCD. After reading quite a few threads here, my main concern is about whether or not my system specs will severely limit what monitors I can/want to buy.

Specs are as follows:

Athlon 64 4400+
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX (256mb)
2 GB ram
etc...

My question is, do I need to upgrade this system to be able to effectively use 22" or 24" LCDs?

This would be used for gaming primarily (when time permits hehe), web surfing, office applications, and my wife viewing her work files (maps, etc...).

P.S. If I do need to upgrade the system it's going to have to wait til July (school ends), but that's fine.

Thanks
 
You will need to upgrade unless you don't mind running your games on low settings. Honestly I would get the monitor and then play around with game settings to see if you can get a playable frame rate at settings you can live with. If not you will need to upgrade to either a 8800GT (~$120 after MIRs) or 8800GTS 512 (~$180 after MIR). Personally I would go with a 8800GT esp of you get a 22". I currently have a 8800GTS 320 and I don't think that it will be enough to run a 24" w/games on high settings which I am considering to buy (BenQ G2400W).
 
I agree, just get the monitor and test it with your favourite games, you can always reduce resolution, detailt and buy a better GFX card later, althou I think your is not that bad.
 
While LCDs look the best in their native rez, it isn't a big deal to turn it down. Your nVidia card will do a pretty good job scaling the images in software (it's one of the options in the nVidia controls) and many monitors have good internal scalers. It's no big deal to run games at lower resolutions.

Heck, I have an 8800GTX and I still reduce rez sometimes. World in Conflict just didn't quite run well enough in 1920x1200 so I knocked it down to 1440x900. I also play older games that don't have high rez support. In both cases, stuff looks just fine.
 
I started this thread about 5 months ago and now I'm posting in it again, because my problem still exists. I didn't get it taken care of over the summer. Now, the vertical collapse in the monitor is now almost impossible to get rid of, so I need to grab a new monitor asap.

Since it's been a while, does anyone have any new suggestions as to a good solution? Or keep with the ones already stated in this thread?

The specs on my desktop are still the same and I'm still looking for a 22" or 24" that my computer can handle.
 
You can try and find a lower res 22" screen but I dont know of any as its not my domain.
Other than that, you will have to buy whats available and upgrade your PC as you see necessary.

Are you looking for some other information?
 
Your existing system should have no problem running any LCD except a 30 incher. I was running a GeForce 7600 with my 24 LCD and it was fine even in gaming. I upgraded to a 8600 for DirectX 10 in Vista, rather than performance.

I am guessing you do not spend a lot of time gaming anyway.

Good luck with your education. It is time well spent.

Dave
 
Sounds to me like ANYTHING would be a huge improvement.

As said before, if you're OK with lower resolutions while gaming, anything will be fine.

Use a local store, Best Buy, etc. to try a monitor or two out. See what you like.

Really a 19-22" is going to be a good area to look in. They mostly all use the 1680x1050 resolution native.

A 7800 will not cut it at this res, especially with newer games.

But, it would be a good place to start.
 
Nenu said:
You can try and find a lower res 22" screen but I dont know of any as its not my domain.
Other than that, you will have to buy whats available and upgrade your PC as you see necessary.

Are you looking for some other information?
Click to expand...

I think I was fishing for some personal experiences with this issue or people who have purchased a new monitor with an older existing rig.

Dave and Traze post's had some good info in them and I've come to the conclusion that I don't have much of a choice right now. I'm going to have to take the plunge and buy a monitor that I like and make it work with my rig, but ensure that it is a good enough monitor to last me a while once I do get time to upgrade my rig further.

Thanks for the suggestions. Now I just have to find one that I can buy locally.
 
Just get a 24" model, it is better for browsing, movie watching and other things.
How much are you willing to spend?
 
Hell, for $500 you could get a 22" TN panel, maybe the new BenQ E2200 full HD or something like it; and still have enough for an HD4850 so long as your PSU can feed it.
 
Bedpan, I think you're making this more complicated than it really need to be.

You have a 7800GTX, it's not that old like an FX 5900. You can run all the resolution just fine, just not fast enough or with a lot of eye candy, heck you can use a lower resolution and most monitors today looks fantastic at a lower resolution.

Since you do have a $500 budget, I agree with flogge, you can grab a new monitor and the HD4850.

Or just grab a bigger 24" monitor and save up to upgrade your system down the road.
 
You're probably right. I've been out of the loop for a bit and felt anxious about not making a good purchase decision.

Anyways, thanks for the information and opinions everyone.
 
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