Viewsonic VX2025wm arrived! First impressions and pics

Got this monitor up and running last night, and all i can say is WOW. The image quality is superb, the text is crisp, the backlight bleeding is virtually non-existant, and eberything else is just awesome! Im playing BF2 @ 1680 on high with my X1800Xl and loving it!

vx4.jpg


vx5.jpg


vx6.jpg


This monitor blows my L90D+ out of the water, and i think its an EXCELLENT WS monitor. im going WS all the time now from now on for sure.
 
I ordered one from Amazon.com last night about 10 pm for only $339.99 + $9.99 shipping.
:)
I couldn't resist after seeing DigitalEdge's Oblivion pics he posted. Widescreen just looks really good for gaming. After placing the order, I went back to the webpage for it a couple hrs later and that price was history. I was going to post hear to tell everyone about the price, but I had to sign up and wait to get authorized to post in the forum.
Anyways, I never had a LCD, much less anything widescreen. So this is definately going to be a big change, hopefully for the better. Previous monitors were a Dell 17 CRT, and now a Samsung SyncMaster 997DF CRT.
However, I do have some concerns:
Resolution: 1680x1050..... man, that is high :eek:
I cranked up my crt (1600X1200) just to see what it would be like that high. Eye strain, even after raising font size. But, it could've been that my monitor can't display text well at anything above 1024x768..it was sort of fuzzy. But, I heard LCDs, especially with a DVI, have very sharp text. Hoping so......considering most of the time in front of monitor is spent reading and programming.
I have a BFG 6800gt OC AGP card and I am worried about being able to play games with a playable framerate. I could just run COD2 in DirectX7 mode and turn some stuff down in Halflife2 for e.g. But, for Oblivion, no way in hell at 1680x1050 :mad: Guess, it's time to go PCI and either a 1900xt or new Geforce card.
I also plan on getting an XBOX 360. I've seen the 360 running on a Samsung 32 LCD with a VGA and it looked amazing. Another poster here said the VGA for Xbox 360 isn't a good solution, but I've read otherwise from other people, so I hope it turns out ok.
 
OP, how did you hack BF2 to do the widescreen deal? I havent been able to find info on it, albet im not the greatest at searching :(

-Cameron
 
techer said:
I ordered one from Amazon.com last night about 10 pm for only $339.99 + $9.99 shipping.
:)
I couldn't resist after seeing DigitalEdge's Oblivion pics he posted. Widescreen just looks really good for gaming. After placing the order, I went back to the webpage for it a couple hrs later and that price was history. I was going to post hear to tell everyone about the price, but I had to sign up and wait to get authorized to post in the forum.
Anyways, I never had a LCD, much less anything widescreen. So this is definately going to be a big change, hopefully for the better. Previous monitors were a Dell 17 CRT, and now a Samsung SyncMaster 997DF CRT.
However, I do have some concerns:
Resolution: 1680x1050..... man, that is high :eek:
I cranked up my crt (1600X1200) just to see what it would be like that high. Eye strain, even after raising font size. But, it could've been that my monitor can't display text well at anything above 1024x768..it was sort of fuzzy. But, I heard LCDs, especially with a DVI, have very sharp text. Hoping so......considering most of the time in front of monitor is spent reading and programming.
I have a BFG 6800gt OC AGP card and I am worried about being able to play games with a playable framerate. I could just run COD2 in DirectX7 mode and turn some stuff down in Halflife2 for e.g. But, for Oblivion, no way in hell at 1680x1050 :mad: Guess, it's time to go PCI and either a 1900xt or new Geforce card.
I also plan on getting an XBOX 360. I've seen the 360 running on a Samsung 32 LCD with a VGA and it looked amazing. Another poster here said the VGA for Xbox 360 isn't a good solution, but I've read otherwise from other people, so I hope it turns out ok.

Wow you got an incredible deal, if I would have known about it I would have bought another one. Awesome LCD and at that price its a no brainier

Oblivion 1680x1050 Amazing game in WideScreen btw:Im running a 7800gtx

VSO4.jpg
 
sanitystream said:
2) BUT... as an Xbox 360 monitor it doesn't cut it. The problem isn't really the monitor at all, it's the damn 360's VGA cable. For some inexplicable reason, Microsoft's VGA cable severely washes out colors, gamma, and contrast. I knew this going in and had my fingers crossed. You see, on my old Dell CRT I could over-compensate for this "wash out" by maxxing my individual color levels (R,G,B) to 100. That took care of the problem, and everything looked fine.

Hmm, I wonder if the Monster VGA will fix this problem. Have you tried the Monster one yet? May not do much better, but may be worth a shot. I may get around to doing it first next week If I am able to pick up the monitor by then.

-DarkLegacy
 
DigitalEdge said:
Wow you got an incredible deal, if I would have known about it I would have bought another one. Awesome LCD and at that price its a no brainier

Oblivion 1680x1050 Amazing game in WideScreen btw:Im running a 7800gtx

Your picture is awesome!!!
 
DarkLegacy said:
Hmm, I wonder if the Monster VGA will fix this problem. Have you tried the Monster one yet? May not do much better, but may be worth a shot. I may get around to doing it first next week If I am able to pick up the monitor by then.


I don't think it has anything to do with the cable, nobody has ever said Monster's VGA looked better. It's just how the Xbox 360 outputs the signal.

Now then...

My search for a proper monitor to run both an Xbox 360 and a PC paid off. I spent a lot of time at stores messing around with color controls, trying to find one where I could oversaturate the color levels to compensate for the crappy Xbox VGA cable. And the winner is...

The Gateway FPD2185W. I bought one at Best Buy and brought it home and the Xbox 360 looks just fine on it through the VGA cable with R,G,B, levels all maxxed to 100. In fact, running it through the Gateway's component is not advisable since (like many people have said) the Gateway's component is too dark.

So to sum up my experience this weekend:

-The Viewsonic VX2025wm is a terrific monitor if you're only going to run it on a PC. I bought one, but then found it does not fare well with the Xbox 360 because it cannot oversaturate the color levels to compensate for the VGA cable "wash out" effect. (And for what it's worth, the Viewsonic cannot re-scale images that aren't native resolution. They distort and stretch).

-The Gateway FPD2185W is a terrific monitor for both PC and Xbox 360, the 360's color levels look fine on this baby. Downside is, the component input is too dark, but I don't really need that and I recommend running your Xbox 360 via the VGA cable with this monitor. It's definitely sharper that way. The upside with the Gateway is it *can* re-scale images: you can pick "Zoom", "Wide", or "1:1". The last option will just leave the image alone, so for instance 1024x768 will be a 4:3 box in the middle of the screen with black bars on the sides.

One last thought: on both the Viewsonic and Gateway, I'd have to say the Xbox 360's image (1280x768) is fine, but not quite up to par with the way it looks on a good CRT. Stretching 1280x768 to fit 1680x1050 works just fine, but you do lose some clarity and sharpness and there's nothing you can do about it. You're gaining more real estate, a bigger image, and the proper wide aspect ratio in exchange for crispness.
 
NOW LETS SEE THE FW900 IN ACTION WITH OBLIVION :)

DigitalEdge said:
Wow you got an incredible deal, if I would have known about it I would have bought another one. Awesome LCD and at that price its a no brainier

Oblivion 1680x1050 Amazing game in WideScreen btw:Im running a 7800gtx

VSO4.jpg
 
sanitystream said:
One last thought: on both the Viewsonic and Gateway, I'd have to say the Xbox 360's image (1280x768) is fine, but not quite up to par with the way it looks on a good CRT. Stretching 1280x768 to fit 1680x1050 works just fine, but you do lose some clarity and sharpness and there's nothing you can do about it. You're gaining more real estate, a bigger image, and the proper wide aspect ratio in exchange for crispness.
do you mean 1280x720, or is there some sort of provision built into the 360 that sends 1280x768 when outputting to VGA?? 'cause thru component, it's definitely 1280x720, hence "720p", and WS on any flat panel PC display i've ever seen has always been 16x10 (ie: 1280x800). i ask because if you're sending 1280x720 to the Gateway display, you must be seeing a letterboxed image? if not, then i guess it's a slightly stretched 16x9. oh well, i'll give it a swirl myself in a couple weeks when my VS comes in.
 
killedaway said:
do you mean 1280x720, or is there some sort of provision built into the 360 that sends 1280x768 when outputting to VGA?? 'cause thru component, it's definitely 1280x720, hence "720p", and WS on any flat panel PC display i've ever seen has always been 16x10 (ie: 1280x800). i ask because if you're sending 1280x720 to the Gateway display, you must be seeing a letterboxed image? if not, then i guess it's a slightly stretched 16x9. oh well, i'll give it a swirl myself in a couple weeks when my VS comes in.


When you use the Xbox 360's VGA cable you have a variety of options, among them 1280x720 and 1280x768 (I use 1280x768). I just set my Gateway to "Wide" mode and the image fits the whole screen. Or you could use 1:1 and you'd get black bars to the sides and above, but that's sort of pointless because you'd be using a lot less of your available screen.
 
wonkman said:
I haven't tried it but I've read a few posts that teh Nvidia software will scale and keep the proper ratio. Don't know about ATi.

Hello all,

Does somebody, could post the photo of a game in 800x600 (or 1025x768) with "the option" of the 7900gt or 7900gtx, to see if there are black bars..

Thank you for your help.
 
Ouch...suddenly now I'm in a tough spot now that I heard the 360 looks like crap on the VX2025wm. Would anyone be able to post some pics, or is there anyone else that has tried this and can provide some additional input?

The Gateway that Sanitystream mentioned is approx $200 more...are there alternatives in the same price-range (excluding the Dell)?

Thanks...

--Dev
 
I purchased the Viewsonic VX2025wm last Friday and finally got the chance to fire it up. Coming from a solid 19" Dell CRT, my intial impressions are:

PROs:
  • Great looking monitor. Blends well with my Saitech keyboard and MX1000 mouse.
  • Image quality is EXCELLENT. I have ZERO dead pixels (verified with Dead Pixel Buddy) and almost no backlighting. I really cannot see the backlighting expect when the black screensaver kicks on.
  • Text is VERY sharp and clear (using DVI-D cable). Much sharper/clearer than my CRT.
  • Color rendition is great as well. I have not checked this thoroughly in Photoshop, but the colors seems very vibrant and "punchy". This is on default settings.
  • No ghosting at all. I played NFS:MW and didn't notice any ghosting whatsoever.
  • Price is VERY reasonable for this quality. I paid $394 (before taxes/after rebate) for this most excellent monitor.
  • This monitor is a keeper given its quality and overall value.
CONs:
  • No pivot mode or height adjustment. I suppose you could buy an Ergo-tron flex arm and rotation software to make this work. This is NOT important to me, as my desk hutch prevents me from a orienting any monitor in portrait mode or raising the monitor much higher. No big deal for my needs.
  • Scaling? I am not too sure on this as I have not thoroughly tested this. I have not yet detemined if I can make games run in a windowed mode at lower resolutions (i..e 1024x768 with black bars around it). Anything in non-native resolution seems to get stretched across the monitor. I've had to hack my games to get them to native res (BF2, NFS:MW, LOTR:BFME2)
  • Sparkliness. Hard to describe, but some colors have a bit of sparkle to them. Seems to be caused by the glarescreen layer in front of the LCD pixel panel. Not a deal-breaker, just something to note that may affect the overall image quality for still photos. I do not notice this in games or videos.
  • Additional investment may be required. Not sure if my ATI X800XT will be able to keep up with all the great games I will soon want to play (ES: Oblivion, Crysis, etc.) Being that I have not made the leap to PCI-E, this great new monitor may force earlier upgrade plans to better achieve this high res with better FPS rates.
In summary, I find this to be an excellent monitor for the money. Highly recommended for those gamers sitting on the fence with CRT. I like the clarity of this monitor for everyday desktop usage (web surfing, text apps, etc.) and games look great as well. Nice upgrade to any existing CRT-based PC rig.

My PC Rig specs:

Intel 2.8Ghz Pentium IV (OC's to 3.2Ghz)
2Gb Corsair XMS RAM
Asus P4P800 mobo
ATI AIW X800XT (Omega drivers)
WD 180Gb HD; Maxtor 120Gb HD
Lite-On DVD-RW drive, Lite-On CD-RW drive
Saitek Eclipse keyboard
Logitech MX1000 mouse
Nostromo n52 Speedpad
and now... Viewsonic VX2025wm LCD widescreen monitor
 
I agree with the Sparkliness comment above...whites are really sparkly..It doesn't bother me much, but some people may find it unacceptable

BTW, has anyone tried to force 75hz refresh on this monitor yet?
 
HoodooGuru said:
[*]Scaling? I am not too sure on this as I have not thoroughly tested this. I have not yet detemined if I can make games run in a windowed mode at lower resolutions (i..e 1024x768 with black bars around it). Anything in non-native resolution seems to get stretched across the monitor. I've had to hack my games to get them to native res (BF2, NFS:MW, LOTR:BFME2)


No, the Viewsonic does not scale non-native resolutions. It just stretches all images to fit the whole screen, no letterboxing is done. This means you need to play your games in the proper aspect ratio modes (like 1280x768, 1650x1050, etc.) to avoid distortion.
 
HoodooGuru please let me know about the resolutions and your video card.
Things like BF2 if you think the card is fast enough at this res and what settings
you are doing in game...some friends are running low on almost all settings and
feel that its not much different than high..nothing in game I would notice...lying there
dirt color looks the same LOL

I have an x800xl agp on a high oc system....I guess I am waiting for conroe
before I upgrade the video.
 
sparks said:
HoodooGuru please let me know about the resolutions and your video card.
Things like BF2 if you think the card is fast enough at this res and what settings
you are doing in game...some friends are running low on almost all settings and
feel that its not much different than high..nothing in game I would notice...lying there
dirt color looks the same LOL

I have an x800xl agp on a high oc system....I guess I am waiting for conroe
before I upgrade the video.
I have not yet played BF2 with this... I just set it up to run and haven't yet found the time to play it. I will in the next few days, so I'll report my findings here. I, too, would like to wait on upgrading my mobo and vidcard, but the game requirement may force my hand (wallet) earlier than expected... ;)
 
I dont know if its been mentioned before but the VA712b, although not widescreen and as large and nice as this, suffered from image persistance. If i were to upgrade to this one, does it suffer like the va712b from image persistance? Have you noticed anything of that sort yet? What has been your longest time w/ one image in the same place?
 
Windows Media Play 6.4

If I play a movie that is 4:3 ratio, and I select Media Player to VIEW FULL SCREEN, will it fill the entire screen and be stretched, or will it show black bars on both sides and retain the 4:3 ratio?
 
HoodooGuru said:
I purchased the Viewsonic VX2025wm last Friday and finally got the chance to fire it up. Coming from a solid 19" Dell CRT, my intial impressions are:

PROs:
  • Great looking monitor. Blends well with my Saitech keyboard and MX1000 mouse.
  • Image quality is EXCELLENT. I have ZERO dead pixels (verified with Dead Pixel Buddy) and almost no backlighting. I really cannot see the backlighting expect when the black screensaver kicks on.
  • Text is VERY sharp and clear (using DVI-D cable). Much sharper/clearer than my CRT.
  • Color rendition is great as well. I have not checked this thoroughly in Photoshop, but the colors seems very vibrant and "punchy". This is on default settings.
  • No ghosting at all. I played NFS:MW and didn't notice any ghosting whatsoever.
  • Price is VERY reasonable for this quality. I paid $394 (before taxes/after rebate) for this most excellent monitor.
  • This monitor is a keeper given its quality and overall value.
CONs:
  • No pivot mode or height adjustment. I suppose you could buy an Ergo-tron flex arm and rotation software to make this work. This is NOT important to me, as my desk hutch prevents me from a orienting any monitor in portrait mode or raising the monitor much higher. No big deal for my needs.
  • Scaling? I am not too sure on this as I have not thoroughly tested this. I have not yet detemined if I can make games run in a windowed mode at lower resolutions (i..e 1024x768 with black bars around it). Anything in non-native resolution seems to get stretched across the monitor. I've had to hack my games to get them to native res (BF2, NFS:MW, LOTR:BFME2)
  • Sparkliness. Hard to describe, but some colors have a bit of sparkle to them. Seems to be caused by the glarescreen layer in front of the LCD pixel panel. Not a deal-breaker, just something to note that may affect the overall image quality for still photos. I do not notice this in games or videos.
  • Additional investment may be required. Not sure if my ATI X800XT will be able to keep up with all the great games I will soon want to play (ES: Oblivion, Crysis, etc.) Being that I have not made the leap to PCI-E, this great new monitor may force earlier upgrade plans to better achieve this high res with better FPS rates.
In summary, I find this to be an excellent monitor for the money. Highly recommended for those gamers sitting on the fence with CRT. I like the clarity of this monitor for everyday desktop usage (web surfing, text apps, etc.) and games look great as well. Nice upgrade to any existing CRT-based PC rig.

My PC Rig specs:

Intel 2.8Ghz Pentium IV (OC's to 3.2Ghz)
2Gb Corsair XMS RAM
Asus P4P800 mobo
ATI AIW X800XT (Omega drivers)
WD 180Gb HD; Maxtor 120Gb HD
Lite-On DVD-RW drive, Lite-On CD-RW drive
Saitek Eclipse keyboard
Logitech MX1000 mouse
Nostromo n52 Speedpad
and now... Viewsonic VX2025wm LCD widescreen monitor

Many thanks for your input, man! My spec is close to yours except I'm running a 9800pro 128M..otherwise, I'm also having a P4 2.8c with 1G RAM...Now for me I'm planning to upgrade my AGP card to 7800GS now...really wish the vx2025wm can do scaling...
 
Another thing i've noticed, at least to my eyes, that text, especially white text, seems a little off, like blurry or something. Almost like theres' a sort of purplish glow over it. I"m starting to think it's the antiglare coating doing it. I have it set to cleartype, it makes it a little better. Anyone comment on this? Suggestions? Using the supplied DVI cable. Brightness is on 30, Contrast at 70 gamma at .83
 
WickedWeasel said:
Windows Media Play 6.4

If I play a movie that is 4:3 ratio, and I select Media Player to VIEW FULL SCREEN, will it fill the entire screen and be stretched, or will it show black bars on both sides and retain the 4:3 ratio?
I'm using Windows Media Playter 10. For movies in 4:3 ratio, it shows black bars on both sides and retains the original 4:3 ratio...

Have yet to try my HD WMV movies...
 
HoodooGuru said:
I'm using Windows Media Playter 10. For movies in 4:3 ratio, it shows black bars on both sides and retains the original 4:3 ratio...

Have yet to try my HD WMV movies...
Oh really, so you DO mean it can scale....? How is it in the game....? Many said that it cannot scale...
 
I'm pretty sure it won't scale in games, at least I haven't figured out a way to do it yet.
So.. you'll need a pretty beefy video card to get the most out of games while playing at 1680x1050.
You CAN play at different resolutions, but it likes to stretch it to fit.
 
I actually decided to keep my 2025. It grew on me as soon as I found some games that supported WS. :D

.. That and gave me a reason to build a new rig. ;)
 
jedicri said:
For my setting, I have Digital Vibrance almost between the first two dots; Brightness I left at the default setting (100%); Contrast at 115%; Gamma at 0.91; Image Sharpening all the way to the left.

But that's just me and my personal preference.
Are you guys connected via DVI or VGA? I cannot access that manual settings menu with the Digital Vibrance & Image shapening selections. The PDF manual states this is unavailable when running DVI (vs. VGA).
 
jekyll917 said:
Oh really, so you DO mean it can scale....? How is it in the game....? Many said that it cannot scale...
I broke down and bought ES: Oblivion. Looks frickin awesome at native resolution, and I am NOT having any problems with my FPS! My specs are pretty modest compared to other beefy rigs out there. I certainly don't have many setting cranked up (i.e. AA, draw distance, etc.), but it looks so good at 1680x1050 that I don't feel I'm missing much.

Also, I played BF2. Looks great as well, though BF2 has totally nerfed true support for true widescreen (no proper FOV at 1680x1050). But, I have to say it DOES make it a more immersive experience filling your peripheral vision with more screen and action.
 
Voltron said:
I actually decided to keep my 2025. It grew on me as soon as I found some games that supported WS. :D

.. That and gave me a reason to build a new rig. ;)
Damn, now that I'm at 1680x1050, my wallet is crying out for an new X1900XT... which also means a new MOBO and CPU... :eek:
 
Exactly. I had to upgrade my old pc but there was SO much to upgrade, it turned into me just building a new one. I guess that's what happens when u wait 3 years to update. :eek:
 
HoodooGuru said:
I broke down and bought ES: Oblivion. Looks frickin awesome at native resolution, and I am NOT having any problems with my FPS! My specs are pretty modest compared to other beefy rigs out there. I certainly don't have many setting cranked up (i.e. AA, draw distance, etc.), but it looks so good at 1680x1050 that I don't feel I'm missing much.

Also, I played BF2. Looks great as well, though BF2 has totally nerfed true support for true widescreen (no proper FOV at 1680x1050). But, I have to say it DOES make it a more immersive experience filling your peripheral vision with more screen and action.
Many thanks for your nice input!! Now I know what I have to do...buy a decent vid card and then wait for the down-price for this monitor.... :cool:
 
I guess what is really keeping me from buying is it can't re-scale images
if it did this would be at my house tonight

the gateway does Zoom,Wide,and 1:1
but it has toooo many down sides..

is there a 20 or 21" that has all the good points and none of the bad?


sparks
 
sparks said:
I guess what is really keeping me from buying is it can't re-scale images
if it did this would be at my house tonight

the gateway does Zoom,Wide,and 1:1
but it has toooo many down sides..

is there a 20 or 21" that has all the good points and none of the bad?


sparks

What about the new Samsung 215TW? I'm trying to find more info on it.
 
The only thing it doesn't scale is games. If your refering to images as picture and movies, it can scale those fine. Might have to monkey with the display properties or the setting in the video player your using, but it can do it.
 
well, my wife was playing The Sims (yes, I know) last night...and when i went in there to talk to her for a second, i noticed the game was playing with black bars on the sides..so i made her move obviously and went and checked the resolution, and it was at 1024x768. The image was not stretched, there were black bars on the sides...it looked rather good actually. The only thing i can think of is that in the Nvidia Driver panel i changed scaling to Fixed Aspect Ratio...I am at work right now, but when i get home tonight I will try to post some pics to confirm this. Now hopefully I wasn't just on last night and it still works tonight.
 
Nephandus said:
well, my wife was playing The Sims (yes, I know) last night...the game was playing with black bars on the sides...

I'm so happy to hear that.... Hope you will able ti give A LOT of screenshots
:D

Thanks a lot for the time you will take. ;)
 
oh man I hope hope hope....Nephandus hope to hear more

ps on a site I was on several people were talking about HIDDEN
screen menus on a lot of the LCD monitors.
wonder if this one has one with some options on display settings.
Zoom,Wide,and 1:1

have to get home and check and see...do the ATI drivers have an aspect ratio lock or something?

how is BB on exchanges for dead pixels :)

ok enough joking

egg....
Price -$415.99
Shipping -$9.99 flat three day shipping
cheapest by far.
missed the amazon $320


sparks
 
well i don't get off work for 6 more hours...keep in mind I didn't try any other games, just The Sims...I even changed it to 1600x900 which is the max res in the options for that game and it still kept black bars on top and bottom and didn't distort the image at all...Anyone with an Nvidia card want to try this...just go into your driver menu, and find scaling options..mine was on Monitor Scaling by default..just click Fixed Aspect Ratio. and try it out...hopefully it works
 
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