New Monitor Recommendations

[FHRob]

Currently, I have a 20" 4 x 3 LCD monitor, which I find excellent for everything I do, including various Train Simulators.

I want to upgrade to a comparable size 16 x 9 LED monitor.

Question 1 - Is IPS good or bad? My understanding is the response time for IPS is slower. The monitors I'm considering have 5 ms response time for LED vs. 7 ms response time for IPS LED. Does this matter?

Question 2 - The IPS monitor has an HDMI input and DVI input, whereas the LED monitors have DVI only. Does this matter?

Question 3 - Is a max. resolution of 1600 x 900 ok or do I want a max. of 1920 x 1080?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/comments.

Rob

[dgallina]

Hi Rob,

1. IPS is good from an image quality standpoint. I'd go with the IPS myself.
2. The extra HDMI input might be useful in future in case you get a machine that only has HDMI output
3. What resolution will you run your games at? In general the full 1080p resolution is better. BUT if your games can't run well at that native resolution it will look a little worse because of scaling to that output resolution. That's assuming your games could run well at the lower resolution of course. If you're scaling either way I'd get the 1080p unit.

Diego

[FHRob]

Hi Rob,

1. IPS is good from an image quality standpoint. I'd go with the IPS myself.
2. The extra HDMI input might be useful in future in case you get a machine that only has HDMI output
3. What resolution will you run your games at? In general the full 1080p resolution is better. BUT if your games can't run well at that native resolution it will look a little worse because of scaling to that output resolution. That's assuming your games could run well at the lower resolution of course. If you're scaling either way I'd get the 1080p unit.

Diego

Hi Diego:

Thanks for the input.

The games I play are MSTS, Run 8, TS2014, and Fallout: New Vegas. I use 1280 x 1024 native resolution, and connect to a GTX 650 via DVI.

Other than the games, I use the computer for Internet, e-mail, excel etc.

Rob

[Bananarama]

I've had an HP 24" IPS monitor (LP2475w) for a few years now and love it. I bought it specifically for the color and image quality over a TN panel, but another benefit is that I don't have to be dead-on in front of the monitor to view it in all its glory (1920 x 1200 native). It does get a bit warm, but I'm otherwise very pleased with the purchase.

[GSkid]

Don't worry about response times. Pretty much anything made today is plenty fast enough. You won't be able to discern between a 5ms and a 7ms response time.

Whatever monitor you get, make sure the video card is beefy enough to have the game/sim run smoothly (high enough fps) at the monitor's native res.