Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

*hope this is the right section*

So I think its time I upgraded my monitor - I've been using an old and cheap Cybercom 1027*768 for years and years now and whilst I love this screen format, the gaming world (and heck even Photoshop) has moved into the widescreen world in a big way to the point where several games now don't even have my aspect ratio any more (and I either have to suffer missing edges or force the graphics card to run at a higher width and accept "letterbox" style view - which of course makes all the text super small to read).

LEDs appear to have also pushed into the market in a big way and it seems they are replacing the traditional LCD screens (or at least are competing with them - I've honestly not kept up with the technology advances and the pros and cons).


So I'm looking for a new screen to improve/feature the following criteria.

1) Budget around £400ish - that's a very rough budget, if what I'm after can be got for way less that's fantastic; if its going to cost way more than I'll have to accept a compromise or wait and save.

2) Angle of view - I do photography and I hate how the screen contrast and colour changes with my angle of view to the screen. LED might get around this entirely whilstI forget the acronym for this feature in LCD talk.

3) A decent refresh rate for games - whilst most of what I play is RTS even they are more demanding today; and I do have the odd action and FPS game to play.

4) I'm not after 4K - heck chances are with any 4K capable games my graphics card wouldn't be able to keep up with at that resolution. So I'm quite happy with a basic 1280*720 capable screen. And yes I'm aware any screen that can go higher can be set lower so a higher resolution screen would give me future growth room.

5) Decent calibration controls - likely a default feature on most but the most budget end of the market. It just makes it a lot easier to setup when calibrating for photography (I've got a nice Spyder 3 to do the hardware calibration side, but it often wants me to adjust parameters that my cheap screen can't do or wont' do all that well).


So there's my criteria in a nutshell - any help would be most welcome!

You really want to avoid a mismatch between your chosen resolution and native screen res if you can at all help it. Given you've been using a monitor with a resolution I think I last had in 2001 I almost hesitate to ask, but what graphics card do you have? Your specs in general would be useful really.

Personally I'm of the view that 4K for gaming remains a pointless extravagance considering the ridiculous amount of hardware required for it to function at anything approaching playable, but at the same time 720p is aiming a bit low. 1080p is the "budget option" these days, and should be doable unless your rig is pretty prehistoric, but 1440p/2K is the optimum.

My rig isn't too prehistoric - granted I'd love a new graphics card and processor, but it holds up decently well for what it is today (provided I'm happy with a few medium to low to turning shadows off on some games)

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/RpJn4q
That link should show my current rig from case to cards

Oooft, yeah that 660 is going to be a limitation. You're fine on CPU, I'm still using a 3570K with a modest overclock and the only things that ever get close to being CPU-bound are modern Total Wars and Frostbite engine multiplayer games, and that's with a GTX1080. There's a TLDR at the bottom.

You should still be able to hit 1080p reliably, though you'll be looking at more like 30fps than 60 and some modern games might struggle even if you crank the settings down.

On the terminology front; an LED screen is actually just an LCD screen with an LED backlight. They're pretty much standard these days. Then there's OLED, which is actually a different type of tech entirely, but isn't a factor for most of us because it's still ludicrously fething expensive.

What you're interested in based on your requirements is the type of LCD panel - the viewing angles issue you mention is something that crops up a lot with "TN" panels which are what historically ended up in most budget(ie, sub ~850 quid) monitors, while "IPS" panels typically went into the expensive ones and were marketed to graphics design, photography, and movie buffs. IPS' limitation was that it often suffered a lot of input lag and struggled to get to higher refresh rates. Thing is both techs have kind of blurred into each other in recent years, so you can find IPS panels with high refresh rates and low lag at more affordable prices, and TN panels with pretty nice colour and blackness & even better viewing angles. Which is to say the whole thing is a bit of a soup right now, but for your purposes probably go IPS.

You can get a 24-27" 1080p IPS panel monitor with all the connectors for around 100-150 quid, but personally I wouldn't go over 24" at 1080p(the pixels would be too obvious on a 27"+ screen), something like the ASUS VZ249HE or Iiyama ProLite XU2492HSU-B1. They won't set the world afire, but your PC won't burst into flames trying to run them either

27" 1440p IPS monitors start around the 200-250 quid mark, but if you do decide to "future proof" I'd grab one with Freesync for when you get a better graphics card(NVIDIA now kinda-sorta support Freesync on top of their walled-garden GSYNC version, so there's no reason to pay over the odds for a GSYNC monitor again IMO). The Asus MG279Q is a "whole package" affair, but will push you about 100 quid over budget unless you can grab it in a sale. If you're willing to sacrifice some potential headroom by dropping down to the 75hz range and losing a few bells & whistles, you could grab something like the Iiyama XUB2792QSU-W1 27" for around 280 quid, or lose stuff like USB ports as well and get one of the new AOC Q3279VWFD8 32" models.

Unfortunately I can't really just point and say "buy that one" because I don't do photography stuff myself so I can't speak to things like colour accuracy, but in general terms what you want is an IPS panel, and either a 1080p 24" monitor for the affordable option, or a 1440p 27"+ monitor for "future proofing".

EDITS: I are the gud spellar.

Thanks Yodhrin that's been a big help!

No worries about not being able to point to "that one" as when one looks at computer hardware its clear that there's so much variety out there, esp in the cheaper and middle range options, that there's so many choices and few are outright "bad" and most are pretty good. Esp with all the different manufacturers all competing.

That said it sounds like I could make a decent update to the screen without breaking the bank. If I budgeted £200 on a screen that might leave me the same for a graphics card upgrade. Whilst it wouldn't be a world breaking card it might at least give me a bit of a boost to overall performance on some of the newer games and steady up some on some of the more recent titles. The 660GTX honestly impresses me as a card and its done really well, but I do start to feel its shortcomings now and then on newer titles).
Something like an ASUS STRIX-GTX1050TI 4GB; gives me a step up and shouldn't have any trouble with my current motherboard and powersupply.


*TotalWar Warhammer is certainly the game that makes me want a graphics and processor upgrade. One day I will have that computer which can run 8 fully oversized skaven armies against each other without lag! Though I kind of hope bitcoins and the like crash out so that graphics cards go back down to sane prices,

Get yourself a laptop, they are cheap enough these days, if you add some more budget you can even get a solid gaming laptop.
You want to buy online, not going to physical stores as it will really limit your options; I recently did a good shopping for my new laptop, the previous 2 were ASUS, got a 17” Alienware from Dell website that was retail around 2k, got it for 1400 with all sort of coupon codes/discounts, then at the check out the tax hit me for +125, so 1525 or so total.
You want to look for % coupon codes, then look at certain parts that are on sale. For my recent purchase it was a 15% code which saves me about 325 from retail price, then a 100 for first time buyer, couple 50 discounts on parts.

I'm not a sure a laptop would be the right move since you freely admit it will cost way more than my current rough budget. Plus why pay for all that technology and mobility when I'm not in need of a mobile option - its going to sit on one single desk for the majority of its life. I just don't have any need for mobile. If I had that kind of money to spend right now I'd far more likely sink it into a big processor and graphics card upgrade.

 Overread wrote:
I'm not a sure a laptop would be the right move since you freely admit it will cost way more than my current rough budget. Plus why pay for all that technology and mobility when I'm not in need of a mobile option - its going to sit on one single desk for the majority of its life. I just don't have any need for mobile. If I had that kind of money to spend right now I'd far more likely sink it into a big processor and graphics card upgrade.

Agree, don't get a laptop. Why limit yourself to a comparitively tiny screen when your usage indicates the bigger the better? However, reading people talk about "a monitor" makes me wince... I can't get by without dual screen these days (or even a triple head setup at work).

Anyway, Yodhrin's post above is all good stuff.

 Overread wrote:
I'm not a sure a laptop would be the right move since you freely admit it will cost way more than my current rough budget. Plus why pay for all that technology and mobility when I'm not in need of a mobile option - its going to sit on one single desk for the majority of its life. I just don't have any need for mobile. If I had that kind of money to spend right now I'd far more likely sink it into a big processor and graphics card upgrade.

my laptop does everything I want and saves space, it usually stays at the same place too like a desktop. my advice applies to your potential purchase- search online at legit stores(bestbuy, dell, amazon, ebay stores, etc.), refurbish items for savings, sorting must haves and optional items on your list(must haves-graphic card, RAM; optional-guarantees, additional disk space, high end graphic card, softwares, etc.), wait for known sale dates like(4th of july here, black Fridays, etc.), take advantage of their coupon codes(through site specifics like ebay or store/website discounts), look at all the reviews if possible.

Mac a laptop is still way more than I'm willing to spend even if I spend an age hunting down coupons and the like - If you can find a laptop that equals or beats my current setup with a nice widscreen IPS monitor and over 5TB of storage space for under £400 that would rather amazing
That said it still wouldn't be what I was after.


Monitor wise I've been hunting around and I think I might well settle on the ASUS VZ229HE 21.5 Inch Monitor. That's already a big screen increase over what I've got now in terms of size and overall performance. The one annoyance is that my computer desk is older and has two CD tower racks either side of the screen - which is not that good if you're going for a wideangle! Even the 21inch are going to mean I have to take CDs out of the rack and move it in front (which somewhat pushes it a good 2 inches closer to me). I might have to consider a new desk (or just modify this one and take the racks off - a pain because I do have lot stored on and above the screen).
Sadly it seems that if I try for an 18 or 19 inch many of the more advanced features vanish - I'm guessing monitors are going through a general size-creep over time.


So unless there are some counterpoints or other suggestions I think the ASUS VZ229HE 21.5 Inch Monitor might be the one. I could then consider a GTX1060 to upgrade my graphics card at the same time.

Can't speak to the monitor from a technical point of view (especially re:photography), but I'm happy with my HP Pavilion 27c (curved) and Samsung S27E510.

I'm less certain about going for a graphics card upgrade at this point- we're at another generational shift in GPUs, and while the bleeding edge ones are pointlessly expensive ($1000+), dumping money in a 1060 series rather than a 2060 seems like bad planning. Yes, the 2060 is about 2.5 the cost of a 1060 (in the US, anyway), but personally I'd wait for that to drop, otherwise you might well find yourself replacing the new card in a year or two anyway, depending how quickly games you're interested in take up the new tech as a standard.

I agree with you on a laptop. Unless you're really on the go constantly (and for some reason a tablet isn't sufficient), a laptop brings restrictions, not benefits. Especially as a desktop replacement, it's simply inferior graphics, memory & storage for extra cost, or on par in specific areas (but never all) for a LOT of extra cost.



-Sidenote on the TW:Warhammer. If you can squeeze the install onto the SSD drive, that makes a bizarrely huge difference. Ultimately though, a lot of performance problems with TW games are optimization issues that CA just doesn't address.

I've got the same size SSD you do, which I originally intended just as a boot/system drive. But after scoffing at the SSD advice for a while I finally caved and put TW2 on the SSD, and was mildly horrified at how much better it performed, especially Mortal Empire end turns.

I dunno Voss, it doesn't sound like Overread is going for something big & beastly, and most of the advantages of the new RTX cards really need the high end ones to have any real value.

I'd hold off for a little while regardless to see the pricing on the RTX2050(which will be the replacement card for the GTX1060 bracket, because of course they can't keep their fething numbers straight for more than a couple of generations), and what it does to 1060 prices.

I'd also caution that a 21.5" might not be quite as big a boost as it first appears. The big downside of the 16:9 wide aspect ratio is vertical screen space - even my present 24" monitor only has about 12" on the vertical axis.

I currently only have 9 inches on the vertical so even a tiny increase would be noticeable.

I fully admit this is more a stop-gap upgrade than it is a proper full upgrade otherwise I'd really be wanting to save a lot more and replace the processor and graphics card at the same time for a much bigger jump in overall performance.

Out of interest you say wait on the graphics card upgrade - about when are they dropping the new update to their range? Are we talking weeks or months or many months or an unknown rough period?


And I already bought a second SSD about a year ago to put Warhammer on - and yeah it makes a blazing difference to its loading times! Honestly next time I do full computer update I'll likely start looking at 2TB or larger SSD drives for the game files. Granted it might only have a meaningful impact on the top end of newer games, but it would be very good to have. That said the way games are getting bigger and bigger (Esp any than port over from consoles) I might wind up with 4TB or even two 2TB or such at that stage. Once you're talking 100GB a game or greater those are some serious space eaters!

Voss wrote:

-Sidenote on the TW:Warhammer. If you can squeeze the install onto the SSD drive, that makes a bizarrely huge difference. Ultimately though, a lot of performance problems with TW games are optimization issues that CA just doesn't address.

I've got the same size SSD you do, which I originally intended just as a boot/system drive. But after scoffing at the SSD advice for a while I finally caved and put TW2 on the SSD, and was mildly horrified at how much better it performed, especially Mortal Empire end turns.

Back in the early days of the SSD revolution it was just too costly to get anything more than 120GB which generally led to steam libraries (etc) on 2nd mechanical disks. For a while I've had 250GBs in all my machines, which is decent but still not a size you'd be comfortable keeping some of the huger newer games. Last year though I lucked out purchasing some decommissioned 'obsolete' kit and one of the servers had a couple of enterprise-level larger SSDs in it which are now forming a ~900GB RAID 0 array in my gaming rig. Now absolutely everything just goes on the array and it's incredible.

As an aside to this aside, that's the sort of thing you generally can't do with a laptop!

 Overread wrote:
I currently only have 9 inches on the vertical so even a tiny increase would be noticeable.

I fully admit this is more a stop-gap upgrade than it is a proper full upgrade otherwise I'd really be wanting to save a lot more and replace the processor and graphics card at the same time for a much bigger jump in overall performance.

Out of interest you say wait on the graphics card upgrade - about when are they dropping the new update to their range? Are we talking weeks or months or many months or an unknown rough period?

They are currently out already (20XX series). Truthfully, for the lower end ones, you won't see much performance difference right now (because current games don't utilize the new tech in any significant ways). Benchmarks, from what I've seen, are slightly but not meaningfully better. The catch is the way graphics card pricing works. A true bleeding edge one is $1700 (and foolish to buy, frankly, as you can buy a whole new system for that, with a 2080 card in it). The 2060s are ~$350, and the 1060s $150-200 But the 1080s are still up around $600-800 yet the 2080s are about $700-800, and performance-wise still in the same ballpark, though the 2080s are consistently a bit better. Usually when a new GPU hits, by about 6 months later the prices will all shift dramatically, and they'll have worked them over a bit as well. Barring other influences (which admittedly happens often), I'd expect to see some of the new stuff to drop from $700-800 to around $300, and the lower tier 2060s (or 2050s) to be about $150-200.

The next big thing will be the software developers catching up. While Farcry Fallout (or whatever the sequel to Farcry 5 is actually called) or Anthem probably won't be affected much by the 20XX tech, Dragon Age 4 and ES6 probably will. Cyberpunk could go either way. Total Warhammer 3 probably won't, as I don't see them doing major engine and lighting modifications again (especially for a final title in a trilogy contract).


Here's a fairly decent comparison article. Interestingly they use Total Warhammer 2 as one of their benchmarks
https://www.pcgamesn.com/nvidia/nvidia-rtx-2060-review-benchmarks-founders-edition#nn-graph-sheet-total-war-warhammer-ii-ultra-dx11

[For TW2 performance, a 2060 vs a 1060 is max 75 fps vs max 55 fps at 1080p (min 44 fps for both), or max 62 fps vs max 40 fps (min 42 vs min 30) at 1440p]

The 2060 runs like 1070ti, for a bit cheaper (though significantly more than 1060) and runs a lot cooler to boot. But the real potential doesn't matter too much until game developers jump on the realtime ray tracing (ultra megazord god rays) and all that (as their test on Battlefield 5 shows a 30 fps jump from turning the RTX off).

Main problem area I was worried is power draw. But it apparently has less than the power requirements that my 980ti wants, so that's actually a relief.

You certainly know how to wave temptation under someone's nose

I've gone from wanting a screen to a graphics card upgrade ;P The 2060 though is looking very tempting now. I can even partly justify it by being a little bit future protected. Even if it won't be top-end it would still at least be a decent stab at a good entry to middle level approach.
Of course going from something like an Asus Duel 1060 to a Duel 2060 is double the price right now. A price drop might well come, but the question would be when that could be expected. A few weeks or a month or so and one could wait, but if we start talking 6 months or more then that's quite a significant span of time.

A little future proofed I suppose, but honestly I wasn't trying to be tempting. Personally, I wouldn't buy anything currently, the new cards are too new, and bugs, drivers, performance and pricing are all too fuzzy, and too many games recently out (or coming out) won't use the new features (for example, don't know if you care or not, but Anthem apparently won't utilize the new ray tracing stuff thats the signature of the new cards, though battlefield V does).

My suggested approach is what I used for this system: find (or wait) for the specs for games you're really looking forward to. I basically built this system for Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 (despite not really liking either of them all that much once they came out). But it gave me a ballpark to shoot for, and for the kinds of games I play, the ones most likely to be graphics hogs that my old system couldn't handle.

As a result, I haven't even had to look at system requirements for anything that's come out since. Cyberpunk will probably be the first thing that makes my system choke (given the demo footage was run on a 1080, my 980 will probably not be happy with the full version, and I suspect running that game on lower settings will be... unsatisfactory). Though in consideration, given it's barely been 3 years, I probably should have gone with a better card, but it seemed pricey enough at the time.

Since you mentioned Total Warhammer, I'd at least suggest waiting at least until CA publishes the system specs for TW: Three Kingdoms [which should be soon given the release date], as that will give some insight as to what the specs for Total Warhammer 3 might be. The alternative is hoping they keep the requirements close to 2.

Ok now the world is too wide!
It's going to take some getting used to this extra width! My eyes have to travel to the other side of the screen now and my photos all feel far to small and I feel like I want those 50MP cameras!

That said the jump in clarity is night and day over the old monitor and the better angles of view are a dream!

Took a bit of fiddling to find the setting to stop it stretching all the games to superwide and I'm tempted to keep running Warhammer at a lower resolution just for the FPS gain. Otherwise a very solid upgrade, though I still don't get why the world has gone so widescreen mad over a nice square screen, but at least now my eyes will turn into rectangles instead of squares.

 Overread wrote:
Otherwise a very solid upgrade, though I still don't get why the world has gone so widescreen mad over a nice square screen, but at least now my eyes will turn into rectangles instead of squares.

The main reason is because "Humans have a slightly over 210-degree forward-facing horizontal arc of their visual field. The vertical range of the visual field in humans is around 150 degrees." Thus, it should be a lot more "natural" to have a rectangular viewing field.

 Overread wrote:
Ok now the world is too wide!
It's going to take some getting used to this extra width! My eyes have to travel to the other side of the screen now and my photos all feel far to small and I feel like I want those 50MP cameras!

That said the jump in clarity is night and day over the old monitor and the better angles of view are a dream!

Took a bit of fiddling to find the setting to stop it stretching all the games to superwide and I'm tempted to keep running Warhammer at a lower resolution just for the FPS gain. Otherwise a very solid upgrade, though I still don't get why the world has gone so widescreen mad over a nice square screen, but at least now my eyes will turn into rectangles instead of squares.

I know how you feel. I used to use dual 27" monitors and then 4 years back, I was tempted by a 34" curved IPS. It was pretty spendy - $750 at the time - but was so pretty. What sealed the deal was my friend saying he thought it was a bad purchase because I convinced myself that he was just trying to gaslight me out of getting an awesome monitor - one better than his.

Anyway I got the monitor and it was a weird transition. 34" doesn't seem much better than 27" but the aspect ratio was much different, it's a very wide monitor - 33" across, not diagonally. Just scanning from one end to the other felt like it actually took a second.

I got used to it in about a week or so, and you will to.

That being said I have some ragrets and I try to live a life with no ragrets. Turns out the curved screen does little besides add +33% to the price; it really was a gimmick.

I also was happier with having 2x27" monitors - it was nice being able to mentally separate stuff with a physical divider. There is software that can sort of simulate that, but eh.

I'd like to add a second one but unfortunately my computer desk is wedged into a corner and I don't have the physical real estate for a second ultrawide - the 2xs7's was pretty much all the space I had.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I think the first gen RTX cards are objectively a terrible investment. They are very expensive and few games implement support at all, and the ones that do so add very little.

By the time you start seeing wider and more meaningful support, the second gen of RTX cards will be hitting the market, they will be (relatively) cheaper and substantially more power. I'm hanging onto my 1080 for now.