Samsung 20" 205BW widescreen

G'day all!

I'm thinking of picking up a Samsung 20" widescreen 205BW this weekend. Was just wondering if anyones picked one up yet and what their opinions are.

It certainly seems like a good monitor from what the reviews have been saying.

I plan on using it with my Asus W3J.

1 question though, how will having this larger screen hooked up affect my gaming performance?

Will it be a big hit? I can deal with small hits too performance.

Sorry, Im very inexperienced when it comes to external widescreen monitors...

I need some feedback on this before I buy!

Thanks as always,
Pommie

 

That depends on the resolution of the screen. If it is higher than what you normally run in, then yes, your will see a decrease in performance if you decide to run at that resolution (you can always set a lower one).

Depends on the game whether the increase in resolution will affect your performance that much. If it's a game like Half-Life 2, then increasing the res from WXGA 1280x800 to, say, WXGA+ 1440x900 isn't going to do anything. But if you're playing FEAR or Oblivion, that's another story.

 

I've also heard some very good things about the Samsung 205BW, although I'm considering the Viewsonic vx2025wm... another excellent 20" I've seen as low as $515 AUD. There's a nice review for it over at Tom's Hardware.

You will experience a performance hit gaming on this monitor at it's native resolution, which is WSXGA+ (1680x1050) IIRC. Of course, you can always down-res to WXGA (1280x800)... this will cause some minor blurring, but for most games you'll hardly notice it.

 

Ok, I'll have to think about this then...

The W3J runs at a native res of 1024 or whatever it is. It might not be a good idea for me to buy this screen then...

The viewsonic looks good mate. But I'm more a fan of the Samsung. I know so little about widescreen LCD's, makes it annoying to figure things out.

Potentially I could use the screen at its native res for working in windows and playing movies, and then when playing games I could just unplug it using the laptops screen?

 

your computer's native resolution has no effect on the gpu's ability to output numerous other resolutions so don't let that make the decision for you

 

No need to do that. Just drop the display resolution on the external panel to 1280x800 (or 1280x768 for the W3J) and go. As has been mentioned above, running an LCD display below it's native resolution causes a little blurring, but you won't notice this in 99.9% of games... it's mainly a concern for general desktop work like MS Word or web browsing.

 

I just purchased this screen. I haven't gamed with it, as I'm not a gamer. However, I do have it hooked to my old toshiba laptop with a horrible intergrated graphics (intel xtreme or whatever it is) and the max resolution of it is 1400x1050, with no updated drivers since 2001. The screen adjusts suprisingly well to resolutions below its native operating resolution. The screen is very nice, and a very wise purchase in my honest opinion. For the price and its performance, it seems hard to beat.