wat upgrades to get?

[harry18]

basicly for christmas im either gonna get a new monitor or some speakers and sound card, i dont want to spend any more than £400

for speakers i was thinking of z-5500?, and an X-FI, which would come to about £360, currently have some harman/kardon spearker, they do the job pretty well

for a monitor id love a 24" but its stretching it, tryin to get one for £400, but i can get an acer for close to that, or a dell 2405/07 if im lucky, thers a few 2405 goin for £350-400. im useing a pretty 17 dell screen now.

trouble is i listen to alot of music, and watch/play a lot of games and dvds, so what do you think i should do, any better ideas on how to spend my cash?

[Null]

I moved up to a 24" LCD a while ago and I'm never going back.

Games on a screen that size with a decent video card are stunning.

[harry18]

interesting, i think id notice the biggest difference with a big screen, whats better a decent 22" screen or a not so decent 24" screen?

[Neal_White_III]

I'd go for the decent screen.

I've got a ViewSonic VP201b, which I really like. It's 20.1 inch, 1600x1200 native; the colors are good, the speed is fine, and it only has 1 half-dead pixel near a corner. I've had it for over a year; it's been great.

[harry18]

alright, if i go down the monitor path, i have a few options:

dell 2405 for about £400 (proby a refurb)
dell 2407 for maby £450 if im lucky, but likely to be £500 (proby a refurb/used as well)
or i could go for a samsung or veiwsonic 22" for £350

i dont really want to go as low as a 20" as im gonna use it for films and tv as well as gaming, so waht do we think?

[Kougar]

If you get a bigger 24" you'd sure better hope you can live with the quality it has... I'd say get the best monitor at whatever size you can afford.

[darkorb]

What moniter do you currently use?

[harry18]

i currently use a 17" dell tft i think its like 4 months old, i got it free.

i have up to £400 to spend. which would get me a 2405 off a friend http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1764459,00.asp


and i could stretch to a 2407, but thats like another £100

otherwise i would spend up to £300 on a 22" like a viewsonic or the new samsung one pretty sexy

thie nice think bout the dells is they have an integrated card reader and used ports, i think the only realy diff betweern the 2 dells is the 2405 has a 16ms resposne time where as the 2407 is 6ms

but i dont really want to spend more than 400, so its either a used 24" dell, or a new 22"?

[Null]

thie nice think bout the dells is they have an integrated card reader and used ports, i think the only realy diff betweern the 2 dells is the 2405 has a 16ms resposne time where as the 2407 is 6ms

but i dont really want to spend more than 400, so its either a used 24" dell, or a new 22"?

The Dell 2405 is not HDCP compliant. Not a big deal for me as my video card isn't HDCP compliant either. I have two Dell 2405's (one for each machine) and they are pretty sweet. Neither one has any dead pixels. I don't know about warranties over there, but over here, the warranty is transferable.

The response time is 12ms, I believe and I don't know if I would notice the difference between 12ms and 6ms. The onboard card reader is nice. I use it fairly often for my compact flash card.

[XJnine]

I've got a 2405 and I love it, i'd say go with one if you can afford it. Scott is running a 2407 and I'm pretty sure he loves his too.

[harry18]

hmmm, interesting, i think if i can get hold of a 2405 then ill get it, otherwise ill get a 22"...any sugestions?

also wats HDCP, wat do you do with it?

[werty316]

hmmm, interesting, i think if i can get hold of a 2405 then ill get it, otherwise ill get a 22"...any sugestions?

also wats HDCP, wat do you do with it?
Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP

[Godspeed]

well if u watch alot of movies an dt.v i think it would be worth investing in the moniter. i think u would notice that the most as long as ur graphics card performance won't decrease that much. If i was u though i would dump a little more money in on the moniter so that u could get a good moniter with a very low response time so that it would be good for DVD's and games