- Anton P Nym
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- Exalted Mythic Member
Thanks for the kind words.
As far as CRT monitors go, computer power doesn't much factor into it. (As long as your video card supports the resolutions of the monitor, anyway... and with a 9800XT you should have no problems whatever the monitor you choose.)
The big factors are size, refresh rate, resolution, colour quality, and price.
* Size: bigger is better here. However, bigger also sucks up more desk space and makes the monitor heavier so make sure that your heart's delight will actually fit where you need it to go. Playing Halo on a 19" monitor is sweet, and if I'd had the budget and deskspace I'd have gone with a 21" in a heartbeat.
* Resolution: more is better here. 1024x768 pixels would be my bare minimum; it's easy to downgrade the resolution in software if you're experiencing some chug, but it's impossible to ramp up past the hardware's limit. Shoot for as high as you can get in your price range.
* Refresh rate: faster is better (bigger number in Hz), but these days it's hard to find a monitor with a bad refresh rate. Just make sure that the rate they quote is the non-interlaced rate... interlacing looks twice as fast as it is, and it makes the image look jittery sometimes. Again, the interlaced monitors are ancient stuff so you shouldn't have to worry about it.
* Colour quality: this is sort of subjective. You need to see how well the monitor reproduces colours, so have your sales-critter fire up a web browser and take a look at bungie.net screenies to see how they look. If you can find a decent online video, try that too to see if there's any residual ghosting. (There shouldn't be with a CRT, unless the ray tube is nearly shot.)
* Price: the best way is to set a budget first, because it's very easy to get into stratospheric prices if you get carried away. All the monitors available are worth the price to somebody, but perhaps that $3000 USD ultra-high resolution widescreen monitor is a tad much just to play Halo. (Though it'd be interesting to see how work would phrase the rejection of my purchase order request. Hmm...)
-- Steve hopes that this will help.