New graphics card on old monitor

[Zhan]

Hey guys,

I was thinking of buying a new graphics card, prolly some geforce 9000 or 200 series to play DX10 games on my com. However I won't have enough money left to purchase a new monitor so I'm gonna be stuck with a normal samsung 17' LCD thats probably 4 or 5 years old. Will this be sufficient to use with the new card? Do I have to have an HD monitor to use the new graphics card?

Thanks for all your help.

[Dark Dragon]

Your old monitor should be fine since i was using my 9800 GT on a 4 year old 17".

The only thing is that having a really good graphic card when your monitor is incapable of displaying it is rather pointless.

If you are planning to get a better monitor later then i have a recommendation.

The monitor i am using is Westinghouse L2410NM 24" which in my opinion is one of the best 24" monitor available unless you are crazy about gloss. The price isn't bad either, i got my for 300$ during a Sam's Club sale but you can probably find it at about 50$ more from most online retailer.

[KrayZ33]

I'm not too sure about this but your 17' monitor might get problems in displaying higher resolutions... at least you won't be able to see stuff if you use a high desktop resolution..

17' monitors are usally made for using 1024x768 pixels. (1280x1024 but it gets texts and so on get really small then when you are browsing etc)

I don't know how it affects playing games though

I hope someone who has more experience in stuff like that than me will answer this... because it interests me too ^^

[David75]

I'm not too sure about this but your 17' monitor might get problems in displaying higher resolutions... at least you won't be able to see stuff if you use a high desktop resolution..

17' monitors are usally made for using 1024x768 pixels. (1280x1024 but it gets texts and so on get really small then when you are browsing etc)

I don't know how it affects playing games though

I hope someone who has more experience in stuff like that than me will answer this... because it interests me too ^^


Usually graphic cards and monitors communicate. So the graphic cards knows the resolutions the monitor can display. When you ask for a higher resolution, the monitor can't keep up and 15 seconds later the last working resolution comes back. Or you get an 'extended desktop' where you see a part of the desktop and it moves around.

Also, 1280*1024 on a 17" monitor doesn't give that tiny characters or density. That's what I use right now ;)

Regarding monitors, well it's too hard nowadays to find a good monitor for every uses and not too expensive... and even when expensive, there are troubles, defaults and so on...
I'd go to a 24" wide because they can do 1920*1200, so with one that does 1:1 you can display full HD media with no up/downscaling.