uhmmm... Are you sure you posted this question into the right Forum? This Forum discusses Windows 7. Did you notice? You may get better advice at some HD Display Forum, where you might find "Experts" of that matter. Really. Sorry, i cannot tell you much about it. all i know is that i had a 16:9 LCD before and now i have a 16:10 LCD and it doesnt really make a difference, really. on the 16:10 Display the black bars on top and bottom of a movie might be slightly bigger, but that doesnt really matter either because nearly every movie you get from the internet has a different aspect ratio, there is no such thing as a perfect display in terms of aspect ratio. its really not that important when it comes to movies. basically your player-software manages the picture and it will look after a correct aspect ratio, so all you might notice if you have good eyes are slightly different sized bars at top and bottom... BenQ states on their site its really important to have a 16:9 Display for watching HD content but thats just utter bulls**t in my experience. Just buy the one you like better. The AOC site says its a really fast display with only 2 milliiseconds gray to gray change cycle so if you play fast Games like Unreal Tournament it might make a difference allthough my display is 5 milliseconds gray to gray and its way enough. i see everything clear and crisp no matter how fast i move in games. Also, the AOC has more visible space (its 1920x1200) where as the 16.9 Display from BenQ has only 1920x1080 which makes more sense if you also work or play on that display - more space is always better. and for the movies, as i said. i believe it really doesnt matter. Also the AOC has an inbuild media player, which you may find interesting. I dont need that because my pc plays everything but some people find it nice... your last question: PCIE exists in two versions, 1.0 and 2.0 the latter one supports higher transferspeeds for data exchange with the system ram. i have a new PCIE 2.0 card from Ati and it runs on an old PCIE 1.0 slot as good as it does on the new. it makes no difference today because neither DDR3 nor the CPU nor the Card can currently generate enough traffic to even exhaust a 1.0 Slot as far as i know. it might change in a few years but until then you certainly own a new motherboard. Your nVidia Card will most likely run fine on your board but also here i can only advise you to go looking at the nVidia forums for help and info. This forum here simply is not the right place for good advise on that matter. Sorry [EDIT] before i forget this: My personal experience with a few different Displays is, that for the matter of whatching HD Content from Bluray LCD is a very bad technology, it never ever looks good, no matter how advanced the display control technology inside is. i have seen a few dedicated lcd tv sets which came pretty close to a Plasma, but they where never better in my eyes. so if you look for a tv, dont go looking for lcd. my opinion. if you need it for your pc, well, then you have to. there is no plasma or better for pc.
Tautological, repetitious, redundancy Apoorva, I have expended considerable resources in your behalf (as have others) and previously answered most of your LCD questions, in great depth. Furthermore, I, and other, have provided links to various very useful sources that address your questions - including those that contrast aspect ratios. Alas, to no avail. Whether you avail yourself of Google, this and other forums, as well as a host of very good tech/review sites, it is my personal opinion that it is time for you to peel your own grapes! Monk
Urie, thank you for pointing this out but at the time i was writing my reply this thread was still listed under Windows 7. It has now been moved...
Need some clarifications.... Hello Gollum, You mentioned: " the AOC has more visible space (its 1920x1200) ". But no-where on AOC's product page, can that resolution be found. The only resolution mentioned out there is 1680 x 1050...therefore could you kindly clarify this? Also you mentioned: "the AOC has more visible space. BenQ with 1920 x 1080 makes more sense if you also work or play on that display. More space is always better". Well, if you notice the screen size of Benq, it offers 21.5inch b'coz of 16:9 ratio whereas AOC 2230FM offers 22inch than how come it wouldn't make sense for AOC 2230FM to work or play on it since its display size is bigger when compared with Benq e2200HD? Also, on some other forum, someone has mentioned the following: "Many BenQ screens use a pair of Sanyo 2SC5707 Transistors in the power section. [A.k.a. a C5707 Transistor]. - Those transistors are notorious for burning out in 6-18 months and when they go they generally take other components with them. Most of the Dell screens known for problems use BenQ circuit boards and have that Transistor burn out". What would you have to say about it? Would AOC be also having the same issue? Regards, Apoorva.
Sorry it was really late at night when i went through this... i actually made a mistake there. the resolution i took from the AOC Page is of course wrong. you are right. the second thing i said about the one making more sense than the other was firstly based on the wrong resolution (see above) and secondly very bad put english. i meant the opposite of what you where reading from it. i meant to say the AOC makes more sense... But thats irrelevant now anyway because its got such a small resolution. Which one is safe and which one would i buy? none of them. i think 1920x1080 is too narrow because its 16:9 and i like 16:10 better and the other one is simply even worse with its 1680x1050, which is a 16:10 native resolution but its not HD Compliant anyhow. So Images from Blu Ray would always be scaled up on that display and that never gives good image quality. go and look for a 24" 1920x1200 (16:10) Display like the Samsung T240 (i have that one, its cheap but the image is also not very good - as i said before, i don't believe LCD Technology will ever be good for Movies and TV and such). Its just a matter of personal preference. If you can go to some Electronic Superstore and check the different Screens and their Image-Quality that would be perfect. Nothing else makes much sense. Sorry i cannot really help you with this.
Apoorva, Rather than answer all your questions, I will try to make it easier for you to choose which monitor to get, in a less techno-babble way. In terms of brand, Acer is decent, although most people I know tend to go with Samsung, Dell, and sometimes hp, probably because they are offered more in USA stores and online. That doesn't mean Acer is worse. In fact, most all the LCD monitors from major brands are good. Some like Dell score very high when the price is down and certain years they have great models. But the next year, they may offer basically the same monitor but slightly updated and they get mediocre scores because they didn't make anything "cooler." That being said, go with a lcd monitor that has lots of good reviews and all the features you want, at a minimum I would go with one that supports dual inputs, including vga and dvi. HDMI is a plus, but not required if you're connectiving to a pc. Audio is going to be bad on almost all monitors, but as you noted, you'll have seperate speakers. If you're going to watch a lot of movies, the first thing I would suggest is to get an HDTV. It will look much better than any pc monitor. But if you only want to get one screen for movies and pc, I would opt for the 16:10 ratio instead of the 16:9. In my opinion, 16:9 is too wide and not tall enough, where 16:10 gives you extra real estate for windows programs (about an inch on my laptop and about 2 inches on my 22" desktop monitor). If you have a dedicated graphics card, you will see 2 black bars on the left and right side when watching movies but it won't annoy you really. For resolution, I think some blu-ray moves are in 1080p format, but most tv shows are in 720p. I personally do not like 1920 x 1080 for 23 inch and 24 inch screens. Everything seems to hard to read and if you increase the dpi to 125%, some programs like tv tuner applications won't show any video. I typically prefer 22 inch at 1680 x 1050 resolution.