New Monitor Old Graphics Card

Mistro11 · 18 Mar 2014, 05:11

My 5 year old monitor died today and I went to buy a new one. I had to stay within the $150-$200 range. I got a 21.5" HP Pavilion IPS LED Backlit Monitor....model 22bw.

I like the monitor but now I'm wondering if I need a newer graphics card to really experience the quality. I am on a 5 year old rig (Q6600 quad core @2.4GHz on a P5QL Pro mobo XP SP3). The current video card is a EVGA 9800GT. My videos and picture had more harmony on the old monitor than this new one but I don't know if it's because of the video card not performing to meet the capabilities of the new monitor or I am just ignorant on how to configure my monitor with the card to get the best display I can with what I got. Every monitor I ever had was just plug in and forget it save for adjusting brightness and wishing I had something higher than 60Hz. This thing is more sophisticated than I thought a monitor could be. I Feel like I been living under a rock when it comes to monitors.

I have the resolution at the native 1920x1080. I can actually raise it to 2048x1536 but then I would have to pan to see the edges. The more I raise the resolution, the edges start to look weird (like too much sharpening) and the lower resolution videos tend to look better than the HD ones. But there are options in the software panel where I choose presets and the the "text" and "photos" options looked the best. The HD options were all the way to the left and when I went there, I saw the "over-sharp" edges. If I put the resolution back to 1680x1050 like I had on the old monitor the aspect ratio is off and everything is slightly stretched horizontally.

Before I completely blame it on the video card, I want to make sure I'm on the right track before I go to purchase a new one. I never studied the relationship between monitors and graphics cards until now. I want to find balance in my display again. Any advice or lecture on this subject is appreciated. I do plan on getting a GTX 660 or 760 in the near future as I get ready to build a new PC.

numerobis · 18 Mar 2014, 13:55

First of all, there is only one resolution you would like to set on LCD displays to get the best, clearest result and this is the native screen resolution. Everything else is interpolation which will give you unsharp contours.

It would be helpful to know which monitor you had before... an IPS panel in general should be ok and better than a TN panel, but there are also things like S-IPS or S-PVA panels since more than 5 years.
Is it possible that you had set some colour correction for the last monitor? I would try to reset everything to default values and maybe install a newer driver for the GeForce.
How is it connected? DVI?

Concerning the video card... i don't know how the image quality of the 9800GT would compare to a GTX660 or 760. The 9800GT is "only" a relabled 8800GT, so it's almost 7 years old and as far as i remember nvidia has clearly improved the image quality since GTX4xx. So i think the GTX660/760 should be better, yes - but i'm not sure if this would be such a huge difference.
But there would be also a big performance gain switching from a 9800GT to a new card - here compared to a GTX660 (and less noise/power draw) http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_9800_gt_vs_geforce_660_gtx_review.html

If you want a cheaper alternative than a GTX 760 you could take a GTX 750 TI 2GB http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-750-ti-review,3750.html which should be still much faster than your 8800GT.

Mistro11 · 18 Mar 2014, 14:53

Thanks numerobis!
My old monitor was a Sceptre DCL LCD http://www.amazon.com/DCLCD-Sceptre-DCL20A-Widescreen-Monitor/dp/B000VXR8RE/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

I always connect to DVI. Since I made the post last night, I been playing around with the settings and software. I put it back to native resolution and went into my NVIDIA control panel to experiment. I played a good quality HD movie with good bitrate and the video is actually beautiful. The natural colors are far better than my older one. I just have to get used to it.

What do you think about this monitor for gaming or the fact that it's 7ms response, with IPS? Someone told me IPS is not suitable for gaming and I would notice it once I upgrade the GPU.

numerobis · 18 Mar 2014, 20:51

TN is faster than IPS/S-IPS/H-IPS or PVA/S-PVA, with maybe 2ms, yes. If you notice it, or if it influences your gaming depends on you, i think. The last time i played a shooter was HL2DM some years ago on a 8ms S-PVA Eizo. Before that one i had a CRT screen (no lag) for gaming and i think i was much better on the CRT... but i also had a break of a few years from this game (or gaming in general) so maybe i just had lost my skills...

The problem is, that a TN panel is faster but not so good if you're doing colour critical work. I think you can only try yourself if it is fast enough for you. And if it is really a problem for you, buy a second one with TN panel for gaming... or only a TN panel if colour doesn't matter for you. Or a faster IPS monitor like this Eizo Foris with 3.4ms
http://www.eizo.com/global/products/foris/fs2333/index.html
http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/review/2012/review-eizo-foris-fs2333-bk-part9.html
but not in a price range of $150-200...

Here is an overview of response times of some monitors
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/viewsonic_vp2772.htm

Mistro11 · 19 Mar 2014, 20:10

Well, today I exchanged for an ASUS 24" LED monitor.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-23-6-led-hd-monitor/8767187.p?id=1218890757510%26amp;skuId=8767187

It's 1ms. But now I am seeing the same issues from the HP monitor. I'm beginning to think I need a newer graphics card. Or is there a way to calibrate to get the best picture? The issues I'm seeing is pixelation on videos that were smoother on my older monitor and horizontal banding on my gradient colors.

I'm running a NVIDIA 9800GT on XP BTW.

Mistro11 · 21 Mar 2014, 05:11

I ended up going back to the HP IPS monitor. The other choices just could not beat the color and picture quality. In fact the ASUS monitor actually made me miss the HP. I also did an upgrade just to cover some more bases. I got a NVIDIA GTX 760 and 2 sticks of fresh RAM (DDR2 2GB). I notice a big difference in performance. The picture quality is much better too than my first experience. It's not super perfect but I have no complaints and can say I have a better monitor than before. Probably when I get an HDMI cable it will be even better.

numerobis · 21 Mar 2014, 19:09

sorry for the late reply, but it looks like you already found your solution...

Concerning the banding problem i think this could be related to a TN panel and only 6 bit instead of 8 bit (for the panel) - but the description on the page doesn't say anything about it...

But nice to hear that works good for you now.