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.