Widescreen LCD monitors and graphics cards

If you are considering the purchase of a large LCD computer monitor (most are now widescreen), be aware that your current graphics card (or motherboard graphics) may not support the widescreen format or resolution.

Older monitors have a 4:3 aspect ratio (width/height) and use resolutions such as 800x600 or 1280x960. New, large, monitors all have a 16:10 aspect ratio and may use a resolution such as 1680x1050. Get those new glasses out, unless you need lower resolution (resulting in reduced image quality).

The following discussion applies to my monitor and graphics card, but probably has wide-spread applications when buying any new widescreen LCD monitor, based upon the requests for help that I have read on tech-help forums.

The 22" Samsung SyncMaster 226BW monitor has a native resolution of 1680x1050. Using any resolution lower than 1680x1050 will reduce the quality of the text and graphics.

Probably you will need a new graphics card to achieve a widescreen resolution of 1680x1050. A eVGA GeForce FX 5200 card does not produce a digital output at a resolution of 1680x1050, so you must use the digital-to-analog adapter that comes with the graphics card and the analog cable that comes with the monitor, instead of using the DVI digital cable that also comes with the monitor. You must also use the classic control panel for the eVGA GeForce FX 5200 card, to create a custom resolution for the output of the graphics card to the monitor.

The above information is the result of tech-support calls to both Samsung and eVGA, resulting in a beautiful image on a large monitor. The monitor, however, will not produce the best image without calibration.

I suggest that you calibrate the monitor using software and hardware such as Colorvision Spyder2-Express.