Monitor pre-purchase questions

[brando]

I came into a bit of money recently, and decided to upgrade the visual side of my rig (a 24" DiGiMate 1900x1200 & an ATi HD4890) a little. My rig is primarily for browsing, e-mailing, and IL-2 - on-line flying and mission building

Now that Ati have got their drivers sorted for the 5xxx series and IL2, I plumped for an HD5870 card and looked around for a monitor to do justice to it. Eventually I found a 27.5" monitor at 1900x1200 and bought that. It's a Hanns.g HZ281 which retails at £250 in the UK. The quality is superb throughout and even though it doesn't do the ultra-high definition of the Dell and Samsung offerings, it's great for less than a 1/4 of the latters' prices. Surprising to me, the extra 3&1/2" of visual real estate makes quite an improvement to my enjoyment of the game. I was so impressed that I went and bought a TrackIR 5 to replace my tired old 3Pro!

All in all I'm chuffed with the result of this little splurge. For just over £600 I have lifted the graphics potential of my flight rig by a couple of notches - and I still have room for improvement when SoW BoB happens along, with Crossfire and extra monitors an achievable option if I so desire. Based on the price tag for the top-end monitors, I still have £500 in hand to achieve it.

B

Edit: I should have said that my wife is really pleased with the 24" monitor that now adorns her workstation. Buying a bigger monitor AND keeping the wife happy - win/ win!