Best Monitor Size and Resolution for Windows 98 Gaming

[JaKSLaP]

Hey Guys;

 

Does anyone one know what an idea monitor Size and resolution for playing old school windows 98 games.

 

I would rather an LCD then a CRT.

 

thanks

[Tommy]

For playing old school Windows 98 games, I'd recommend a square monitor and not a widescreen one otherwise your games will look stretched unless they supported widescreen. I'd check eBay or Amazon, they'll probably have decent LCD panel monitors like that. Heck, I found a 17" Dell Monitor at Goodwill for $20, that was one heck of a price and it's in perfect condition too. As for resolution, I'd say 1024x768 would be a great resolution for most things.

[JaKSLaP]

For playing old school Windows 98 games, I'd recommend a square monitor and not a widescreen one otherwise your games will look stretched unless they supported widescreen. I'd check eBay or Amazon, they'll probably have decent LCD panel monitors like that. Heck, I found a 17" Dell Monitor at Goodwill for $20, that was one heck of a price and it's in perfect condition too. As for resolution, I'd say 1024x768 would be a great resolution for most things.

 

thanks for your reply i appreciate that

whats your opinion on 1280x1024 5:4 Ratio

[Tommy]

 

For playing old school Windows 98 games, I'd recommend a square monitor and not a widescreen one otherwise your games will look stretched unless they supported widescreen. I'd check eBay or Amazon, they'll probably have decent LCD panel monitors like that. Heck, I found a 17" Dell Monitor at Goodwill for $20, that was one heck of a price and it's in perfect condition too. As for resolution, I'd say 1024x768 would be a great resolution for most things.

 

thanks for your reply i appreciate that

whats your opinion on 1280x1024 5:4 Ratio

 

I would think that'd work just fine. I don't use that resolution but I see no problem with it. What kind of old school games are you thinking about playing?

[Drugwash]

LCD/TFT monitors have the bad habit of displaying distorted images at resolutions other than the native one.

CRT monitors may be bulky, heavy, with foggy or multiple images if too old or slightly defective, but they would still display images better than LCDs at a wide range of resolutions.

 

Depending on how old the games are, some may start at 320x240px and some relatively newer ones may go up to 1280x960 but old ones usually cap at 800x600 which is a non-standard resolution and even CRT monitors sometimes have a hard time centering the image at that resolution.

 

I'd say most if not all old games would only recognize a 4:3 aspect ratio so even on a 5:4 monitor they will still look a bit distorted, not to mention a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio.

 

Problem is, modern monitors may simply error out on such low resolution as 320x240 or even 640x480 and if they do display something the images would be ugly because they have to be approximated.

 

If you can temporarily perform a test, find a really old game that can only do 320x240 or 640x480, use a videocard/driver capable of clone view with only analog outputs and connect a CRT and an LCD monitor to the video outputs, then start the game and observe the displays. Switch games or game settings, try other resolutions, observe the differences. Then draw the conclusion yourself.

[Tommy]

LCD/TFT monitors have the bad habit of displaying distorted images at resolutions other than the native one.

CRT monitors may be bulky, heavy, with foggy or multiple images if too old or slightly defective, but they would still display images better than LCDs at a wide range of resolutions.

That's one reason why I hate widescreen monitors, because of native resolutions. 4:3 LCD monitors are a bit more forgiving but I have a cheaper monitor from 10 years ago that unless it was at the native resolution, text was all jagged and cut off and just generally bad looking.