Need Advice on a Monitor

I have been researching monitors because the one I have isn't the greatest for my needs. I would like to get something with 120hz,2ms and based for gaming. I don't know what the future holds for gaming so I don't know if I should get 3D or not,,I dont even know if the games I play now are 3D,,,but I was wanting a 27 inch, and some of my friends say that is to big and you have trouble seeing everything at once. I have a 24 now,,,so I really don't know how it would differ. I dont want a cheap one, but I cant afford anything over 4-5 hundred. My graphics card is the EVGA 580 Classified, it has 2 x DVI ports and thats it. I would greatly appreciate any help in this matter and would like to know also if you own what you suggest, Thanks alot for your time and suggestions, YT Danny

Thats kind of contradictory, asking for a high quality monitor and then stating you don't want a cheap one. There is a reason why the monitors are over 4-5 hundred dollars, because they are not cheap monitors.

As for your friends stating you don't want a monitor that large because you couldn't see everything at once. Well that goes against the idea of getting multiple monitors (such as AMD Eyefinity Technology) connected together for gaming purposes.

Thats why i posted this to see what opinions are,,,as far as price goes, like i said i was hoping to cap at 400$,,,,as far as size I have never played on or witnessed anything more big than what i have, if it is not a factor as of what size has to do with performance and ergonomics then i would like to have a 30 inch so i could raise my resolution,,,,but Im no expert,,,,,thats why i camer to these forumsd

Where are my manners today? I didn't welcome you to the forum.

Hi Danny - Welcome to w7forums

I should tell you that your question is a bit out of my league. I haven't used anything more than a GTS 450 on a 20" monitor. Even though I may understand most of the specifications, I've had no experience with them. Thats about the equivalent as being book smart without field training.

Maybe some of the other guys can chime in on this with experienced help. Honestly, I don't see the need in having anything over 60HZ.

That depends entirely on how close you sit to it. And BTW, I could not live without at least two monitors. Though not a gamer, I love having different windows open and different programs running on different monitors.

While a $500 monitor is not the most expensive out there, that certainly is not a cheap one either.

There is a lot of confusion over refresh rates but generally, for fast animation, 120Hz is better than 60Hz though the newer 240Hz rates are probably nothing significant. Like boosting RAM from 16Gb to 32Gb will not likely be noticeable because 16Gb is already overkill for most people. Note the confusion comes out of the old CRT world where the pixel phosphors on the inside of the screen would start to fade as soon as the guns moved on to the next pixel. So the guns would have to return and "refresh" the pixel and it usually did this in 60 cycles per second - hence 60Hz. But LCDs are lights that turn on and stay on until instructed to turn off - they don't need to be refreshed. So if your LCD monitor has a native refresh rate of 60Hz and you change your card settings to 70Hz, in most cases the monitor simply ignored it and stayed with 60Hz.

I understand the concept (aka: electronics courses), it's the need I don't yet understand (let me emphasize the word yet).

What are the limitations on the human eyes? 60Hz is pretty fast as far as the eyes are concerned, I'm not sure I would notice a difference past 60Hz. I did a quick search and came up empty handed as far as the sample rate of the human eye.

If I was Commander Data from Star Trek, I would say 240Hz was slow.

The average human eye can "detect" somewhere around 12- 20 frames per second. Most movies are filmed and shown at 24FPS. This is why 30FPS is considered ideal in most cases for videos and games. However, if the object is moving across the screen very fast, then even at 30FPS, it might seem jerky for some individuals - especially now that 3D is becoming more popular.

I agree though on some sources, if you had two identical monitors but with one 60 and the other 120Hz and you watched them side-by-side in a blind test (by blind, I mean you don't know which monitor is which) you might notice moving scenes on the 120Hz looks a little sharper - "might" being the operative word.

Here's an interesting read on it: The Hobbit shooting at 48FPS.