Gaming on widescreen monitors has been receiving a lot of attention. It was difficult giving up a Sony 21-inch E540 CRT monitor, but I eventually succumbed to the temptation of widescreen gaming. I joined the group of gamers in the nV News Widescreen LCD Club a couple of months ago when I picked up the Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW LCD Monitor. The 2405FPW is a 24-inch widescreen with a native resolution of 1920x1200 (16:10 aspect ratio).

The 2405FPW is an impressive monitor with plenty of real estate and razor sharp 2D text. It takes time getting accustomed to the widescreen layout, especially in 2D mode. Some games support widescreen resolutions out-of-the-box and Widescreen Gaming maintains a repository of games where widescreen support can be enabled through the command line, an ini setting, or a hack.

Dell 2405FPW Widescreen LCD

Click Image to Enlarge - 924x549

Color on the 2405FPW is rich and vibrant, although I give a slight edge in this category to the Sony E540 CRT, which uses a Trinitron tube. However, the E540 weighs in at 67 pounds and is 19 inches deep. The physical characteristics of the 2405FPW are impressive as the unit weighs in at 17 pounds and is 9 inches deep. The edge of the screen on the 2405FPW is perfectly aligned with the monitor frame unlike the CRT, which requires manual adjustments to achieve a picture that is almost never square.

The height of the 2405FPS can be lowered or raised using the adjustable stand and a pivoting mechanism allows the monitor to be tilted as well rotated 90°. The 2405FPW features 4 USB 2.0 ports and the following video connections: 15-pin D-sub (VGA), DVI-D, S-video, composite video and component video.

SYSTEM CONFIGURATION

The Intel-based system makes use of the Sony E540 CRT while the Dell 2405FPW LCD was paired with the AMD-based system. Note that some benchmark results on the Intel-based system list a resolution of 1920x1440 while a resolution of 1920x1200 will be listed on the AMD-based system.

The benchmark results from each system also appear in separate bar charts. The intent here is to focus on the effects of CPU scaling rather than comparing the processors head-to-head.

Intel System Specifications

• Pentium 4 550 - 3.4GHz Prescott with HTT - 800MHz FSB - 1MB L2 Cache
• Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Pro - nForce4 SLI Intel Edition
• 2GB Corsair Value Select 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM 4.0-4-4-12 @ 266MHz
• Western Digital 120GB, 7200RPM, 8MB Buffer, Hard Disk Drive, ATA-100
• Samsung 160GB, 7200RPM, 8MB Buffer, Hard Disk Drive, ATA-100
• Onboard Audio
• Enermax EG565P-VE 565W Power Supply
• Sony E540 21-Inch CRT Monitor
• 32-Bit Color / Vsync Disabled / 75Hz Refresh Rate
• Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 / DirectX 9.0c

AMD System Specifications

• Athlon 64 X2 4800+ - 2.4GHz Toledo Core - 1MB L2 Cache
• Asus A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard - nForce4 SLI
• 2GB Corsair CMX1024-3500LLPRO PC3200 DDR SDRAM 2.0-3-2-6 1T @ 200MHz
• Western Digital Raptor 74GB HDD (2), 10000RPM, 4.5ms Avg Seek, 8MB Buffer, SATA
• Western Digital Caviar 80GB HDD (2), 7200RPM, 8.9ms Avg Seek, 8MB Buffer, ATA-100
• Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Soundcard
• Enermax EG701AX-VE 600W Power Supply
• Dell 2405FPW 24-Inch LCD Monitor
• 32-Bit Color / Vsync Disabled / 60Hz Refresh Rate
• Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 / DirectX 9.0c

Graphics Cards and Drivers

• XFX GeForce 7900 GTX - 650MHz Core/800MHz Memory (BIOS 5.71.22.12.15)
• EVGA GeForce 7900 GTX - 650MHz Core/800MHz Memory (BIOS 5.71.22.12.01)
• NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB - 550MHz Core/850MHz Memory
• ForceWare Beta Driver 84.25

Test Applications

• 3DMark05 - v1.2.0
• Far Cry - v1.33 Build 1395
• F.E.A.R. - v1.03
• Oblivion - v1.0.228
• Quake 4 - v1.0.5 Beta Patch

Next Page: Quality vs. High Quality Image Setting