Which is better/most practical? Two or One LCD?

Would you guys rather have two LCDs (ie, two 17in or 19in) or one large screen (ie, 22in or 24in). I have wanted an external LCD for a looong time and will most likely buy one in the coming month or two and would like to know what your feelings/experiences are with each set up.

 

I would not like having two lcd's in the same area... IT would make too much attention for me ie things to look at. I would get a big one and wall mount it over my desk.

 

I have one 37" and thats the way to go IMO unless you have a very specific reason for 2 monitors like photo or video editing where you can have more realistate to work with. But one screen is the 500x better than 2 for gaming because you do not want the borders of the monitors going right down the middle of your screen also one screen when its big like mine is more emersive it takes up all of your perifial vision so its like being in a game or being at the movie theater when I watch a movie. Also its less demanding on a computer to push one monitor vs 2 usually depending on the resolution you use.

 

Depends on what you're using it for. A single large screen is better for movies and games.

For work I prefer 2 lcds. I'm using 2 17" at work. I don't always need 2 monitors so I normally keep one off. I only turn it on when I need the extra space.

I wouldn't go too big for external monitor if you're using it at a desk. A 37" monitor would be way too big for me. I think a 24" monitor would be an excellent compromise.

 

Anything larger than 24inch is really not that easy to work with. I have two 21 inches and it's a great setup for both work and play.

 

Also depends on how much you want to spend. >22" monitors can get pretty costly. A decent 22" can cost $200-300, while a decent 24" can easily scale from $500+. You can get more real estate with 2 monitors for the same price, the sacrifice, is the line in the middle, a bit more power consumption, and if you have the room on your desk..

 

You either have one screen or three. Two is a bad combination.
Why is two screens bad?
Well if you are playing a game, you are usually centered in the middle, so your cursor is between the two monitors.
This is why one of three screens are golden. You are always in the center of the screen, not on the edge.

K-TRON

 

nice perspective K-TRON, i never think about that before

 

Well, i always ketch my self needing a 2nd screen to accompany my 22 in.
Also, my 22 uin does not satiate me. I am thinking of getting a 47in tv, and then having my 22in as a 2nd screen. i like 2 screens. or more

 

K-TRON speaks the truth. That is the most annoying thing about dual screen setups. It drove me nuts. However, there are some mods out there for the most popular games that will offset the character/cursor to the left or right of the center bezels of the screens.

I have two desktop computers. One has two 19" 4:3 aspect LCD monitors and runs XP Pro. I primarily use this for CAD/CG work where the extra real estate really helps for toolbars, internet, and other stuff. I did have these monitors originally hooked up to my gaming desktop which runs Vista but I discovered much to my dismay that Vista no longer supports horizontal span mode. Which means games immediately default to the primary display. Very annoying.

My gaming rig now has a single 24" widescreen Samsung 245BW. I thought I'd miss the dual screens but it turns out that the larger single screen is quite enjoyable to look at and there's no center bezels getting in the way of the action. It also provides more desk space surface than having the two monitors side-by-side. Not to mention one less power & DVI cord.

 

I would prefer a 40" LCD TV..

i can be most productive that way...

can work & watch TV as well

 

One LCD. Just hooking up a 2nd one might be impossible. I'm on a 22" Westinghouse LCD I snagged for $180 w/ tax on Black Friday

 

Wow, thanks for all the quick responses. KTRON does bring up an interesting point that I have not thought of...however, I don't play to many games. The ones I do play, CIV IV, Rome Total War, and the Sims would be fine on one screen and I could just shut off the second. I also don't play first person shooters (I am one of those people who gets sick... ) so I don' think the bar down the middle would be too bad.

I mostly want the extra screen real estate, there are times when I can have 10+ windows open and it would be nice to spread them all over the place, so in essence three screens would be best but, I don't have the cash to drop on three right now.

My main concern is watching movies but, I think I could deal with it.

 

Yeah but your thinking gaming only for working 2 monitors is ok because usually the content on the two monitors is totally seperate. You forget to mention the Matrox TH2G for the 3x monitor setup and the idea you need VERY high end hardware to run that setup and not many games will support that ultra wide FOV, the ones that do tho (esp racing games) are so cool.

Still thats why I prefer my 37" to a 3x monitor setup, every game supports it, and while not as much "surround gaming" as a TH2G setup its still very emersive.

 

KTRON did not bring up the point about 2 monitors first even tho 3 post have given him praise for it..... I was the first

Common guys its post #3 its kinda dishearting to see nobody paid attention to my post.

 

I was bringing up KTRON's idea of one versus three because that thought did not cross my mind, not that fact that you are in the middle of two screens like you brought up.

 

You brought up the bezels being down the middle which is obvious. The unobvious part to most people who've never seen a dual display setup is the cursor/character split in games. But I'll give credit where credit is due and throw a +1 rep bone your way. There, feel better?

 

Well let me go into more detail about 3 screens, for one 99% of the games out there wont support it. Plus to gain support for the few that do you will need an additional piece of hardware called the matrox tripple head 2 go. It tells your computer basically that your 3 screens (or 2 as they have a dual version as well) are just 1 really big monitor.

If you ever played with a 2 monitor setup just for fun you will notice that games only open in one monitor and do not span both. The only work around for this is windowed mode and just stretching the game across, but the Matrox does it correctly and lets you do this with games that do not support windowed mode.

Keep in mind that using 3 monitors will demand the best hardware you can buy basically to keep any modern game at a playable framerate with good graphics settings.

 

Not necessarily true.

In Windows XP you have the option to use "Horizontal Span" mode for two screens. The desktop will go across both displays. Games do need to support the horizontal resolution and if so will fit both displays. WoW is a good example of a game that supports dual displays.

Unfortunately Vista does not have "Horizontal Span" as an option.

 

I have used that option and yes it does make the desktop span both monitors, but it did not make games go across both unless in windowed mode and you dragged the window across both desktops, WoW runs in windowed mode infact thats how I play it on my laptop so I can use Ventrillo at the same time and open web sites.

If you try full screen gaming I am almost positive you will see it only one one of the two monitors. (not full screen windowed mind you)

 

Actually, WoW on my two 19" Monitors plays @ 3200x1200, non-windowed (full screen) mode. The option for 3200x1200 appears within the WoW display options.

Perhaps there's a video res limitation with your graphics card?

 

No it would be a game limitation if anything because back when I used 2 monitors I didnt have WoW.

 

I use two screens, the one on my laptop and a 17" Sony CRT to the left of it. Right now I'm posting this on the laptop and watching CSI NY on the Sony. I use the CRT for photos and video and such and also to display processes that take a while like DVD authoring or encoding so I can keep an eye on them.

 

I would probably get 1 large monitor if you were going to be looking for office productivity, and (probably) 2 if you were planning on gaming, depending on the system powering the game.

Office productivity is (typically) enhanced by having a large work space. That said, if you're gaming on a massive monitor, and you don't have a powerful video card backing it up, you're going to get really terrible, choppy, gameplay. Assuming that you don't have a particularly powerful graphics card pushing pixels, get two smaller LCDs so that you can turn one off and play on a single LCD with a higher framerate.

 

What 19ins? That resolution is very rare on 19in LCDs. Also most (like 99% out there) wont run a game on both screens unless the game is a) windowed, or b) designed for both screens. Supreme Commander is a good example of the later.

Also Matrox TripleHeadToGo only works with identical sized screens at 1280x1024.

Id take a single large screen over 2 smaller ones. However one large screen and one smaller auxillary screen works very well.

 

You are correct and I stand corrected. The res is 1280x1024 for a single 19", standard 4:3 LCDs. So my dual screen res is 2560x1024 which some games such as WoW support. They are NEC 1935NXM's which came out about 4 years ago. I was thinking of my old 19" CRTs which were 1600x1200. I meant to edit my earlier post when I double checked the res many days ago but forgot. Thanks for keeping me honest!

Exactly, I did state this fact. The game needs to support it.

 

OR you know you can have one screen centered and the other one off to the side, it's not hard to turn your head 10 degrees, Plus with 3 screen you would have to turn you head either direction anyways.

 

I would suggest going over this study done by NEC:

http://www.necdisplay.com/gowide/

It seems the best is 1x 24" or 1x 26" widescreen monitor from their (limited) study. Too bad they didn't test more multi monitor configurations.