Campquake Senate

So, I have a bit of a problem.
My new place has forced me to buy a smaller desk that isn't large enough for my current 21" CRT and 19" CRT monitor setup.
So that leaves me in the market for an LCD (or two)
I think I could handle just having one large monitor with the possibility of adding a smaller second one in the future but I have a couple of questions that some of you here have more than likely already found the answers to.

The main question is, how good are wide screen monitors for gaming? I'm considering something in the 24-27" range, which I'm sure I'll spend a pretty penny on, but I'm curious if the games that I play will display correctly on it. I've been struck by the bad thought of a skewed aspect ratio messing up my mouse movement and making everything in my games look short and fat. I play CS at 800x600 regardless of how fast my video card displays it at some massive resolution. Try it sometime, you'll realize how much larger your enemies head is.
Do any of you have any experience with this?

Second, what refresh rate should I look to get? I know the faster the better, but is it safe to assume that anything faster than 5ms is good for gaming?

Third, I'm noticing that Dell has some nice monitors which I can get for a cheaper price through my companies small business account. Do any of you have experience with their larger monitors?
I use 3 19" Dell LCDs at work and am pretty impressed with them, but I havent tried any of their larger widescreens.

I'm sorry but... bigger is better, always!

I run dual monitors on widescreens, and games look really great on them. For most, if not all, games they come with resolutions for normal and widescreen displays. With widescreen resolution you can see more on your sides than on normal displays, and the skewing really doesn't affect it much.

I've got the 21" dell lcd and I lilkes it lots!!

I use a viewsonic 21" (20?) wide along with a 17" square and the viewsonic is a beaut. With WOW I dual screen to look up crap (quests etc) on the 17. With FPS I turn on SLI and turn off the 17. Everything Dark said is correct. I don't notice the stretch at all.

Oh yeah, forgot, my laptop's got a 21" wide screen, my external is a 24" wide screen from X2gen

I have a single 19" 4ms 1400:1 monitor and am extremely happy with it.

Thanks guys... after your comments and much research at widescreengaming.com, I finally bit the bullet on this guy.

A BenQ FP241W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824014124

BenQ also has a WZ model which has BFI (black frame insertion) which is supposed to reduce ghosting even further for about $100 more, but the only places that seem to have it in stock are shady resellers.

Everything I've read said that the standard W version hardly has any ghosting as it is, and has great picture and color quality.

Originally I was looking at the Dell 2407WFP-HC, which is a great monitor, but apparently is plagued with a problem in their acceleration circuitry that causes horrible ghosting. Dell knows about the problem, but has no intentions of fixing it according to an incredibly long thread on their support forums.

Ironically, it turns out that BenQ makes monitors for Dell anyway though, so go figure.

I'll let you know how it is!

Oh, and for those of you who ever wondered...

Panel types explained...
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/pa ... logies.htm

The BenQ that I ordered is a P-MVA
The Dell that I mentioned is a S-IPS (better, but too bad they screwed up the overdrive circuitry!)

Wondering what yours is?
Try checking this list.
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wi ... itors_List

I've had a BenQ FP931 LCD for a year or two now and have never had a complaint -- enjoy your new toy!

Well, I got the new monitor yesterday. Gotta love Newegg and their 3-day shipping that usually seems to arrive the next day!
It really is a thing of beauty. Makes me wish I had the desk space for two of them, actually!
My only gripes... The OSD was in Japanese and I had to guess how to change it to English. Also, the thing had fingerprints on the screen straight out of the box.
But, everything else is good. No dead or stuck pixels, and no ghosting whatsoever that I can easilly notice!

It's honestly the first monitor that makes my old DVDs look like crap. Even the 42" 1080p LCD TV I have hooked up to my computer makes the DVDs look better than this thing!