Aspect Ratio--16:9?

I'm thinking of buying a new samsung lcd monitor with a 16:9 aspect ratio. My understanding is that this is atypical for games and usually for games etc, people use a 16:10 aspect ratio. My concern is that if I buy a 16:9 ratio monitor that I will have black bars on my screen when playing gw or any other video games. Can someone confirm whether this is true or not or am I way off-base here?

while i dont really like the move away from 16:10 for monitors, there is no real drawback to them. no you will not have the "black bars" like in a movie, you will just be running at a rez of 1920x1080 (hdtv's 1080p) and GW along with every game that can use widescreen works just fine with this resolution.

thanks- why don't you like the move away from them?

i like having more room on my screen, and 1920x1200 is a bit more room then 1920x1080

I just go window mode and stretch it to fill the screen. It helps with rez problems and lets me check wiki easy on my second monitor without having to minimize GW.

which lcd you interested in?

You will not have black bars anywhere on your screen as long as the resolution in-game is set to your monitors native resolution. If it is not set to the correct resolution, then your picture will just look out of proportion.

I used to play on a standard monitor, then upgraded to a 16:10 monitor, and sometimes I like to link my computer to my HDTV which is 1920x1080 and if the resolution is set properly it looks the same. Higher resolutions can see more however.

For a computer monitor, 16:10 beats all.

When faced with a widescreen monitor, some games display more horizontal, some games crop vertical, and some games do a little of both. GW is a game that does a little of both. Hope that helps.

GW molds quite well to wide-screen monitors. It doesn't strech/add black bars, although it gives you more gaming space.

Here's a hint, don't rotate your new widescreen, unless it's huge. 1050x1680 sucks for gaming

As for 16:9 and 16:10, 16:10 gives you more room, true, but it's neglible. Even on high-end 20some" monitors, at most it's 200 pixels you're missing from the bottom, and that isn't much. If you can get a 16:10, go for it, but you'll hardly notice the difference from a 16:9. Trust me, You'll notice the difference from a 4:3 (regular) screen.

I still prefer my two 19" widescreens running at 2100x1680 though. Now if only Windows 7 supported dual monitors the way XP did, I'd be set.

no bars
from my understanding, that extra :1 in 16:10 is for the taskbar, so basically you can view the video's native resolution (lets say fullhd 1080) in window mode maximize and still see the taskbar.
While in 16:9, the video probably have to be resized a little bit (window mode maximize), since the height is not enough for both taskbar and 1080.

for fullscreen mode video, both should run at fullhd.


and for gaming, game nowadays allow u to change resolution so shouldnt be a big deal.

in what way is win7 different?

given how every game nowadays are console ports, you can bet that 1920x1080 resolution will become more popular for gaming.

ye i thought a 16:9 Acer X233Hbid Black 23" would work nicely given that it could run games as well as high def and blue ray content. and at 23 inches i still think it would be large enough to compensate for any loss in vertical space, no?

You're not able to strech GW past the end of one screen. By dragging it in windowed mode, you can get it across two screens, but never past 1050x1680 in size. Also, full screen doesn't support past said resolution.

It's a small thing, but it always was funny back in XP watching reactions when I said I was running GW at 3360x1050. And also, tall and narrow isn't very nice to how my GW was set up.