My trusty Iiyama LCD monitor died on my birthday having given us 4 years of hard earned service. I checked with Iiyama and it had run out of warranty around Easter so there wasn't much we could do - the repair cost was unlikely to be worth the hassle.
As part of my delayed plans to build a new PC I had always intended to buy a new monitor and had been eyeing up Alex's Samsung Beast since he needed my help setting it up a few months back!
However only a few days before my bereavement I had read a review of the new Viewsonic 22 inch monster and even though it worked out a few pennies more than the Samsung I decided that it was the one for us!
Well the monitor arrived on Tuesday and talk about a faff to set it up! The digital setup refused to play ball and I had to resort to an analogue connection whilst I worked out what was wrong with it.
I spent 30 minutes of the phone to Viewsonic's techies and got no help whatsoever, just a we don't know but we'll ring you back! (When?)
Anyway I ploughed on and decided to wipe down the drivers and to start afresh.
Bingo... I updated the graphic drivers and instantly everything worked fine. I then installed the monitor drivers and it all went to hell again!
Third time lucky? I uninstalled all the drivers again and reinstalled the graphics drivers and decided that Microsoft's generic "Plug and Play Monitor" driver seemed to be much more reliable than Viewsonic's own, so I left it at that!
Anyway after 2 days I am very pleased. Running games at full screen is beautiful, although it does tax this poor PC a little bit! DVDs look good and 1080P HD Trailers I downloaded as a test look amazing (apart from Beowolf which looks shit! - stupid CGI animation.).
Now I just need to get used to surfing in widescreen!
2 comments:
Every monitor I've ever bought (and it's been a few) has never worked with their own drivers....kinda weird if you ask me.
Yup, Beowolf looks shit, I agree. Even a naked CGI-Angelina Jolie can't save it.
I'm in the process of looking at 1080p televisions for a blu-ray player. I'm thinking of 42" minf you the Panasonic 46" is only £300 more at £1200 RRP so that's a steal....
I have subscriptions to Home Cinema Choice and What Hi-Fi - Sound and Visison, so if you want to see some reviews of similar stuff let me know your budget and needs and I'll PDF some for you.
PS My old Iiyama worked perfectly on it's own drivers - with a noticable improvement of picture clarity over the windows default... still the Nvidia configuration tool is so good now that you can really do a lot with the base package.
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