I'm in the market for a 17" widescreen LCD. Currently I can buy a Samsung 172W for $699 CAD. (and on top of that 15% tax).
The brightness and contrast are both excellent on this display, but it's got a 23ms response. (I don't want extreme streaking in games).
Is this a good deal, is there any other good 17" widescreen monitors I should be aware of?
I don't have a DVI videocard yet.
i have the samsung 172w actually. bought it last year because i really wanted a widescreen lcd (and this was the most affordable one at the time). i don't play games, so i can't comment on ghosting or responsiveness of the lcd. however i am satisfied w/ the lcd overall and watching widescreen stuff is awesome on it.
my main complaint is the resolution. for the same price, you can get a 19" lcd or a 22" crt. if you don't need a lot of vertical space to work with, then i guess you're fine. when i was doing some programming last semester, it was quite annoying to scroll up and down since the vertical resolution is same as a 15".
a side comment, i didn't get a 19" lcd because i knew i would be annoyed at the viewing angle problem. on a regular 17" or 19" lcd, the shade of color looks drastically different at top of the lcd compare to bottom.
oh yeah, since you seem to care about gaming, you might want to reconsider getting this lcd. i have played couple games on here. need for speed hp2 and prince of persia sands of time. you should be aware that a lot of games don't support widescreen resolution. nfshp2 did natively but pop didn't. i had to get a special patch to modify pop to widescreen and it didn't actually show more stuff horizontally. pop merely cut off the top and bottom of camera view. i didn't notice any streaking or ghosting when i played those two games. i think a real fps game would be different (as the camera would shift much more). i can't play fps so i don't have much to say.
as for dvi connection, get a card in the future that supports it. dvi does make a difference. it's not dramatic like some people claim, but i notice it eliminated noise in signal as it should. when i was using vga connection, i actually saw noise on a completely gray background. for normal usage i didn't notice any noise in picture of course. i think dvi provides more bandwidth also, don't remember though.
That is very helpful CrusaderSean. I don't play that much games, lol 
. I'm also dying for a widescreen monitor. So yea... Thanks for the advice, I'm probably gonna get this soon.
if it's dvi, and you don't have a dvi connector, you'll need to get an adapter. in my experience, though, i never noticed much difference.
23ms isn't horrible. i have a 25ms lcd and things are fine, but if you're serious about the games, you might look for 16ms (or lower) monitors.
699 cad is a big sum, but i don't know how much widescreen monitors cost.
good luck.
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