Quote Originally Posted by KrayZ33
I'm not too sure about this but your 17' monitor might get problems in displaying higher resolutions... at least you won't be able to see stuff if you use a high desktop resolution..

17' monitors are usally made for using 1024x768 pixels. (1280x1024 but it gets texts and so on get really small then when you are browsing etc)

I don't know how it affects playing games though

I hope someone who has more experience in stuff like that than me will answer this... because it interests me too ^^

Usually graphic cards and monitors communicate. So the graphic cards knows the resolutions the monitor can display. When you ask for a higher resolution, the monitor can't keep up and 15 seconds later the last working resolution comes back. Or you get an 'extended desktop' where you see a part of the desktop and it moves around.

Also, 1280*1024 on a 17" monitor doesn't give that tiny characters or density. That's what I use right now

Regarding monitors, well it's too hard nowadays to find a good monitor for every uses and not too expensive... and even when expensive, there are troubles, defaults and so on...
I'd go to a 24" wide because they can do 1920*1200, so with one that does 1:1 you can display full HD media with no up/downscaling.