Can I get some monitor suggestions please?

[jr76]

I know, the dreaded monitor question but I need some help! I'm in the design phase of a cabinet and I'm stuck on the monitor thing.

Here are my goals:

• PC Golf Games using a Happ's Trackball
• Modern MAME games such as Street Fighter
• RTS PC Games such as SimCity 4
• Classic MAME games
• Console Emulation

Given my goals, I'm not so interested in the classic arcade feel as I am in good graphics for the golf games and for the RTS games. I also may be using this PC as my main PC to keep from building two new computers. I dabble in photography, so if I do make this a gaming slash computing PC, I'm looking at either sharing the cabinet monitor for all needs or splitting the signal from my video card to a normal pc setting and the cabinet. Meaning I may build a two-sided cabinet, one with a gaming side and one with a desktop setting side. I would probably use the desktop setting side for RTS gaming as well, but would still need good graphics for the PC golf games.

Any suggestions? Two sided monster cabinet with a PC setting on one side and gaming on the other? What kind of monitors for each side? What kind of monitor if I do a one sided, do everything setup?

Thanks for any suggestions!

P.S. I'll be using Windows XP and the PC Golf games are Links 2003, Tiger Woods 2003, PGA Championship Golf Collectors Edition, and the PC version of Golden Tee with the addon disk.

[SNAAAKE]

one word !
D9200
for all that..yeah that should do the trick.
get that and run mame games at 31khz and see if you like..you like then use whatever video card you have now IF not happy with it then get arcadevga from ultimarc.
best of both world...play pc games at 800x600 and play mame games at their native resolution !  
Just in case you didnt know which monitor I am talking about.
http://www.wellsgardner.com/wellsgardner31/catalog.cfm?dest=itempg&itemid=596&secid=4&linkon=subsection&linkid=8

[shmokes]

Sorry, but if you want to do digital photo editing you're going to need to use a PC monitor.  The very best you can get out of a D9200 is 800x600 resolution.  It's a big monitor so things might be legible, but the dot pitch is going to be like .80 or something.  Most people would find this unacceptable.

I would say that for all of your gaming uses the D9200 is the perfect solution for two reasons 1) it has a regular VGA input so it'll interface with any video card with no modification or special hardware needed (this means that for Windows games you can get a hard core 3D card like a Radeon 9800 for 3D gaming goodness rather than using an Arcade VGA with rather modest 3D capabilities), and 2) it supports resolutions up to 800x600 which makes Windows readable and will support the higher resolutions offered by your PC games.  Standard arcade monitors will only go up to 640x480 and require an Arcade VGA card from Ultimarc or a hack of some kind to interface with a PC -- all this is great for Mame, but leaves a little to be desired for other Windows uses like your RTS and golf games.

But once again Photoshop is out.  I've got a 21 inch PC monitor and I can't imagine trying to use photoshop on it at 800x600.  And it's even a real computer monitor with a .26 dot pitch, I think.   If you're going to use one monitor for everything make it a PC monitor.  If you're going to split the signal D9200 is best if you've got a decent wallet.

[jr76]

800X600, this would be good enough for PC games, but not for PhotoShop. If I get the 9200, I would have to do the dual-sided monster cabinet.  Not a big minus, but more work for sure! The specs say the 9200 is capable of 640x480, I remember reading that it does do 800x600 though....hmmmmm.

Forgive my ignorance, if I run MAME on a normal Windows XP computer using a 17" monitor, how many khz would it be running...I ask so I can have an idea of what 31khz would look like.

Is the ArcadVGA PCI or AGP? If it's PCI it could be a possibilty to run different hardware profiles with the 9700 Pro running a normal PC monitor and the ArcadeVGA running the WG 9200, I think...

[tom61]

Forgive my ignorance, if I run MAME on a normal Windows XP computer using a 17" monitor, how many khz would it be running...I ask so I can have an idea of what 31khz would look like.

31kHz is the horizontal refresh rate of VGA at 640x480 resolution running at 60Hz vertical refresh. '31kHz' has become a blanket term for VGA and SVGA on this (and other) boards. It is techinically incorrect for any other vertical refresh rate or resolution. '31kHz' is what you're running now on your PC monitor.

Hmmm... this brings up a problem. We've been calling VGA (which maxes out at 31kHz) and SVGA (which can can go higher). Let's call SVGA '31kHz+' since it starts at 31kHz and goes from there.

Would an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro run fine with MAME and the WG 9200?

Yes.

Or would I be better off using hardware profiles, one booting with ArcadeVGA on the WG 9200 for MAME games and one profile booting with the 9700 Pro and a normal PC monitor for my PhotoShop needs?

Unless you have two AGP slots, this setup won't work. The ArcadeVGA is AGP only, and if the 9700 comes in a PCI version, it'll hamper game performance.

[Frostillicus]

I would suggest getting a card like the 9700 or even the 8500, which is still a great card - you can assign the d9200 as the primary monitor and hook up a reg PC monitor to be the second and use that for photoshop and such.  This is kind of what I'm doing until I scrape the cash together for a new dedicated system for my cab.  Darn 9200 sucked my wallet dry