Both 16:10 and 4:3.

I use an Asus ProArt 24" monitor. It natively supports 1920x1200 (16:10) and 1600x1200 (4:3), and will auto-switch between them depending on the game's resolution.

I find 16:10 especially useful for shooters of the mid-2000's era including Battlefield 2, FEAR, Crysis and RB6: Vegas 2.

I've also discovered some older games like Simcity 2000 and Civilization II support wide-screen resolutions. Civ II in 1920x1200 resolution is glorious.

I've got a 22" Dell P2213, while it doesn't switch automatically, it does have a 4:3 and 5:4 mode which is handy. I don't like the small image though and prefer to use My 19" Hyundai B90A for 1280x1024 resolutions.

Rule of thumb for me: If one of the outputs is digital only (HDMI, DVI-D) then 16:9; analog: 4:3 (even if I convert it to HDMI afterwards). Also applies to consoles. That seems to coincide well enough with games from the respective machine/card's era supporting 16:9 or not.

16:9 or 4:3 on a 16:9 panel.

Depends on how your games tackle scaling. Some older games can understand widescreen formats, but they scale from vertical resolution, unlike modern games, so you'll get reduced viewing angle.
By itself, 16:10 is a useless standard which will not benefit any games than can understand widescreen, but individual panels might be nicer than 16:9. 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 are slightly better than 1080p/1440p panels. And 5:4 is just an abomination which must burn in Hell.

Serpent Rider, I like your style. Seriously, always straight up.

I use 5:4 for all my retro systems because i can't be bothered with CRTs and widescreen is not retro to me at all.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-02-28, 00:35:

By itself, 16:10 is a useless standard which will not benefit any games than can understand widescreen

Eh? There are games that natively support 16:10, so not sure what you mean by it won't benefit any games?

Plus the 1920x1200 resolution offers pixel perfect 1600x1200, which in turn scales perfectly into 320x200, 320x240 and 800x600.

IMHO, 1920x1200 is as good a resolution as it gets on an LCD display for running an XP system.

It's fine. It's just not a "high definition" resolution therefore gaslit out of being part of modern video standards, thus not as mass produced or marketed.

16:10 is arguably era-appropriate though if one is looking for the early widescreen gaming in the XP era.

Plus it can offer pixel-perfect resolutions of 1920x1200 and 1600x1200 when going between 16:10 and 4:3.

IMHO, this makes it superior to the 16:9 resolutions at least for that specific era of gaming.

I like 16:10, since it's the best of two worlds.

Examples:
Films. 16:9 films don't completely fit a 16:10 screen, but that little free space can still be used for control elements of a player or Windows task bar.
Media Player 9, afaik, has the control panels in full screen mode were the black bars are.

Also, 4:3 films can occupy more space than they can on a 16:9 monitor.
Sure, a 4:3 monitor is superior here - but most 4:3 models top out at 20" or 21".
A common 16:10 monitor of 24" or 27" and up comes close to that 20" 4:3 experience .

PDFs. Scans of books, magazines and comics can be viewed good on a 16:10 monitor (two pages).
A 4:3 monitor is too small in width here. An 16:9 monitor misses some height.

Emulators. 16:10 monitors can display classic 4:3 contents better than 16:9.
You get a few centimeters extra with a 16:10 monitor of same size of a 16:9 model.

But that's just my opinion. I'm using a 4:3, 21" monitor for VGA and SVGA resolution at 640x480 / 800x600 pels, respectively.
The 286 PC I have runs Windows at 800x600, which displays nicely on a 1600x1200 panel.

5:4 is also interesting, but worse than 4:3 or 16:10, perhaps.
Because, the visual distortion of 4:3 material through stretching makes an oval out of a circle.
It's like running 320x200 games at 16:9, imho.

5:4 is what old game consoles (SNES) used internally due to the resolution limits imposed by LD monitors (max 240/288 odd or even lines),
but what never was meant to be displayed unaltered.

Edit: That simultaneously means that 5:4 monitors are nice for pixel artists as a secondary monitor.
They can see their 5:4 art raw, without distortion. That makes editing/drawing more pleasing.

Me? Why I consider 1600x1200 to be the perfect eXPerience. My monitor can actually do 1920x1440, but my aging eyes certainly aren't able to resolve the minor uptick in detail. But they sure do appreciate the higher refresh rates available at 16x12!

They made 27"+ of 16:10? I may need to look into what's out there.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-02-27, 22:01:

Both 16:10 and 4:3.

I use an Asus ProArt 24" monitor. It natively supports 1920x1200 (16:10) and 1600x1200 (4:3), and will auto-switch between them depending on the game's resolution.

This is the way.

Having recently acquired a 16:10 Samsung monitor myself, I can confirm that both of the aforementioned resolutions look great on a 24" screen. Also, the few games which run at a fixed 800x600 resolution (e.g. Heroes of Might and Magic 3) look pretty nice too, due to a clean 2x scale.

ptr1ck wrote on 2023-02-28, 02:38:

They made 27"+ of 16:10? I may need to look into what's out there.

There are although they are uncommon. The Hanns.G 28" monitor is one such display: https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/hanns- … 8in-lcd-monitor

I like 5:4...
Maybe it's just because I'm used to it. Basically every XP machine I ever interacted with that had a good monitor was 1280x1024.
XP looks perfectly at home on those goofy almost-square LCD monitors.
Of course in a perfect world we would have just gotten 1280x960 LCDs and in that world I'd be a firm 4:3 believer. For games 1280x1024 is pretty dreadful. In a perfect world it's also true nobody would have ever invented 1366x768 and TVs would have switched to 16:10 instead of monitors switching to 16:9. But we can't have perfection.
This is also only about LCDs. I would never ever be willing to drive a CRT at 1280x1024. Somebody would have to be physically threatening me to make me do so. 5:4 is for LCDs only. CRTs get whatever the highest legible 4:3 resolution they can handle is.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-02-28, 03:05:

Having recently acquired a 16:10 Samsung monitor myself, I can confirm that both of the aforementioned resolutions look great on a 24" screen. Also, the few games which run at a fixed 800x600 resolution (e.g. Heroes of Might and Magic 3) look pretty nice too, due to a clean 2x scale.

What specific model do you have?

The one complaint I do have about the Asus ProArt 24" is that it doesn't offer clean scaling for 800x600. It still interpolates pixels and no way to turn that off, unfortunately.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-02-28, 03:20:

What specific model do you have?

I'm using a Samsung SyncMaster S24B420BW. It's similar to the model that Phil is showcasing in this video.

The one complaint I do have about the Asus ProArt 24" is that it doesn't offer clean scaling for 800x600. It still interpolates pixels and no way to turn that off, unfortunately.

You can't completely turn off the blurring on this monitor either, if that's what you mean. Though its sharpness adjustment has quite a bit of range (0-100) which does help a little. What I meant was that 1600x1200 is 800x600 doubled on each axis, so it looks cleaner than upscaling from something like 1024x768.

It's a shame that GPU drivers didn't offer proper integer scaling until a few years ago, which rules out that option for WinXP gaming.

5:4 out of necessity/historical reasons. I'm over all very satisfied with my 5:4 screen. It has good image quality and if necessary a pair of surprisingly decent quality speakers. Tops out at 75Hz, no ghosting, no screen tearing, contrast is a little low.

A lot of XP games I play don't support wide screen out of the box, though some don't even support 5:4, like for example F.E.A.R.

I have a 4:3 CRT conserved at work I'm planning to take home.