How deep is your desk? If you've only got 2ft or less, the keyboard will be under it and your nose will be planted on the glass... but you can manage with the desk pulled out a foot from the wall, provided it hasn't got a backboard on the hutch or something. But even a full 17" (Where the pic is 17", not a 16.5 tube with distorted edges you have to give a half inch border for all round) on a shallow desk, where you like to sit right up to it, you might find you're getting a tired neck because you're moving your head around to see all of the screen. So you wanna get them set back around 18" from the front of the desk. Shallow desks even pulled out might have a 21" on it's teeter point though, and balance games with a 60lb monster are not something you want to play. A lot of the weight is fairly far forward though as the screen is typically thick on the front. If you haven't figured out yet, that you don't wanna carry one of these beasts facing away from you, you will.

Right now I am using a working bench that I can move away from the wall. And I am placing the keyboard on the desk so there will be the keyboard in between me and the monitor. Just wondering if I need to put the monitor further away from me. But I can always rearrange the setting in my gaming room or get new furnitures.

It depends on your setup.
I had an 21 inch iiyama in 97, now i'm using a 19 inch vision master. Still have to pull the desk away from the wall.. and the ideal distance is the one you are comfy with.
You can also go and find the best ergonomic distance, but that depends on how many hours a week you use it.
I for instance use my setup for an averagr of 3h a week. So I dont even bother.

I would recommend 19" as 17" is too small nowadays. 19" CRTs are able to display resolution up to 1600x1200. There are also 17" CRTs that can do that, but they are rare. 19" CRT can display 1280x960 at 85Hz or 1024x768 at 100Hz.

AlexZ wrote on 2021-09-15, 20:52:

I would recommend 19" as 17" is too small nowadays. 19" CRTs are able to display resolution up to 1600x1200. There are also 17" CRTs that can do that, but they are rare. 19" CRT can display 1280x960 at 85Hz or 1024x768 at 100Hz.

It depends on which games one wants to prioritize. For DOS games which usually run at 320x200 I prefer a 17" CRT. Anything larger than that and they start looking a bit too blocky for my taste (personal preference). But if Win9x games are the main focus, then using a monitor that can do 100 Hz or more at 1024x768 might be preferable.

There's also the fact that the UI for most Win9x games was designed around 640x480 or 800x600 resolutions. Going much higher than that tends to make UI elements too tiny and unreadable in many games.

I had a 20" Apple CRT I used when I was in college.

Had to use an adapter with it so I could use it with my PC though.

That thing was ginormous and weighed around 80lb.

That being said, the bigger the better depending on the resolution , refresh rate and dot pitch.

Seems like everyone has their own preference. 19 or 21

I probably will go with the Sony G520 and try to pull out the desk.

I have a 32" lcd for my regular working desktop and I have about 18" from the edge of my desk. So maybe I will try 18 inches first with the G520.

Thanks everyone for the feedback!

Dell M991 a little smaller and lighter with similar characteristics

Depth 18.3 in vs 17.2 in
Weight 46.3 lbs vs 44.09 lbs

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-09-15, 21:15:

AlexZ wrote on 2021-09-15, 20:52:

I would recommend 19" as 17" is too small nowadays. 19" CRTs are able to display resolution up to 1600x1200. There are also 17" CRTs that can do that, but they are rare. 19" CRT can display 1280x960 at 85Hz or 1024x768 at 100Hz.

It depends on which games one wants to prioritize. For DOS games which usually run at 320x200 I prefer a 17" CRT. Anything larger than that and they start looking a bit too blocky for my taste (personal preference). But if Win9x games are the main focus, then using a monitor that can do 100 Hz or more at 1024x768 might be preferable.

There's also the fact that the UI for most Win9x games was designed around 640x480 or 800x600 resolutions. Going much higher than that tends to make UI elements too tiny and unreadable in many games.

^ this is also mainly my point of view. It all depends on the content you're running. Secondary concern would be the space you have on your desk and the depth of your desk, so you'll sit at the correct distance from the screen. Third concern is storage: the larger to monitor, the more space it takes up in your closet or attic when you're not using it. Especially if you change systems a lot, ask yourself if you really want to haul a massive crt around frequently.

I prefer smaller monitors for DOS, 15" is great for this. For win98 games I go with 17" because most of it runs best on 800x600 on my Pentium 2.

I have a 17" (Compaq MV740), 19" (HP 91) and a 21" CRT (Sony G500).

The 17" is the most recent acquisition, and I switched the 19" I was using for DOS with my 486 with it. I always liked big screens, but the 17" is definitely a better fit for DOS resolution, makes everything look just a bit more sharp, even if I wasn't complaining with the 19" either, it was perfectly fine.

I'm using the 21" with a VGA switcher with my P1 and P3 builds, both Win98se. Even for late DOS games, the 21" Trinitron is great.

I'm lucky to have a game room where they don't move, Hezus' point about hauling big ass CRT's around is fair 😀

Granted, I like "big" screens, I've never encountered anything that resembles eye fatigue as I've been spending many hours a day on screens for 35 years both for leisure then work, the usual recommended distances in relation to screen size (both computer and TV's) never made any sense to me and I've always been way closer than that, and my eyesight has never suffered from it 😁 I've always been slightly shortsighted but only wear glasses when driving for comfort, and that's it.

Not trying to boast or anything and hope it doesn't come that way, what I mainly saying is that the concepts of "eye fatigue" and "proper distance" are nothing but alien to me so I like to sit close to big screens!

I would say for late 90s period correctness... 17" CRT was usually an upgrade, and 15" (or even 14" sometimes) the standard that came bundles with machines. 19" if you felt like shelling out for what would be considered a premium upgrade.

As others have pointed out, 'short' CRTs were becoming a thing with the bigger screen sizes (19"+), because as you know, they just became monstrous otherwise and would eat up too much desk space.

I would recommend at least a 17" Trinitron (or knockoff) if you wanna go the CRT route.

"Recommend CRT monitor size for Windows 98 gaming"

I'm not entirely sure what's an ideal size, but my family's Windows 98SE system consisted
of a Pentium III 733 and a 17" CRT monitor.

On the other hand..
My father's 386DX-40 had a 20" monitor (non-multisync/frequency) with BNC connectors..

So it really depends on your needs, I would say.

I've remember that I've also seen ads in an Atari Magazine from the late 80s / early 90s that showed a 19 or 20" monochrome monitor..
It was ment to be used with a custom graphics card for the Mega ST.
Programs rgat followed the TOS/GEM programming guidelines were said to be compatible (Cubase?).

I would go with something between 15" to 17". Bigger for productivity work or movie watching but that is not relevant on a crt in 2021 in my opinion.

Hezus wrote on 2021-09-18, 09:20:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-09-15, 21:15:

There's also the fact that the UI for most Win9x games was designed around 640x480 or 800x600 resolutions. Going much higher than that tends to make UI elements too tiny and unreadable in many games.

^ this is also mainly my point of view. It all depends on the content you're running. Secondary concern would be the space you have on your desk and the depth of your desk, so you'll sit at the correct distance from the screen. Third concern is storage: the larger to monitor, the more space it takes up in your closet or attic when you're not using it. Especially if you change systems a lot, ask yourself if you really want to haul a massive crt around frequently.

I prefer smaller monitors for DOS, 15" is great for this. For win98 games I go with 17" because most of it runs best on 800x600 on my Pentium 2.

Yah, I really don't get why ppl wanna push late 90s games past 800x600, they were designed to look best around there, and pushing to 1024x768 or 1280x1024 will just make all the blockies and jaggies pop out, so having needed twice the GPU to run that high, you now need twice the GPU again to run 4xAA to make it as fuzzy as you thought 800x600 was in the first place.

What? Higher resolution when using the same screen size works the opposite way. The higher the resolution, the less the jaggies stick out.

This is when comparing 2 monitors that are the same screen size but have different max resolutions.

If you are using an LCD, the lower resolutions will blur everything because the built-in scaler is not going to be able to make it as clear as the native resolution of the LCD.

With both CRT and LCD monitors, there is more to it than just resolution though. You have to watch the dot pitch on CRTs and with LCDs, the type of panel can make a huge difference in clarity and color reproduction.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-09-20, 17:36:

What? Higher resolution when using the same screen size works the opposite way. The higher the resolution, the less the jaggies stick out.

Unless you are using a CRT TV via a little mod to play “VGA” resolution games

Then you can’t see the jaggies at 640x480 or lower

rmay635703 wrote on 2021-09-20, 17:43:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-09-20, 17:36:

What? Higher resolution when using the same screen size works the opposite way. The higher the resolution, the less the jaggies stick out.

Unless you are using a CRT TV via a little mod to play “VGA” resolution games

Then you can’t see the jaggies at 640x480 or lower

Ewwww... I have one of those... talk about maximum blur for everything.

rmay635703 wrote on 2021-09-20, 17:43:

Unless you are using a CRT TV via a little mod to play “VGA” resolution games

Then you can’t see the jaggies at 640x480 or lower

Mmm... free anti-aliasing... 😁

This makes more sense for console games as they did take advantage of this and other tricks such as blending.

Hah... It could be considered the absolute worst quality anti-aliasing ever... Good luck being able to read text or make out any fine details whatsoever.

Of course if you have bad close up vision you could just use your eyes' built in anti-aliasing by not wearing glasses or contacts.