As far as gaming and fast-paced films are concerned, one of the most crucial parameters for a TFT panel is the response time – as previously mentioned, the Dell delivers in this front as well, with no visible sign of ghosting in high-paced film scenes. Gaming was a joy as well, with even the most frantic 3D games showing their best. One problem you may encounter though, is that most games support resolutions that only fit 4:3 screens – fortunately this has slowly started to change, and now more and more games support widescreen resolutions, either natively or by a patch. A great resource for games and patches for widescreen support is the WideScreen Gaming Forums, where you can find patches and hacks in order to enable widescreen support in many titles that miss it out of the box. For those games that no patches or hacks exist, you can either choose to have a stretched image (which is fine by me, but for some people it may look odd), or to enable Aspect Ratio from your graphics card control panel, in order to keep the correct aspect ratio of the image displayed. I should probably note that, due to the nature of my work, I often swap graphics cards, so I have gamed in a variety of resolutions, from 800x600 in Quake 4 using a Radeon X800GT to 1920x1200 in Half Life 2 using a Geforce 7800GTX. The 2405fpw will play every game you throw at it with marvellous image quality; colours look vibrant, and there's no sign of ghosting. Of course, it is always best to game at the panel's optimal resolution (as with most TFTs), which also means that, in order to run your games at 1920x1200 you will need a killer graphics card (like a 7800GTX or a X1800XT) in order to afford all the eye candy at acceptable frame rates. Trust me when I tell you, that when you play Half Life 2 (or Quake 4, with the appropriate hack) at 1920x1200 with the help of such a card, and experience fluid framerates, you will never want to go back. Ever.

Conclusion
The Dell 2405fpw can now be found for about $1000 (or even less than that, if you count rebates), which in my opinion is a true steal of a price for what you get – the quality of this monitor is truly excellent, and I doubt you will find a 24” inch panel with such a low response time for a price like that (which, at least in Greece, includes postage and packing and comes with a free delivery to your door). The build of the monitor is excellent, and it comes with a 1 year warranty from Dell. For those of you who are afraid of dead pixels, Dell has a policy where it will replace your monitor if you have more than 5 dead pixels – there are better warranties out there, of course, like LG's zero dead pixel policy, but we believe that it is acceptable.

All in all, the 2405fpw is a great TFT monitor, huge by any standards, has an excellent display quality and furthermore costs almost half the price other 24” TFT monitors cost these days. So it's very hard not to award it with our prestigious DriverHeaven Gold award. If you are looking for a TFT monitor, and you have such a budget, get it. You will definitely NOT regret your purchase. Contacts: Reviewer: Panagiotis "Kombatant" Vagiakos Editor/Designer: Allan "Zardon" Campbell s