Monitor Size & Resolution
Knowing what size monitor you want to use will help you choose the right model of PC for your needs. Why? The images on the screen are made up of thousands of little dots (or "pixels"). Without enough pixels, the image looks bad:

12 x 12 = 144 dots (pixels)

40 x 40 = 1600 pixels

200 x 200 = 40,000 pixels

The number of pixels on your screen depends on what resolution the monitor or game is set to. The more pixels used, the more powerful the PC has to be to keep games running smoothly. It's by far the biggest factor in determining how much money you should spend on your PC's hardware. Here's a chart that shows you what resolutions are best suited for our two models:

Resolution

Recommended
Model

# of Pixels on screen

Size and Type of Monitor

1024 x 768

Ion

0.79 Million

15"-17" CRT/LCD

1280 x 1024

Ion

1.3 Million

16" to 19" CRT/LCD

1440 x 900

Ion

1.3 Million

17" to 19" Widescreen LCD

1680 x 1050

Ion* or Reactor

1.8 Million

20"-22" Widescreen LCD

1920 x 1200

Reactor

2.3 Million

24"-28" Widescreen LCD

2560 x 1600

Reactor

4.1 Million

30" Widescreen LCD

*The Ion can handle 1680x1050, but some games will require settings to be lowered.

Resolution didn't used to be quite as important of a factor in designing/buying a gaming PC, because the older CRT monitors could make just about any resolution look good, within reason. Now that most of us are buying LCD monitors, resolution is a very important issue:

LCD Monitors Have a Native Resolution
Most gamers are buying LCD monitors these days, and with good reason: they take up less room and weigh 1/5th as much as the old bulky CRT monitors. The trade-off for that convenience is the loss of the CRT's ability to use multiple resolutions with no drop in quality. If you play a game at 1600 x 1200 on a CRT and notice sluggish performance, you can probably just go into the game options and drop the resolution down to 1280 x 1024 and the game will play smoothly and look just as good.

LCD gamers don't have that option, because of "native resolution". All LCDs are designed for one particular resolution, and kinda suck at any other settings. Yes you can choose a (lower) resolution than the native one, (and that is one way to get a sluggish game to perform better) but the visual quality will go down - often way down. Gaming is about immersion, and image quality is just as important as fluid motion for the experience. When buying a gaming PC, you want to ensure as much as possible that the games you're going to play will run smoothly at your monitor's native resolution without sacrificing the image quality. (Think High Quality, 4xAA, 16xAF in most games, or High Quality, 2xAA in Crysis). Our recommendations are balanced with that in mind.

Games Don't Automatically Use An LCD's Native Resolution!
One important fact to bear in mind is that many, many games automatically choose an "optimal" or default resolution the first time they start up, and they don't inform you that you're not gaming at your LCD's native resolution. Consequently, there are a lot of gamers out there who don't realize that their games could look a lot better than they do by simply changing an in-game setting. Always set the resolution in a new game's options to your native resolution and see if it's playable that way. Drop antialiasing to 2x before lowering the resolution. In some cases, no antialiasing and medium quality settings might be prefereable to a non-native resolution. (Your native resolution is usually the highest one you can select.)

More About The Ion
Starting at $1,690

More About The Reactor
Starting at $2,450