I am planning to buy an LCD monitor with my new build... i wud be using a ASUS 8800GT card..

my uses are
1. Gaming
2. Software development (lots) using java SDK netbeans etc...
3. watching movies and serials...

I wan to get a 17" LCD only as only that comes inside of my budget....

I cant seem to find a good combination of all factors like response time, brightness, contrast ratio etc....

suggest some good 17" LCDs, no speaker/audio on board...
Samsung, Viewsonic, LG, Acer are preferred... as they are available ( i am in India by the way, so i guess u can understand )

Gimme me ur choice....

I would recommend one of Samsung's widescreen 19" monitors, they're coming down in price all the time.

i do a lot of programming and software development... having a bigger resolution on a bigger screen makes text small and difficult to read right?

You can set the monitor to a lower res and it'll do the scaling on its own, though that would not be optimal. However it's my experience that the resolution usually fits the size more than vice versa. You can try it in a shop and judge for yourself. Most likely however ClearType (which is necessary for smoothing fonts on LCD displays) is disabled in store displays so keep an eye out for that too.