8ms TFT - not ghosting, but not good for games

Blair

Blair

Blair

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I've just bought an 8ms TFT, and whilst 2d apps look fantastic, 3D FPS performance is...well, pretty awful.

San Andreas looks OK, but Half Life and Half Life 2 are really really bad. The screen update is jerky, and it just feels as if the controls just aren't responding as well. I just found them unplayable - I'm now typing this on my CRT that I plugged back in to test, and all of a sudden the games were fine again.

Do I need to tweak my HL games somehow for a TFT? It's all a bit odd...it felt like the wireless mouse had flat batteries again or something.
 
Try turning v-sync off (in HL2). Also you could try running your monitor at 75 Hz.

Btw what monitor and what video card do you have? Also were you using the same resolution on both screens?
 
fish has it covered there. Check refresh rate, try vsync on and off, see if that helps. can you try this screen but on another PC, see if the games are bad then?
 
I would've thought you needed to make sure vsync was enabled. Try both and see.

Also, it'll take a while for your eyes to adjust to using a TFT.

I remember when I made the move from CRT to TFT and found things a bit strange.
 
No, V-Sync makes your mouse response go WAY off (Most of the time) and thus can make games awful. It's the reason why I'm only just starting to get decent in CS.
 
Never had a problem when I set vsync to enabled and left refresh rate at 60 Hz when I used to game on my PC.

Played CSS all the time and never experienced any lag.

My eyes really must be shot to pieces then!
 
It's only bad when your framerate is far far above the refresh rate for your monitor. That's probably why CS is far worse than CS:S. Like, say you had 100fps with 60hz, then turned vsync on, your hand would literally puke at the sight of it (Like mine with CS).
 
Well, with v-sync on at 60 Hz, that would limit your maximum framerate to 60 fps, but of course 60 fps is fine. The problems come when you've got a far more demanding game than CS, say HL2, which, if it takes more than 1/60th of a second to draw a frame, would suddenly drop to 30 fps.

V-sync makes your PC wait for a retrace before drawing the next frame, and it can waste a lot of time and nearly drop your framerate in half. If it just misses one retrace it just sits there waiting for the next one doing nothing.

The problem can be reduced by a game using tripple buffering, where there's two backbuffers and the game always has a free buffer to be drawing into. Dunno if HL2 supports tripple buffering - you'd think it would do.

Unless you find tearing really annoying, or you can run your monitor at a nice high refresh rate (not an option on an LCD), it's probably best to always turn v-sync off.
 
It's a Daewoo something-or-other. 8ms at 1280x1024.

Gaming sucks on it though :(

I've tried v-sync on and off on HL2, it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference.

Thing is - this might make a HUGE difference - I'm playing through a KVM switch. Funny thing is, the KVM was fantastically tolerant of trying to push unusable refresh rates through the CRT - it would always work, and resolution would always scroll nicely if it was beyond what the monitor would handle. Maybe that's the weak point?

I have 2 PCs I use by the way...that's why...was hoping to be able to continue to drive them both with a single keyboard/mouse/monitor but I'm starting to think I either send the TFT back or use a spare kb/mouse and set up the video editing PC with the TFT on another desk...
 
how about leaving keyb/mouse connected to KVM

but connect both PCs to the monitor, one via DVI and one via Dsub and use the monitor to switch between inputs

thats what i do :)
 
hi, there is no solution to this problem, i instantly noticed the change in smoothness moving from crt to tft, on the half life engine anyway.. admittedly it's not so apparent on other games i tryed i.e. quake 3 and ut2003 the games that i had installed when i made the transition some years ago. vsync on just creates a mouse lag similar to having acceleration on which is just awful imo, so vsync off is mandatory.

it takes a little time to adjust, but if you continue to use a tft and not resort back to using a crt, you become accustomed and forget the smoothness of crt's.

i have a 12ms 172x, and not used any of the newer panels with lower response times and had always wondered if the gap between tft and crt had reduced, obviously not.

i have to admit the noticable change (tearing, unsmoothness etc) i can only seem to notice on the half life engine.
 
Blair said:
No DVI on the monitor, sadly!
Click to expand...
You get dvi to d-sub connectors as standard, in all graphics card boxes. If u can play a game on both monitors at once then u can also test for lag produced from the monitor (Ive seen a video of this in action on a 2405 dell and its unacceptable imo).
 
Yeah, the thing is I think he was meaning using the D-sub for one PC and the DVI for another (instead of using the KVM for video as well as kb and mouse).

Anyway...oddly enough, it's fixed. I don't know why, but it is. I messed around with the video settings in both games to no avail, then tried the monitor direct to the PC. I set the refresh rates with the monitor connected, played the games - all was good. Plugged the KVM back in and sent the video through that - all is still good.

So I'm not sure what it was, I suspect v-sync. Anyway, it's sorted - looking good :)
 
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