drak3 said:
comments around Belinea are all good and I belive also is a good choice. Badass, can you suggest something better in the 19'' range even? or is pretty much the same (as widescreen looks a new and better experience).
Thanks.
ps: I only care about ghosting really...
well the 19" market has had more time to establish itself and there is certainly more choice than in the 20" and above market at the moment. The 20" market is the area of most growth and R&D at the moment, since people are moving to larger and larger screens, and WS is becoming very popular.
Ignoring the WS aspect ratio and extra size / res for now, as far as performance goes of the panels i would say this: The most responsive panel technology for gaming is TN Film. In the 19" market you have the latest generation of aggresively overdriven TN panels like those used in the fastest rated 4ms, 3ms and 2ms panels. Models like the Samsung 930BF, Viewsonic VX924, VX924 and Hyundai Q90U are examples of these. These are undoubtably some of the fastest and most responsive TFT panels in the market and for gaming, you won't get much better right now. However, as eluded to above, having a TN Film technology panel means sacrifice in other areas. Viewing angles are the biggest trade off, being pretty restrictive, especially in the vertical field. Movie playback is also an issue, since 'noise' and artefacts are common on this technology, and only accentuated by the application of overdrive to the panel control. As such, i would say the TN market nowadays is very well suited to gamers, but not really for movies.
On the other hand, the 19" market also offers a fair few non TN panels. Models like the Viewsonic VP930 (using P-MVA) and Samsung 970P (PVA) for instance are priced as more of a premium product because of this. They dont suffer from the same drawbacks of TN Film in general, offering truly wide viewing angles, a true 8 bit colour depth (TN can only do 6 bit, but you probably couldnt tell a difference), a deeper black (this might be noticably better than TN) and smoother movie playback (in general). However, MVA and PVA panels were always traditionally slow and unresponsive for gaming. With the evolution nof overdrive technology, the models i've just listed are very good for gaming, as response time has been greatly improved. One thing to be wary of though is that quoted response times in modern PVA / MVA panels are not always representative of their actual performance. However, the VP930 and 970P are certainly very good. Another note is that with the application of overdrive, there is the risk of adding unwanted noise to movie playback. Sadly Samsung dont seem to have managed to control their overdrive (MagicSpeed) properly whch results in a lot of noise in movies on the 970P and their TN 930BF.
So the 19" market does offer a wider variety. There has onyl recently been the introduction of WS monitors in this sector, but these are pretty much all based on an 8ms TN Film panel, very similar to the 8ms rated 4:3 models like the Samsung 913N, Hyundai L90D+ etc. Still a good screen, but you would need to decide if TN Film was ok for your needs
In the 20" market, is a similar situation. However, only AU Optronics have so far broken into the recent generation with a non TN panel. This is the P-MVA panel used in the Belinea 102025W and soon to be some other models. Samsung haven't released a 20" PVA panel to rival it yet, but it will follow at some point im sure. There are a few 20" models being released with TN Film technolgy as well, but the same coments go for these as with the 19" models talked about earlier. These may be a little bit more responsive once overdrive is really heavily applied, but with the trade offs as before, which you dont have to put up with if you get an MVA / PVA panel.
If you're wanting THE fastest gamers panel, then at the moment the 19" market is the place to look. However, im sure it wont be long before we see heaviloy overdriven 4ms, 2ms etc panels in the 20" market. If you want a more rounded performer then you need to look at the P-MVA and PVA models, especially if movie playback and viewing angles are important to you. In the 20" you've only got the Belinea to go with at the moment., If you want a 19" then i would recommend the Viewsonic VP930 as probably the best all round panel in the whole market right now
anyway, hope that helps, a summary of what to look for