Compared the VX912B to the Hyundai L90D+ last night
Managed to get out last night and see my mates new Viewsonic. Bear in mind he has a 6800GT and I have the standard 6800 but I doubt that makes too much difference... same RAMDAC or does that not figure when DVI-ing?
PIXELS
First things first, he was gutted at having a bright green dead pixel on the right of the screen. My Hyundai's 'dead' pixel is obviously not a dead pixel after all as it is miniscule in comparison and must be either a bit of dust or a very small blockage on part of the pixel (plus it's dark blue). I did wonder why so many people were getting bothered by them as I didn't think it was too bad! I'll count myself lucky.
COLOUR BANDING
The big test for me! Opened up the grey gradient jpeg I had created and straight away could see that the banding wasn't as bad as on the Hyundai. However the TN-panel of the Iiyama had no banding at all!
The banding that was present on the Viewsonic was fairly thin and only had one slightly green band towards the bottom that would be corrected by altering the contrast by one or two steps. Overall it looked like the Viewsonic was running at say 24bit and my Hyundai is around 20bit. The Iiyama was nearly perfect so I'd compare that to around 30bit (if you could set the Desktop colour like that).
Other examples - The blurred boot screen to Half Life 2 has visible banding on my Hyundai and was less noticeable on the Viewsonic. You particularly notice this when the screen darkens or lightens as it has the effect of 'scrolling' through the colour shades.
CLARITY
About the same as the Hyundai, I couldn't tell any difference. He had Cleartype on but hadn't gone through the Microsoft Cleartype pages. The text was a little thick so choosing a finer one will prolly solve that.
The black text on white background suffered the same very slight red edging but it is neglible to be honest. The 17" Iiyama e431s Prolite didnt appear to have it but then it is smaller dot pitch.
I also noticed that where image sharpening in the Nvidia control panel made things much worse on the Hyundai, it actually helped a bit on the Viewsonic (if set to low).
I'd say about 8/10 each for clarity.
VIEWING ANGLES
Virtually the same again. You have the usual colour hue changing when viewing from the side and darker areas when from above/below. Additionally the Viewsonic also had the same slightly annoying light leak through on every side. This is most noticeable in the very centre of the side but dissipates after a few inches. Only noticeable on darker backgrounds or dark games.
GHOSTING
Tried Doom3, EQ2 and Half Life 2 and I couldn't tell any difference between the 8ms of the Hyundai, the 12ms of the VX912B and maybe even the 16ms of the Iiyama (although Half Life 2 and Doom3 weren't tried on the Iiyama. UT 2004 was). All looked good with minimal ghosting.
One particular issue - which stood out on EQ2 and I guess which is present on all TFT's - was when the NPC's produced a white speech balloon with black test in. Moving your character around gave the kind of effect when you very slowly drag a window on the desktop. It made the text thick, blurry and illegible. That was the only thing that I don't rememeber being as bad on the Hyundai when we installed EQ2 on my rig.
CONCLUSION
The Viewsonic looked great, had a nice stand, good colour controls in the menu that aren't present on the Hyundai, better (but visible) menu control on the Viewsonic and less colour banding. If I were to buy again I think I'd go for the Viewsonic but only just. I think they both suffer from the usual TN-based TFT issues so if you can live with that then I think you'd be happy with either.
It put my mind at rest anyway, I thought I'd go there and be really jealous and would want to get rid of the Hyundai but I'm actually not that fussed to be honest. The colour banding annoys me since I do some graphics work but especially at it seems to be a solvable issue. But you live and learn and it was bought on the basis of specs and not reviews.
