What monitor?

Soldato
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Ok i think im gonna go for a lcd, it seems the next gen monitors such as oled are not going to be released for ages, and hopefuly the ones out now are lag free in the way of ghosting.

Will be using it for fast paced games, surfing.. basically everything

Will either go for a 20" or 22", currently have a what seems to be in between 19-20" CRT.

Posted before but didnt know what to get, if better ones are around the corner with no ghosting visible then is it worth waiting?.

Also heard that a 22" has the same native resolution as a 20", does that make it look worse?.

also if i got one of these does it mean i would have to run it at native res if i dont would things look bad?, because the native res of my monitor is 1600 x 1200 i believe.. and i usually run at 1024 x 768 which looks fine to me on my crt. My sister got a 19" Acer a couple of years ago and when she used it at a lower resolution, stuff looked kinda pixellated and not right so she went back to a 17" and it was fine, is this normal on a lcd? i found it odd. Because i play some games in the internet browser now and again also, and if the monitor needs to be run at high res to look good then i wont be able to play flash videos/browser games as it will look like crap.

I dont know if i can get a good one for about £200.

Suggestions please, and hopefuly someone can answer those questions for me :) it would make me feel better.

thanks. :rolleyes:

Samsung SM-245B 24" Widescreen <- whats that like for games?. Seems good, how would it compare to 22" 2ms screens though?.
 
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I use dual Viewsonic VX922's which are 19" 1280x1024 2ms monitors and still around £160 - £200 a pop although they have been on the market a few years.

They are great for gaming never experienced any ghosting on them and would recomend them to anyone. Viewsonic also do a range of widescreen monitors in the VX series but they all seem to have a 5ms time on them with native res of 1680x1050 @ 22" for around the £200 mark, unfortunatly OCUK no longer stock viewsonic so you may wanna look round the jungle. ;)
 
thanks.. but i still havent had my main questions answered

what would that samsung 24" be like with 5ms response?

and just because i have a monitor thats big, does it mean i have to run at its native res? how would it look at lower resolutions?.

or should i go with a 22" with 2ms?
 
A lot of screens support 1:1 pixel mapping (if you run a lower res than the screen it will draw a box around it or stretch it, stretching usually doesnt look so good).
If your screen does support it the 8800 (and a lot of other nvidia cards) can do 1:1 pixelmapping at the card end. The card adds a black box around the image.
Most modern screens (so long as you dont buy some unknown rubbish) are generally very good for gaming. It might be me but after about the first half day of owning my first tft the ghosting was never noticable. Of the 3 screens i've either owned or currently owned (2005fpw 1705fp and the old school hitachi CML17??? - I forget the full model number) none have issues with ghosting that i've noticed.
 
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Mercutio said:
A lot of screens support 1:1 pixel mapping (if you run a lower res than the screen it will draw a box around it or stretch it, stretching usually doesnt look so good).
If your screen does support it the 8800 (and a lot of other nvidia cards) can do 1:1 pixelmapping at the card end. The card adds a black box around the image.
Most modern screens (so long as you dont buy some unknown rubbish) are generally very good for gaming. It might be me but after about the first half day of owning my first tft the ghosting was never noticable. Of the 3 screens i've either owned or currently owned (2005fpw 1705fp and the old school hitachi CML17??? - I forget the full model number) none have issues with ghosting that i've noticed.
So what do CRT's do differently over the LCD's when you change resolution?, if i go lower or higher i dont seem to notice it get blocky or anything. I also dont get a black border around the screen. :confused:

As for response time, im not sure whether to go with that 5ms samsung, it would be quite a lot bigger than i have now.. as long as its not too big, and i can run at lower resolutions than its native res without looking poor then i might go for it. Anyone that has one currently and plays fast games with no ghosting?, or would you recommend i go the 2ms route?.

cheers
 
Tried to think of a couple of ways of explaining this without much joy (it needs pictures). Try google. Basically CRT's can have varying sized pixels. As TFT's are made up of a grid of electrodes controlling an RGB filter over the backlight the pixels are a fixed size. If you arent displaying the native res then you have the problem of how do you display a box of say 3x3 pixels with a screen res of 5x5 - the electodes on the edge where the colour change occurss have to display half a pixel somewhere (which isnt possible) so you get them trying to mix the colour with the pixel next door which on a TFT shows a very sharp progression.

Now i've made TFT's sound like utter crap, if you think of the difference that makes when upscaled (it matters less as the screen and the res its trying to hold get bigger) its not a major issue but it can make a very well rendered image look kinda jaggy n a bit poor.
 
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Mercutio said:
its not a major issue but it can make a very well rendered image look kinda jaggy n a bit poor.
so all lcd's are like this?

in that case it means i wouldnt be able to get a 22 or 24 incher, as id have to use the native res all the time not for it to look rubbish.. :(
 
Depends what your going to be using on it. if your gaming you probably wouldnt notice masses of difference. It tends to show up more on very fine text. As said, for games that you absolutely cant run at top res (which looking at your rig would probably only be very new stuff like unreal tourny and crysis when released) a lot of screens will stick a border around a lower res image to avoid stretching and lowering quality. Nvidia cards can do this in the driver.
 
Flash games running in your browser don't affect your resolution at all, they should look fine.

As far as I know all 22" panels use an inferior TN Film which can result in worse picture quality and decreased viewing angles. This, combined with the fact that there's no resolution gained from 20" to 22", I recommend you go for a 20" panel.

I would go for this beasty. It's probably the best 20" monitor you'll get for around £200. It's out of stock at the moment however :(
 
Zefan said:
Flash games running in your browser don't affect your resolution at all, they should look fine.

As far as I know all 22" panels use an inferior TN Film which can result in worse picture quality and decreased viewing angles. This, combined with the fact that there's no resolution gained from 20" to 22", I recommend you go for a 20" panel.
How about the samsung 24"? how would that look at say 1024 x 768 res? thats about the lowest id have it for desktop/game use.

would the 5ms affect gaming in any way over 2ms?

i have over 300 quid ready now, so i can buy one when im ready.. i just dont want to be disappointed if it looks bad at lower res.

if 1 x 1 pixel mapping makes a border around the monitor, couldnt i just stretch it in the monitor settings to fill the screen up? or doesnt it work that way?
 
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Only other thing i can do really is spend the £350-400 i have now on a mobo/ram/cpu upgrade and wait a while (again) for a monitor. Then again theres Penryn and Phenom around the corner :confused:
 
Your choice roughly boils down to the following (in my opinion of course):

Dell 2007wfp <- if you have any need for accurate colour reproduction

Samsung 206bw/226bw <- if you want as little ghosting as possible while gaming

Any 24" as long as it doesn't have a TN panel <- if you want 1080p HD support and a great general experience, oh and an emptier wallet :D .

edit - I just wanted to add that in the bottom two categories, it may well be worth waiting to acquire a wide gamut alternative. For gaming then: the Samsung 226cw or LG L227wt. For the 24" category the Dell 2407wfp-hc or Sony's upcoming VGP-D24WD1.
 
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If your expecting to get anything anywhere near the quality of your crt
think again can i ask what's up with your crt ? i still love em
all the hype about tft using less power well it's usually around 50w less
which is no big deal if you ask me.
If i had to buy a tft now i would get the LG L226WTQ 22"
which can be had for around £180 and far better value than the samsung imo.
The screens just aren't good enough yet so better to buy a cheaper
but equally as good as the samsung model.
 
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C64 said:
If your expecting to get anything anywhere near the quality of your crt
think again can i ask what's up with your crt ? i still love em
all the hype about tft using less power well it's usually around 50w less
which is no big deal if you ask me.
If i had to buy a tft now i would get the LG L226WTQ 22"
which can be had for around £180 and far better value than the samsung imo.
The screens just aren't good enough yet so better to buy a cheaper
but equally as good as the samsung model.
I actually like my CRT, it is old.. lumpy as hell though, i just measured it and its almost 23" long lol

Suppose ill keep it till it conks out then, tbh im getting tired of waiting for these new technologies that are supposed to rival CRT but be very thin like a lcd. Looks like SED has been cancelled, and OLED.. seems as if nothing is happening there either

why cant they just hurry up?
 
Perfect_Chaos, the best thing you could do is go to some major store purely with a view to seeing what you think of the monitors 'in the flesh'. They will pretty much only have ones with TN panels like the Samsungs, HP w2207 etc, but if you see them in action yourself, you should know whether you would be happy using one day to day.

I thought my own CRT monitor was the dogs danglies but after finally getting a chance to see one of the 2 ms TN panels in action a few weeks ago, I realised there was no reason to hold onto it any longer. My LCD doesn't handle cs 1.6 nearly as well as my CRT did, but for everything else I do, it is a massive improvement.

edit - I forgot to link bobert's fine comparison: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17761181
 
Zefan said:
I would go for this beasty. It's probably the best 20" monitor you'll get for around £200. It's out of stock at the moment however :(

Cheap DELL monitors are rubbish. That is one of the type that you get include in the £500 systems that you can get from them.

He should be looking for the 2007WFP :) When will these be back in stock as I've got loads of cash to rid myself of!
 
Perfect_Chaos said:
thanks.. but i still havent had my main questions answered

what would that samsung 24" be like with 5ms response?

and just because i have a monitor thats big, does it mean i have to run at its native res? how would it look at lower resolutions?.

or should i go with a 22" with 2ms?
if you want a big low res monitor how about an LCD tv?
 
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