I want to buy an LCD monitor

I just sold my house in SoCal for a kajillion dollars and I'm on my way to live in the land of Drunkagain and phragged (that's Tacoma for those of you without a scorecard). I got the ok from wifey-poo to buy myself a celebratory gift. Question is: what do I get (sticking to the guidelines of the subject, of course)?

I''m happy with my lcd monitor...I own an NEC lcd monitor...Mitsubishi manufactored it but its solid has decent built in speakers and its got a really weighted base and its a very good range of vision on it...

Cool, what''s the model and size?

I would go for 16ms response if you can. The real weakness of LCD is that it isn''t usually fast enough for games. Also 17"" is the best size for LCD. It will give you a similar viewable to a 19"" CRT. The temptation is to go bigger, but the native resolution (1280x1024) doesn''t go up until you hit 20"" (1600x1200) so you are basically getting bigger pixels and no more picture quality. Also bigger tends to be slower. I haven''t seen a 20"" LCD that is faster than 25ms. This will mean that dark colors in particular will tend to blur on fast moving games. Also bear in mind that you want to always be in the monitor''s native resolution for best picture quality, so you have to have a PC that''s beefy enough to run in that resolution.

Hope that helps.

That helps quite a bit Gorack, thanks. I knew about the response time but I am one to believe that bigger is better. I currently have a Viewsonic 19"" that I run at 1280x1024 only because my wife doesn''t have the eyesight that I do. If a 17"" LCD would perform as well as my 19"" CRT, why should I upgrade (seems more like a sidewaysgrade, yeah, that''s a word).

I just bought two Samsung 172X LCD''s

for my gaming pc''s in the basement...they are awesome..

I ""sidewaysgraded"" (good word) for space and heat considerations. LCD''s are also cause less eyestrain in my opinion (which is great for me because my job involves staring at crappy, blurred, screenburned CRT''s for hours on end). It is hard to quantify how LCD''s are better, because they have some limitations that you have to learn to live with, and they are most definitely more expensive than comparable CRT''s, but if I never own another CRT it won''t hurt my feelings.

Hey Gameguru, they look very nice! And they seem to have one of the quickest response times as well.

They''re awesome...best LCD I own...

and I own 6 of them...

Very good for gaming very little ghosting and excellent color contrast..

They expensive for a 17"" LCD but they are worth the money IMO.

I like the Sony SDM-V72 also... I own of of them and they are also execellent for gaming..plus they have a slew of inputs for HD, Svideo (perfect for say an Xbox etc..)

LCDs are nice and all, but for serious gaming I''d still go with a high end CRT.

Buy a high end 22 inch CRT for the same money and you''ll have a huge viewable area, accurate color reproduction, no worries on response times, and you''ll have a whole bunch of resolutions to play with. You''ll be able to boost the thing up to 1600x1200 or higher for specific tasks like photoediting, and drop it down to 800x600 and still have D2 look good.

With an LCD, you are locked into the native resolution unless you want things to look horribly burry. You end up performance tuning for the best results at that resolution, rather than tuning the resolution along with the other graphics settings for the best overall look.

"polq37" wrote:

LCDs are nice and all, but for serious gaming I''d still go with a high end CRT.

Buy a high end 22 inch CRT for the same money and you''ll have a huge viewable area, accurate color reproduction, no worries on response times, and you''ll have a whole bunch of resolutions to play with. You''ll be able to boost the thing up to 1600x1200 or higher for specific tasks like photoediting, and drop it down to 800x600 and still have D2 look good.

With an LCD, you are locked into the native resolution unless you want things to look horribly burry. You end up performance tuning for the best results at that resolution, rather than tuning the resolution along with the other graphics settings for the best overall look.

This simply isnt true anymore... new LCD''s can scale resolutions far better than the old ones...besides with a high end system one can game at 1280X1024 quite easily.. plus with other games 1280X960 looks perfect as you[''d be hard pressed to tell there was any scaling going on.

Heh...and I''m about a serious a gamer as there is..

CRTS wont be around for much longer.. Sony has basically dropped all CRT production.

**edit

I should add that if you want to enjoy gaming with your LCD look for one of the new 12ms panels like the Samsung 172X or the various 16ms 20.1"" panels (most notably the Dell FP2001 which can be found for $750ish)

I highly agree with game guru and the scaling is huge once you go above 15inch lcd...I mean as a side note I see no ghosting when running games...I have not idea what you guys are talking about...heck I see clearier then my bro''s 19crt thats sitting next to me and the model that I enjoy is the NEC NXM76 LCD...another nice thing about this one is that it has two inputs one for DVI and one for standard vga...which is the only cable bundled with it...

"polq37" wrote:

LCDs are nice and all, but for serious gaming I''d still go with a high end CRT.

Buy a high end 22 inch CRT for the same money and you''ll have a huge viewable area, accurate color reproduction, no worries on response times, and you''ll have a whole bunch of resolutions to play with. You''ll be able to boost the thing up to 1600x1200 or higher for specific tasks like photoediting, and drop it down to 800x600 and still have D2 look good.

With an LCD, you are locked into the native resolution unless you want things to look horribly burry. You end up performance tuning for the best results at that resolution, rather than tuning the resolution along with the other graphics settings for the best overall look.

Actually the main problem with native resolution is that 1280x1024 is a different ratio than most common resolutions. My 20"" LCD is 1600x1200 and it looks fine at 800x600.

Actually the main problem with native resolution is that 1280x1024 is a different ratio than most common resolutions. My 20"" LCD is 1600x1200 and it looks fine at 800x600.

Well yes. Of course an LCD that runs natively at 1600x1200 looks good at 800x600. The ratios divide into each other perfectly. Four pixels turn into one pixel. But, of all the other common resolutions, the only other common pair that divides evenly is 1280x 960 and 640x480.

But, with a 20-inch 1600x1200 LCD, you are probably paying a premium of at least $500 over a comparable 22 inch CRT, are locked into a crisp display at only two resolutions, neither of which are generally optimal for gaming, and the colors are less accurate.

Also, I understand that response times on the larger LCDs aren''t as good as the smaller LCDs.

In fairness to the other side of the argument, dealing with a 70lbs CRT is a pain, and a brand new Dell LCD display I saw yesterday actually did a pretty good job of downsampling 1024x768 from 1280x1024.

I like nice, large displays. And at current price points, large high-end CRTs offer a lot more value than comparably priced midrange LCDs.

I have two 19"" TFTs (Advueu simply because they were a good price) and have been very pleased with them overall, including for gaming. The only problem I have had has been with mode detection and sometimes when a game switches screen modes, the screen goes off centre and I need to reset/auto align the screen again. It seems to happen with BFV and occassionally Far Cry.

I did a little research (and testing), and it seems my assertion is borne out. A quality LCD with a 4:3 native resolution should be able to handle lower 4:3 resolutions with minimal quality loss. The trouble is that most LCD''s (all the 17"" to 19"" models I have seen) are 5:4 which is where interpolation and distortion really come in since most common resolutions are 4:3.

I''ll admit that LCD''s are probably still overpriced, and they aren''t as versatile as CRT''s, but there is something strangely compelling about their images. The fact that my last CRT, a 19"" Samsung SyncMaster 955df, screeched like a banshee from the first day I bought it, unless it was angled just right, might have something to do with my wholehearted conversion.

"Dramatic Marlin" wrote:

I have two 19"" TFTs (Advueu simply because they were a good price) and have been very pleased with them overall, including for gaming. The only problem I have had has been with mode detection and sometimes when a game switches screen modes, the screen goes off centre and I need to reset/auto align the screen again. It seems to happen with BFV and occassionally Far Cry.

Are you using DVI cables on those? I''ve never had any problems with LCD adjustment using digital cables. Also what kind of video cards are you using? I have heard some rumors about ATI issues with LCD.

Alas, no these aren''t DVI. Thats the plan later this year is to buy DVI capable LCDs. Baby steps in replacing the CRTs. The video card is a GF4800.

Yeah, DVI is pretty nice. I hate adjusting for every resolution.

GG,
The 172x is a step in the right direction, but LCDs still have a little ways to go before I would buy one over a CRT.

Personally, I get headaches from staring at LCD monitors all day. Might just be something with the particular screens I have at work though. I''d still rather have a good CRT then an LCD though. I just don''t have the cash to drop on a decent LCD, and even if I did, my PC couldn''t keep up with it to play games on at those kind of high resolutions.

I have a Sony SDM-HS73 as well as a SDM-HS53 and they are both pretty awesome. I believe both of these have response times of 20ms and I have yet to notice a problem on any game. Also at the time I bought mine there was an article up on Toms Hardware guide talking about how the 20ms panels were actually a bit better than the 16ms panels.

I have a Hitachi 175SXW (16ms), and I don''t have any complaints about the image quality, or ghosting. I''m really not sure what Tom''s is talking about. I also have a Planar 20"" so it isn''t as though I don''t have anything to compare it with.

I haven''t recommended the Hitachi in this thread because the backlight on mine seems to be going out after less than a year. It might just be a fluke.

"Kriegshund" wrote:

Personally, I get headaches from staring at LCD monitors all day. Might just be something with the particular screens I have at work though. I''d still rather have a good CRT then an LCD though. I just don''t have the cash to drop on a decent LCD, and even if I did, my PC couldn''t keep up with it to play games on at those kind of high resolutions.

It has a name!

http://www.careforyoureyes.com/artic...