I have a massive 21" CRt screen that is just taking up too much space. What do I need to look for when buying a LCD screen when it comes to gaming? Also what do I really need to avoid etc.

Thanks!

i just bought samsung 226bw or if it was bw226. Anyways i think it is nice, aim on pov is about the same and it feels smooth. (coming from a 154hz 19" crt). Having a bit of troubles configuringing a nice ws resolution in ezquake, but hope to fix it once i get some more time.

Just make sure your videocard supports the native resolution of the monitor.

Hehe, 22'' nice indeed. Got the same and got the rez ok... If you need some help just knock at the door

I went from a 17" CRT to a 8ms 17" LCD a couple of years ago and didn't have any real difficulties adjusting - ghosting wasn't noticable etc. I reckon as long as you get a response time 8ms or less then you should be ok.

I currently play on a laptop LCD which is probably 12ms or 16ms reponse and even that's ok enough, but you can definitely do better with a standalone LCD.

I would highly recommend Viewsonic's vx922 atm. It has been doing really great in different LCD gaming rankings and having played quite some time with it's older brother, vx924 (3ms version) I can say that it's definitely a pleasurable ride. Also it has a reasonable native resolution of 1280x, so even if you want to crank up filters and quality, you won't need a beast of a machine to reach higher fps.

Some notes about my setup with qw:

res: 1280x1024
hz: 75
maxfps: 154 (308 was even smoother, but felt a bit "heavy", for lack of a better description
cl_nopred 0
cl_nolerp 0
pushlatency 0

Forced profile values from display control center:
8xFSAF (anisotropic filtering) - atm. you should avoid using gl_anisotropy in ezq 1.8, because it also affects your crosshair
2xFSAA (antialiasing)

These help to smooth the small amounts of tearing that are visible. I also recommend that you use textures instead of gl_max_size 1 or r_drawflat, textures make the image seem even smoother.


I would say that the only thing that actually feels worse with vx924 compared to CRT is fast sideways motion. The picture in lcd's is still a ~couple of images behind even with the best panels, so shafting is slightly harder if someone is moving from side to side in your pov in pretty close proximity.

I must also point out that my qw fanaticism went so far this time that I actually got a CRT to play with instead of the vx924 and I must say that even though at first the CRT felt quite nice after a long break, I haven't noticed all that much difference in my actual playing performance. Only doing a bit better on POV, but 4on4 performance (which is my main interest) is pretty much the same. And now I kinda regret getting that CRT, eventhough I got it for free

I can give you links to good LCD gaming reviews and comparisons to CRT's if you're really interested in the nitty gritty and technical stuff :F

I, for example, got 226BW for a while now. It's supposed to be one of the best (fastest) panels for gamers on the market (2ms). Nevertheless, when I bought it I couldn't play QW at all. I got used to 19" CRT 160Hz @ 1000+ fps. Now I got 22" LCD 75Hz @ 600 fps (bigger resolution). It feels way worse. I feel like 2-3 divs lower. I can't get 40%+ LG @ pov anymore (even 30% is hard). RL aim also became worse. I don't have an option to use CRT again so I was trying to forget about it. First of all I haven't been playing QW for last 2 months. Just to forget how good and smooth it was @ CRT. Eventually I played QW once in last week and I think it's working, the impression wasn't as bad as before . Anyway, I think the perception of QW@LCD is very individual case and also depends on what you use ATM. Some people can use 75Hz and 77 fps and they think it's smooth, so they won't even notice the difference between CRT and fast LCD. Other people don't really see the difference at all or just don't care. You should consider yourself lucky if you are one of them .

You can't simply stare at the panels reported shift speed (2ms in this case). Panels differ very much, even in exact same models - for example 226bw has been available with at least 3-4 diff panels, of which only one is worthy of being called good in the gaming sense - the sickest thing is that you can't easily tell which panel a single retail screen has in these cases . Also there are many different panel technologies, 3-4 main ones, and variations done by diff manufacturers.

Having just played with a CRT 800x 160hz whatever maxfps for a couple of weeks, I was pretty dissapointed actually. Dissapointed enough that yesterday I changed back to my VS vx924. Yes I tried a lot of settings and maybe the CRT wasn't the best available. Still the difference was not enough to justify such a huge ~30kg heater on my precious table real-estate. I swore two years ago that I would never get a CRT again, but of course qw madness drove over that. I am however glad that I tried it one last time with a good LCD to compare to - no_more_crt's ever ever

edit: oh and just tried pov vs frogbot first time with LCD for many weeks and first round I hit a nice 53% lg, which is quite high for me even against a bot, we'll see how it goes vs. ppl once I get back from my qw break.

You should also bear in mind that response time is not the only issue here. The lag people often talk about with LCDs isn't directly related to the response time. Response time tells you how fast a pixel on your screen can turn off and get back on, that is changing from one color to another. There is also input lag, which is the time it takes between sending the signal from your display adapter before it is shown on the screen. This figure doesn't always go hand in hand with response time, that is even if you have a 2ms screen, it's lag might be bigger than the lag of a 8ms screen. Input lag depends on the panel type and Wikipedia can give you more information on that

Response time
Input Lag

You should probably also check some videos from Youtube if you didn't understand it yet. Just look for "LCD input lag".

I have been thinking of buying a LCD monitor for a while, the ones I have tried have been 12ms/8ms and a gamer LCD monitor with 2ms.

I am using a 19" CRT with 150hz when I play qw, it is VERY smooth and when I tried the 12 and 8ms monitors it just made me puke after 1 sec.
The 2ms monitor that was specially good for gamers didnt work at all either, I got a headache from using it and dont even talk about my aim that vanished.

If I now buy a new monitor I wanna buy a 21" LCD, which one should I consider buying?
give me some links and prices (ps. I can go up to 400euro or 4000sek)

226BW is known of having low response time and low input lag even with that 'worse' panel. I'd carefuly read like 20 reviews and tests before I bought it. Also I spent like 3 days testing it, calibrating it and setting QW best I could. For tests I tried to play QW with 25/16 and 8ms and it looked WAY WORSE than on my 2ms (which is real 5ms anyway I guess). But that doesn't mean with 226BW it looks fine. Screen during the motion loses sharpness. It's harder to focus on your enemy moves from the corner of an eye and also my eyes get tire faster just cause of that. But it's still best LCD I could get 3 months ago. Maybe in a year I can replace it with newer model. QW is very fast game, still too fast for LCD IMHO, but sometimes you don't have a choice. Anyway, like I said, MANY people play using CRT 75Hz/77fps and it looks even worse than @ LCD. Also many people just don't see the issues I mentioned. What is very comfortable or at least playable for one can be unplayable and uncomfortable for someone else. So best would be if you could take the monitor home for 2-3 days and test it by yoursef.

btw plast, what resolution do you use for the 226bw?

Yesterday i tried to play with 1680*1050@60hz and got plesantly surprised. It is slightly less smooth compared to 1024*768@75hz. But i still prefer the higher res. cos it is easier to make a nice hud with alot of information.

For CRT I used 800x600 so now I use 960x600 (same proportions but wider screen). Native 1680x1050 is unplayable for me, too low fps and 60 Hz really hurts.
What new important stuff could I add to hud? Team overlay?

I assume he means that among others . But you also have a much higher resolution which means you can make hud items smaller and they'll still look great at such odd scales :> That's one benefit of LCDs.

Maybe all of the panels for 226bw were good compared to most when talking about gaming, there were still big differences between the panels according to actual measurements. The motion loses sharpness, because of the way lcd's update, morphing the image instead of drawing a new one. Also I'm very surprised that you would even consider getting a monitor that has such a big native resolution that you can't play at that. The difference in enjoyability with native vs. non-native is quite big, that's why I don't have any plans on upgrading my gaming screen above 1280x for a while. At 1280x I'm still able to play pretty much all games at a satisfactory level, quake4, fear, qw etc.

Also a point could be made for getting used to lcd gaming (even on a great panel). The picture acts a bit different and you are adding a little (or more) to your input lag cycle, it just takes time to get used to.

But I have to say that most of this is based on just subjective evaluation of all the LCD's I've tried and the tons of articles I've read through the years. And also realizing that qw is such a fucking elitist game that it demands the best I had no prob playing fear or q4 (single player) on 1600x 16ms 20.1" screen.

Sassa, I don't recommend a screen that big, unless you can have good framerate at native resolution and actually want to play with that high resolution!

mine 226bw works great ^^

Niomic, fps in native (1680x1050) resolution ain't really a problem for me, I can get stable 300+ fps. The problem is 60 Hz, there is really big difference between 60 and 75 Hz in QW even @LCD. 226BW isn't able to get 75 Hz in native res . Like I said, there are lucky people who don't see the difference and there are people who have to suffer, like me. I only hope it really "just takes time to get used to" . And replace 226BW for something better next year, possibly with real 2ms and 100 Hz?

100Hz @ native rez sure would be nice for us qw players

And of course there's the limitation of 75Hz in LCDs. Luckily in QW it's quite close to the physical FPS limit, but on newer games that you might be able to run at 100 or 150 FPS, the disadvantage would be even greater. Has anyone tried to force an LCD over 75Hz, via VGA for example? I hadn't even thought about the native resolution problem: anything even remotely usable for desktop use (1600+) would be way too much for gaming. I guess I have to hope my CRT doesn't break any time soon. Perhaps the new laser display tech will present a solution for gamers...

From what I've read from many sites and/or people comments, quite many of 75Hz TFTs actually disregard every 5th frame resulting in no more than 60Hz refreshrate (or frame update). I don't know in how many TFT displays this affects but it is clearly visible among *VA and IPS panels, they just can't do 75Hz properly.

I don't think this is applicaple at all. There is also a limitation of bandwidth using DVI especially with higher-res TFTs but this is affected by the monitor's capability of being single- or dual-linked and it really limits the possible fps. Huge monitors with huge resolutions are basically unable to have anything above 60Hz due to this DVI bandwidth limitation.

My tft's native resolution is 1280x1024. Should I play with that resolution as it looks best or is there any harm on using different?

in games you wont notice the difference, it's more noticeable with something thats static, like your desktop, or websites etc.

Well, that is exactly why I thought about using VGA instead. Typically DVI bandwidth sets the limitation, but what kind of limitations exist in the display itself, if connected with VGA for example?

I use VGA(DSUB) cause with DVI I couldn't get 75 Hz. I don't see any difference in the image quality or any other thing between DVI/DSUB.

I got my Viewsonic VX922 to work at 75Hz over DVI by unchecking "hide modes that this monitor cannot display".

Yeah but how about going over 75, forcing with drivers, powerstrip or something?

Are you talking about LCD monitors? If you do, why would you want to even use 75hz or higher?

To minimize system latency from input to output of course. The more often you can send an update to the screen, the less it's lagging behind.

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I disagree totally.

Native resolution should be used ALWAYS. 1680*1050 pixels looks so small on desktop compared to 1600*1200 for example, as it has so "little" height. Also when using native resolution in games you will get the sharpest/best possible image, as scaling really makes artefacts on screen, even in games.

If you have the money to buy a 20-22" widescreen, I'm sure you have money to buy recent enough gfx card (150-250 euros) to make the best out of it.



I'm not even trying to guess what this means in the end. If the fps remain constant, input/whatever-lag also remains constant. Note that scaling may actually increase the delay of the screen as it has to be done by the monitor.

Wouldn't a large native resolution limit the refresh rate to 60Hz? Imho a much bigger drawback in competitive gaming than aesthetical image quality issues.