2 bad samsung 19" 997DFs from Best Buy in a row

[getbush]

I purchased a 997DF from best buy on friday. Got it home and hooked it up to a laptop with a radeon mobility 9000. The screen flickered horribly in the bottom half at all resolutions and refresh rates except 1024x768 at 100Hz (the only 100Hz rate). SO i exchanged it today for another and it is the exact same way. Oh, tested both on a second system with a 32mb riva tnt2, same results.

Do monitors need a break-in period? Does this model suck?

Should I give up and buy another brand? If so which one? I prefer to buy locally. Thanks for any input.

 

[jpeyton]

Two in a row? Try another brand monitor.

 

[getbush]

Ok update - I think it may be a problem with the electrical system in this house. When I plug the monitor into a surge suppresor and the suppressor into a regular 3-hole grounded outlet, the problem is really bad. There are outlets in this house that are old and only two holes, so when using a cheater plug ang plugging it in that way, the suppressor indicates it is not grounded, but the flickering problem goes away.

What should I do? will a UPS get rid of this problem on the elswhere in the house? Or is there a line conditioner or something that would help? The cheaper the solution the better.

 

[lenjack]

I don't think it's a grounding issue.

 

[getbush]

Ya, I guess I wasn't getting at as much of a grounding issue, more about being on a different circuit in the house. I went to CC and bought an APC 350va ups, the cheapest one, and it helped a lot. But I don't think it has much to do with the battery part, maybe only due to higher quality circuitry. As far as I know, these cheap UPSs bypass the battery until there's a problem anyway.

 

[getbush]

Okay so I have a new thought now. If the only reason the UPS helped was because of quality circuitry that cleaned up the power going to the monitor, should I return it and get a ~$40 surge protector? I don't need the battery backup functionality, and there is still minimal flickering @ 1280x960 85Hz. I figure if I do that than I will be spending the money on the quality of the circuitry and not be wasting anything on ups functionality.

 

[getbush]

Ok nevermind, the APC ups didn't really help, it looks about the same as when i just plug it in to the wall. This is getting really frustrating. Does anyone know what I can do to help this? There is one other CRT in the house and it is flicker also. What do I need to do? Is there some kind of line conditioner I can buy that will solve this?

 

[acebake]

I have it's smaller brother, the Samsung 793MB, and it works very well. I would test the electricity first--two bad ones seems kind of odd.

 

[ku]

This happened to me with all my monitors (but not to such an extent... only when other power-hogging appliances were running at the same time). To fix it, I got a UPS with voltage regulation. That should help. In other words, it's most likely your electrical wiring that's causing the problem