The Dell website lists the response time as "Typical 25 ms". I haven't done any gaming on the this system and I don't watch DVDs on it either so I can't speak to any ghosting issues, but I do a fair amount of video editing and I haven't noticed any artifacts (GeForce3 Ti200). I am not sure how to verify the contrast ratio, but having owned one for almost 1 year I can say that the blacks appear VERY black but some of the darker blues/purples also appear black. I use a CRT for any graphic production, but for CAD, web surfing, and document creation I have been very impressed with the monitors performance...hope this helps.