I think 120Hz has ruined me!

[Mark Rejhon]

It only takes me like 15 seconds for my eyes to adjust from 120hz to 60hz.. it shouldn't have been a big enough change to where you can't tolerate going back down to 60.

That depends on what kind of 120 Hz you are switching from.

Going from regular LCD 120 Hz to regular LCD 60 Hz = 2x more motion blur (measured)
Going from LightBoosted 120 Hz to regular LCD 60 Hz = 7x to 12x more motion blur (measured)
Going from Sony GDM-W900 CRT 120 Hz to regular LCD 60 Hz = ~10x more motion blur (approx)

Response time is not always the limiting factor in motion blur. For example, see Why do some OLED's have motion blur? -- it's the sample-and-hold issue, which TFTCentral, pcmonitors, and other sources has already covered. Some people are more sensitive to motion blur, other people are less sensitive. So the transition may be less painful or more painful.

 

[tweakboy]

I used to have 60Hz 1920x1200 x3 surround. Today I have a Benq XL2411T and a Dell 2410 as a secondary monitor.

The last few days I have really started to notice that the secondary monitor is slow, really horribly slow. So I turned the Benq down to 60hz and it shows the exact same latency. Its horrible! It doesn't feel smooth at all.

I am not sure if there is a problem or my eyes have genuinely now adjusted but one monitor is clearly smoother movement than the other, and the motion blur is very noticeable on the IPS screen of the Dell. Its night and day. It wasn't in the beginning, in the beginning it felt super smooth in comparison to the 60hz, now the 60hz feels jerky and the 120Hz feels normal. Its even to the point where I have asked on the NVidia forums if there is a problem, because honestly it feels horrible.

But I can't go back to 60Hz now, I think I need another 120Hz monitor, that 60 is going to drive me nuts with its lag if I keep it.

Your at 7ms to 15ms latency. That will cause motion blur and image not smooth and mouse movement has lag in FPS games.. gl

 

[Grooveriding]

I used a borrowed 120hz screen a while back to try it out. The difference in FPS games is drastic and really nice. Unfortunately TN panels are atrocious colour wise and I couldn't get use to the really crummy colours and viewing angles.

Once there is a 120hz 2560x1600 IPS I will go back to 120hz.

 

[Mark Rejhon]

This is why I'm upset there are no monitors with resolutions > 1080 @ 120hz, because now I am stuck on 120hz (144 actually now) but I want to increase my res.
Catleap is the only way to go and the oc models are hard to find.

Unfortunately, there's only 1.7x less motion blur on non-stroboscopic IPS 120 Hz overclocked monitors.

Vega switched from his Catleap 2B 130Hz monitor to a triple-LightBoost setup; switching from IPS 130 Hz to triple-surround LightBoost 120 Hz: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1751610

Overclocked IPS LCD 120 Hz = 1.7x less motion blur than LCD 60 Hz (measured by Vega)
Regular TN LCD 120 Hz = 2.0x less motion blur than LCD 60 Hz (measured by Vega and me)
LightBoost LCD 120 Hz = 7x to 12x less motion blur (measured by Vega and me)

We need to wait for IPS-based motion-blur-eliminating stroboscopic backlights to arrive on computer monitors (full-panel stroboscopic backlights such as LightBoost are superior to older scanning backlights, used in existing HDTV's).

 

[Lonbjerg]

*pats 2 x Samsung SyncMaster 1100MB 21" 1600x1200 @100Hz*
Better I.Q than ANY LCD...and no 60Hz crap...

 

[Annisman*]

Way to ruin my catleap fantasy mark....

 

[blackened23]

*pats 2 x Samsung SyncMaster 1100MB 21" 1600x1200 @100Hz*
Better I.Q than ANY LCD...and no 60Hz crap...

Oh yeah, I sure do miss CRTs and their ridiculous heat output, poor geometry, dampening wires on trinitron models, heavy weight, and losing clarity over time due to heat -> degaussing.

Oh wait. CRTs were great 15 years ago, boy did I love my Trinitrons back then. But now? CRTs suck almost as much as Arma 3. Thanks for reminding me.

 

[mutantmagnet]

I appreciate 120hz but I really cannot stand the fact that they're currently limited to 1080p. 1080p really does look god awful on a 27" panel, the pixellation is very noticeable - on top of this, it is obviously a TN panel with all of the caveats involved with TN.

How much does downsampling help mitigate the pixelization?

 

[Mark Rejhon]

Way to ruin my catleap fantasy mark....

They are still great, if you need the extra resolution and IPS color...

It just won't be as good (motion-blur-wise) as a strobed display, until IPS strobe backlight comes out...

 

[Elfear]

Any love on the Radeon side for 2D Lightboost technology or is it still Nvidia only?

 

[OVerLoRDI]

I'm on a Catleap 2B @ 99hz. I haven't tried much beyond that, my 7970s seem to not like pixel clocks much higher than 400mhz. I did a fresh driver install last night and it defaulted to 60hz. Wow that was terrible.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

They are still great, if you need the extra resolution and IPS color...

It just won't be as good (motion-blur-wise) as a strobed display, until IPS strobe backlight comes out...

Exactly. I was a FW900 gamer and I notice the motion blur on my Catleap, but I still lean towards the Catleap simply because of the 1440p resolution and the IPS colors.

 

[Lonbjerg]

I'm on a Catleap 2B @ 99hz. I haven't tried much beyond that, my 7970s seem to not like pixel clocks much higher than 400mhz. I did a fresh driver install last night and it defaulted to 60hz. Wow that was terrible.

Funny...I remember how people laughed when I told them that thier "fancy" LDC's look like crap compared to my CRT's...oh well...not the first time people post FUD...

 

[Mark Rejhon]

Any love on the Radeon side for 2D Lightboost technology or is it still Nvidia only?

nVidia only, but there's a workaround. You enable LightBoost using an nVidia card (2nd cheapie $50 card, or borrow a 2nd tower, or borrow a GeForce-powered laptop), then hot-plug the DVI to the Radeon pre-configured with ToastyX's Custom Resolution Utility (there's instructions in the Comments section of my LightBoost HOWTO -- the key modification is a Vertical Total of 1149 for the 1920x1080 120Hz resolution). LightBoost keeps working on a Radeon, until you physically unplug the power from your monitor -- then it forgets the LightBoost initialization.

There's been some research figuring out how to unlock LightBoost in a computer monitor from a Radeon, but the above is the easiest way.

 

[Fx1]

I used a borrowed 120hz screen a while back to try it out. The difference in FPS games is drastic and really nice. Unfortunately TN panels are atrocious colour wise and I couldn't get use to the really crummy colours and viewing angles.

Once there is a 120hz 2560x1600 IPS I will go back to 120hz.

There will never be a 120hz 2560x1600 monitor you can run at 120 FPS unless your playing some crappy FPS game from 2005. Not even 2x690 GTX would give you 120fps on that resolution

 

[Grooveriding]

There will never be a 120hz 2560x1600 monitor you can run at 120 FPS unless your playing some crappy FPS game from 2005. Not even 2x690 GTX would give you 120fps on that resolution

I get about 100fps average right now in BF3, one of the most demanding games out there. I could probably play most of my games at well over 120fps at my current resolution.

I only found 120hz useful for online shooters, at least useful in the context of the drastic sacrifice in IQ to have that 120hz. For an RPG or RTS etc, it's not a big bonus either way, still preferable to have if you could get it on an IPS screen, but the benefit is not as significant as it is in an FPS.

 

[Fx1]

I get about 100fps average right now in BF3, one of the most demanding games out there. I could probably play most of my games at well over 120fps at my current resolution.

Bf3 is about to be replaced by BF4 and that game isnt very demanding at all. Tomb Raider & Crysis 3 seem to hit my GPU way harder than BF3 does.

Lets not forget that your also using Titans in SLI. Thats £1680 worth of GPU's and you wont hit 120 fps consistently in any game without turning off the bling.

I can tell you now that you will not see that monitor for a very long time if ever! Best we can hope for is a 120hz IPS at 1080p

BUT i can see OLED coming to save the day soon enough

 

[imaheadcase]

Bf3 is about to be replaced by BF4 and that game isnt very demanding at all. Tomb Raider & Crysis 3 seem to hit my GPU way harder than BF3 does.

Lets not forget that your also using Titans in SLI. Thats £1680 worth of GPU's and you wont hit 120 fps consistently in any game without turning off the bling.

I can tell you now that you will not see that monitor for a very long time if ever! Best we can hope for is a 120hz IPS at 1080p

BUT i can see OLED coming to save the day soon enough

The only reason we are not seeing it is because of cost, not because they can't make them. If they could make them cheaper we would see tons.

 

[BoFox]

Way to ruin my catleap fantasy mark....

LOL, glad I never got the catleap, sticking to my trusty GDM-FW900 CRTs until the lagging technology is finally ready for me again.

 

[PowerK]

LOL, glad I never got the catleap, sticking to my trusty GDM-FW900 CRTs until the lagging technology is finally ready for me again.

OMG. Good'ol SONY GDM-FW900 !! It was my last CRT.
I used it in 2001~2004. Replaced it and moved on with Apple Cinema Display (LCD) in 2004. Never looked back though.

 

[Elfear]

nVidia only, but there's a workaround. You enable LightBoost using an nVidia card (2nd cheapie $50 card, or borrow a 2nd tower, or borrow a GeForce-powered laptop), then hot-plug the DVI to the Radeon pre-configured with ToastyX's Custom Resolution Utility (there's instructions in the Comments section of my LightBoost HOWTO -- the key modification is a Vertical Total of 1149 for the 1920x1080 120Hz resolution). LightBoost keeps working on a Radeon, until you physically unplug the power from your monitor -- then it forgets the LightBoost initialization.

There's been some research figuring out how to unlock LightBoost in a computer monitor from a Radeon, but the above is the easiest way.

Thanks for the info. So it looks like the best options for 120hz monitors are the 1440p Catleap IPS monitors or the Lightboost 1080p TN panels. Better colors and viewing angles or less motion blur. Maybe Microcenter has both so I can see how they compare.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Any love on the Radeon side for 2D Lightboost technology or is it still Nvidia only?

In his reply to this comment he forgot the Samsung monitors that will do this for Radeon cards. The downside is that it injects a little more input lag that is desired.

 

[Fx1]

The only reason we are not seeing it is because of cost, not because they can't make them. If they could make them cheaper we would see tons.

No the reason why you dont see them is because no one would buy them.

120hz is designed for 3D and not for 120hz 2D gaming anyway.

OLED will bring superfast refresh rates and blow IPS away with colour performance.

As soon as they start mass production of OLED panels then we will see some come down the line

 

[MBrown]

I've been thinking about buying a 120Hz monitor but I don't know if this situation would bother me more; I can't stand it when my fps jumps all over the place even when they stay above 60fps so I try and always play with vsync on. So if I get a 120hz monitor, if I turn on vsync, would my frames lock on to 60fps if I can't hit 120fps?

 

[BoFox]

OMG. Good'ol SONY GDM-FW900 !! It was my last CRT.
I used it in 2001~2004. Replaced it and moved on with Apple Cinema Display (LCD) in 2004. Never looked back though.

I look "back" at my FW900's all the time.. especially when I play online FPS games on it! Probably 10x less motion blur than 60Hz LCDs and still a number of times better than 120Hz LCDs without lightboost for clarity!

There are still so many things that I love about it - superb color quality that is still largely unmatched by LCDs - even by IPS panels, resolution scaling without pixel interpolation at all. 1280x800 @ 140Hz or 1440x900@120Hz or 1600x1000 @ 100Hz for S3D gaming, 2000x1280@ 90Hz for an ideal balance between refresh speed and resolution sharpness, 2560x1600 @ 68-69Hz for absolute maximum IQ that does not flicker half as bad as 60Hz, etc.. One hardly needs AA at 2560x1600 on 22.5" viewable, since the jaggies are super-tiny (yet still noticeable at every single step, meaning that the CRT is still displaying all of the pixels - I heard that it actually has over 2700 horizontal phosphors/"pixels".. plus the slight softness to it makes it look a tad bit anti-aliased already, like very very light FXAA. That's why movies/videos look breathtaking on it. It's still unmatched in so many ways. The flexibility of it is like a gift from up above, so I can choose optimal settings for each and every game without being stuck at a resolution (since there's no pixel interpolation issues). Mind you, I do have a 24" LCD too.