Well, today I had an opportunity to compare my 6-bit TN LCD (Samsung SyncMaster 710T) to my old shadow mask CRT (eMachines eView 17f2) which my dad fixed.
At first, my desktop looked a lot more vibrant on the CRT, the greens having much better contrast from the blues in the background image of a sky upon green land. So naturally I decided to adjust the colors on my LCD-a lot. After a lot of adjusting, and putting in a nonlinear gamma curve in ForceWare settings, I got it to look almost as good. The CRT still had noticeably more saturated and contrasted colors though. It also seemed to produce much more intense subtle tones which my 6-bit LCD washed out on. But, it looked nearly as good. Also the CRT had an unfair advantage in this case, having a smaller dot pitch (15" viewable vs. 17").
That said, within 10 seconds, surprisingly, and I BS you not, I got quite a bit of eyestrain looking at the CRT. 60 Hz seemed murder on my eyes, 75 Hz wasn't much better. 85 Hz seemed to ease it up, but still it was quite intense. So your eyes to pay a price for the more intense colors, definitely, at least in my experience. I can't stand to look at it very long at all. No wonder I always got neck aches...phew. The CRT does the same as raw onions to my eyes.
For text/internet work, the LCD was so much more pleasureable. My particular CRT's convergence issues stuck out like a sore thumb, and the flickering and intensity just killed my eyes. I don't remember it feeling this bad every day I had been using the CRT, but since I got my LCD, I can barely stand to look at the CRT anymore.
I also tested lots of games. In HL2: Lost Coast, the CRT reproduced the ramp (early in the game) a lot "browner". I didn't see much difference otherwise, surprisingly.
For Wolfenstein: The CRT seemed to have a lot of red ringe to it, but darker colors were more visible, and gray seemed to be produced more faithfully. Rust on metallic objects stuck out a lot better and the whole range was reproduced better overall. I had trouble adjusting my 6-bit LCD to produce it similarly.
In most cases, adjustment on an LCD goes a long way (except in Wolfenstein). Unfortunately, it does have to be adjusted a lot more. I can say the LCD would definitely do better without such a bright backlight though. My current 710T has 300 nits and 600:1 contrast, and my VP930b will have 250 and a greater 1000:1 contrast, so we'll see. Seeing as there as direct monitor adjustment tools even for Linux now, it should be a piece of cake for developers to make something to adjust the LCD better per environment. Web pages/text demand a less bright and less intense image, while games need more red and green added in to the mix.
Black level suffered on my LCD in majorly black environments, but other than that, it did not ruin the experience in any way.
Using my LCD itself as a scaler, I can honestly say 1024x768 looked no different than on my CRT. The text was just a TAD weird because of the ClearType, but otherwise I was awestruck.
Throughout my "journey", I determined ghosting to be little of an issue except in Battlefield 2, where motion was a little smeary against the CRT.
My overall consensus? The CRT did produce more intense colors in some situations, but it was too big of a price for my eyes to pay. The LCD did not look far off once it had been adjusted properly. The CRT is a very good reference point for adjusting the LCD. It did have quite a bad red tint to it. I'd say my LCD's grays looked a lot better. At 9500K on the CRT, the red was gone, but the colors overall didn't look at good either.
Running a 7800GT with dual DVI clone mode (CRT thru adapter), I did not see ANY input lag on the LCD.
Right now, my 6-bit TN LCD has to dither, so that's definitely something to take into account. 8-bit may be worlds different, I'll have to see for myself, no pun intended. I'm still on the Hajj of finding the ideal display. The VP930b may be it.
Just something to consider. I'll post another unbiased and brutually honest review once I get my 8-bit VP930b. Stay tuned.
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