LCD Refresh rates

[Modular]

I just got my Acer AL2051W last night. It's an amazing beautiful panel IMO, and I hope to do a review of it soon. But I'm a complete LCD noob, so I have a question.

In the nVidia control panel, with "Hide modes that this monitor cannot support" box ticked, I am able to select refresh rates above 60hz at lower resolutions. I was under the impression that LCD's could only have a 60hz refresh rate. This is a P-MVA panel, perhaps that has something to do with it?

 

[xtknight]

It is possible, but the DSP uses features to "round it down" to 60 Hz. It can still end up being more desirable. I use 75 Hz on my ViewSonic VP930b everyday and it feels better. I've used it that way for years and it hasn't damaged it (not that it should). If you can select 75 Hz it's probably safe to assume it was in the monitor's memory, and thus it is safe.

AUO's P-MVA panels seem to have the most success using higher refresh rates (that's what my VP930b is). Maybe it's just a trend that they're paired with good DSPs.

 

[Modular]

Thanks XT. You truly are the LCD guru. I used your site in your sig to test this bad boy out when I set it up last night. I got 13/15 colors without tweaking on the grayscale test. Seems like a good number to me

Also, I set this thing up but never installed anything off of the CD that came with it. Is it better to use that CD to set it up, or does Windows do a good enough job at it?

 

[xtknight]

Windows does fine at it. Nothing on the CD will do much at all. The ICC files provided on the CD don't even include a gamma correction table (that I know of), so they are virtually useless except for experimentation.

 

[mercanucaribe]

Set it to 60hz

 

[Peter]

The monitors Plug&Play self description may very well include other refresh rates for the INPUT signal, particularly if you're running it on analog VGA not DVI.

That won't however make it OUTPUT anything any different than it would at any other input signal rate. Unlike on CRTs, the two sides of the business aren't directly connected. In (much) simplified terms, there's a rendering buffer inbetween.

 

[xtknight]

In some cases, you can even set the refresh rate to 240 Hz and have it still output 60 Hz. Windows/NVIDIA control panel on crack I guess, and I even thought it felt a bit smoother. It's possible it's setting the rendering backend's maxFPS or something similar, but it is not sending 240 frames per second, that I know for sure.