New LCD gamer has a few dumb questions!

[imported_FarNorth]

Hey there, I'm a would-be turncoat from the CRT side of gaming, but need a bit of advice since I've never bought a LCD before. I scanned a few pages in the forums here, but could still use a few clarifications. I'm looking to spend in the $500-$1000 range, and my most video-hungry games are MMORPG's, usually played in 1280 x 1024, to give you an idea of what I'm trying to optimize for. I'm also planning on using my machine for watching DVD movies. My CPU is an AMD 3200+ and video card is Radeon 9800 Pro 256 (I think!)

What I've managed not to figure out so far...
What the heck determines crispness/sharpness? I wandered into the best local electronics retailer in town (which isn't saying much considering I'm in Fairbanks, Alaska). Their selection consisted of a few Samsungs and a Sony, and I noticed the crispness of the 17" Samsung was distinctly sharper than the 19" Samsung 913V (?) and the 21" Samsung 213T, which were both a little fuzzy. A brief review of the specs that I thought might make a difference didn't shed any light on why the 17" should be sharper (though it did have a slight difference in dot pitch....0.26 on the 17" versus 0.29 on the 19" and 0.27 on the 21"). I also noticed that the Sony had a beautiful and sharp picture, though the specs weren't listed for me to compare it to the Samsungs. Anyone have suggestions on what to look for to get a nice crisp picture? I expect that crispness will be as important to me as response time.
Can't seem to find response time listed as a spec very often... Looks like I should be shooting for a 16ms response time (12ms will be out of my price range?), but many sites don't list this on their monitor specs (dell 2001fp for example...I didn't see the response time on the spec sheet). What's a fellow to do if the response time isn't available?
pixel failure One of the reasons I'd like to shop locally is that if there's a dead pixel, they'll let me swap the monitor for another. I get the impression mail-order is cheaper, but isn't flexible on return of a monitor for a dead pixel or two. I think a red dot staring at me would drive me mad... any thoughts?
contrast ratio a key feature? I've been told that "higher is better" for contrast ratio, but I don't have a clue how important this spec is. And the same deal with Brightness...since most times a user won't crank the "brightness" of a monitor to the max, what benefit is a larger Brightness spec?
DVI, a foreign concept! I assume that DVI output doesn't work on CRT's. Does it make much of a difference for LCD gaming performance? I plan on getting a DVI cable for my video card to test it out, once I've got a LCD on it's way.

Thanks a bunch for any comments and/or links you can provide! There isn't much LCD expertise to tap into around here.

Cheers,

Clay

 

[nazardelrosario]

Well since no one else has responded to your post I will to the best of my knowledge. With LCD screens you want the lowest dot pitch like .25 and stuff, the better the picture. Also you want one with a good resolution and good refresh rate. Although LCD's are pretty limited on refresh rates. And yes response time is important the lower the better. Also the thing with pixel failure I have never had a problem, besides it will be on warranty anyways. If you plan to play a lot of games like doom 3, a larger brightness would be nice. Also DVI stands for digital visual interface which gives you better picture quality then regular vga. So go for DVI only LCD's as most video cards nowadays support it. Alright thats all I know good luck, also sharp makes really good LCD's btw or so I have heard. Oh and viewsonic.

 

[MidasKnight]

Just went to a 19" LCD from a 19" CRT here.

I'm still evaluating this LCD at this point. The one I picked up turned out to be a 800:1 / 25ms LCD from Realsync via PCClub.com / The gaming quality is what I'm assessing right now as I really love everything else about this monitor. It's taking me a bit to fine tune the LCD settings and the color correction of my 6800GT vid card but I think I'm almost there. For gaming it's taking me a bit to get used to as it does have a bit of a different quality about it. I believe if this LCD was at 16ms It would be a keeper and perfect LCD. But with the 25ms I do see a little ghosting here and there in 3D games ( first person shooters ) get a 16ms for sure.

 

[Subhuman25]

Want good advise?
Stick with a good quality performace CRT and forget LCD's for at least the next year or 2.
You can't even begin to compare the picture quality of any LCD with my Mitsubishi Diamond Pro CRT.
They aren't even nearing the ballpark yet.And it will be at least another year or 2 or even more before they might even enter the ballpark,let alone hope to compare then.And be ready to dish out lot's more $$ for any LCD that could even begin to compare to my CRT in a few years.

 

[VIAN]

did have a slight difference in dot pitch....0.26 on the 17" versus 0.29 on the 19" and 0.27 on the 21").

This is one of the things. The more pixels you can squeeze into a tighter space, the better it will look. That 19" is still using the same resolution as the 17", so it wouldn't look as good. Another thing is a DVI input to the monitor. Most retail stores, just use the regular analog, but DVI looks noticeably better.

With response time, you would want at least 16ms. Keep away from PVA matrix LCDs. Go for Film TN.

Most of the time, dead pixels are just sub pixels and will barely be noticeable. But you could still get one. Some brands have a zero dead pixel policy. You may wanna check them out, I know one is Philips. Plus dead pixels could pop up over time of use, so are you really safe if you get one without dead pixels.

You can't trust contrast/brightness numbers.

DVI - Digital Video Interface; that's my understanding of what it stands for.

There is also this other arguement that a really good CRT, such as a 19: mitsubishi 930sb for 300 bucks, is better than an LCD. But I should leave that to your discretion. I have never experienced one of these almighty CRTs, so I wouldn't be able to tell ya.

 

[Demo24]

I seem to notice that if they dont show you the response time that probably means its nothing special probably something like a 25ms.

and for your budget a 12 ms is possible. Viewsonic gotta love em.
http://www.viewsonic.com/produ...lays/proseries/vp912b/

 

[imported_FarNorth]

Thanks for the thoughts. Here are a few comments...

Interesting point on the DOT pitch....the fuzzines going from 17" 0.26 to 19" 0.29 is probably due to the dot pitch as you say. However, I'd always thought that Dot Pitch was a measure of dots per screen area, and so I would have expected the 21" 0.27 dot pitch to be pretty sharp in comparison to the 17". We even tried boosting the resolution to 1600x1200, and it didn't make the 21" any sharper; it still looked fuzzy.

I sure hope it's true that DVI gives a sharper output....the store didn't have any DVI cables handy, so all these monitors were showing analog output.

To the guy favoring CRT....I'd tend to agree, for the most part. However, i'm moving a lot of late, generally from one small aprtment/hotel to another, and I also like trying out new technologies Even if CRT is indeed slightly superior, I'd still like to give LCD a test run.

As for monitors not stating response time probably reflecting a poor value, I'd suspected as much. It's good to hear someone support that with actual experiences.


Clay

 

[imported_FarNorth]

Hmmm one more question. Although Best Buy doesn't list Response Time for any of its monitors, it does list vertical and horizontal frequency. Are these related to response time? If so, I notice each monitor has a range for each category....is there any way to convert those numbers to a hard value for response time?

Thanks!

Clay

 

[sbuckler]

My advice is to try the lcd out, or at least read some good reviews for it before buying it. You can't believe most of the specs you read, and there are several important things they miss out.
The latency is particularly miss-leading, as it only has to hit that value for one colour to describe itself as an ??ms LCD. Checkout http://graphics.tomshardware.c...ay/20041015/index.html. That's a review of a supposed 8ms LCD, which is infact more like 23ms most of the time, and hardly any better then their benchmark 20ms LCD.
The other problem with low latency models is they can have a much smaller viewing angle which is irritating as you have to keep your head right in the sweet spot to get a good picture. Again to get the low latency some monitors drop to using 18 bit colour as opposed to full 24 bit which isn't great.
Finally for some reason the screens on some lcd's are highly reflective which is only fine is you like looking at yourself.
On the plus point I find they are nearly all much sharper then CRT, better for desktop work, and so much smaller and lighter.

 

[BFG10K]

Does it make much of a difference for LCD gaming performance?

Nope, it's purely for output quality.

 

[fbrdphreak]

If you're shopping @ BBY, have one of the sales people print you out an information sheet on the monitors you want. It will have ALL of the info you want. They can also order you any number of other laptops.