once again -> is there a decent 24" lcd out there? (2405fpw no need to apply)

davet11

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Dec 1, 2005
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I'm looking into upgrading to a 24" wide screen lcd for quite some time, but am constantly disappointed by claims of input lag and some motion blur. I would go for 2x 19" lcds since this would mostly be a monitor used for graphic/text design, but I also use my PC for movies and TV, so a 24" would be much nicer in that case.

For a while I was hooked on the 2405fpw, until I started to do some more in-depth research and realized what "input lag" actually meant, and it is definitely something that I don't want to deal with. I don't care if you hardly notice it, it's there, and it would bother me.

I want to know if there is a 24" LCD available with the following, I'm sure it would be crazy expensive, but it's something that I'm willing to save up for:

1) HDCP support
2) 8-bit color depth
3) minimal or preferrable no input lag
4) decent response time (sufficient for movies/tv, don't do too much gaming)
5) image quality good enough for graphic design

Does this monitor exist? Is it $5,000? More?

Has the 2407 finally dealt with the input lag issue? What about the fancy NEC monitor? Although it's only 20", it might be good enough if there is no input lag.

Otherwise, for my requirements, what 2x 19" monitors would you recommend?
 
Mar 11, 2004
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Well, it sounds like the NEC offers everything you're looking for. Not sure if you're willing to give up the extra resolution though. I haven't seen any reviews yet, and it looks like I think the end of April (is that correct?) before the 2407/2007 models come out over here, so I wouldn't expect to see much before then.

I suppose you could spring for the 30". Its supposed to be pretty good in all of those areas. Quite a bit less than $5000 too. Maybe wait to see if Dell runs any special deals on it. I believe April/May is one of the months that Dell runs some pretty nice deals.

Perhaps Dell is waiting until around that time to release the newer monitors so they can put their current ones on firesale to get rid of stock of them.
 

XJustMeX21

Golden Member
Nov 26, 2005
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Well if 20" would be enough you may want to check the gateway fpd2185w.
seems to fill all your needs except the 24"
 
Mar 11, 2004
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I haven't heard anything about it having input lag. Might do some reading up on it though. Check Hardforums, as a lot of people over there have experience with a ton of different displays. Also Widescreen Gaming forums should have some info as well. Cnet recently compared the 30" Dell and Apple monitors, but I don't take their reviews too seriously.
 

jnjboc

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Dec 11, 2005
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I have had a Samsung 244T for about a month. it's a next gen panel(compared to the 2405) with a 6ms response time.

I can assure you that IF you have the right PC hardware, you will see 0 lag, ghosting, blurring, etc. It does take some juice to properly run this panel.

I run DOOM3 in Ultra, COD2, HL2, FEAR, all with max settings at native 1920x1200 and it is simply beautiful. I was using a Mitsubishi Diamondpro 2070b CRT just prior to this, so trust me, I would see ghosting and lag in a second.

The panel is just beautiful in every way. Far exceeded my expectations.

Just my opinion, but I almost pulled the trigger on a 2405. The price is tempting, but I have been on the Dell forums where quite a few folks have experienced a high pitched whine from the power supply. They are sending brand new panels back for replacement and getting panels back that are marked "refurbished". No way i would take a chance on that type of lousy customer service.

The 244T does support HDCP.

True, the 244T is expensive, but it's well worth it in my opinion. got mine from TigerDirect.com for $1399.
 

xtknight

Elite Member
Oct 15, 2004
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You might have a look at the 23" widescreen (16:10) Philips 230WP7NS.

Not sure if it supports HDCP or if it has input lag though. Input lag is only 100 ms at max from what I've seen so it doesn't really matter unless you're a hardcore gamer. AFAIK it's most prevalent on the S-PVAs like the 2405FPW, but the Philips is an S-IPS.

If you want 20", there's no competitor to the NEC 20WMGX2. The US version of the LCD20WGX2 (20WMGX2) does support HDCP. I highly doubt it has any input lag. It has a true 8-bit matrix driver, fastest response time of any LCD (pretty much), and all colors are displayed with less than 1 pixel of difference (usually .5 or so).
 

Nebor

Lifer
Jun 24, 2003
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I'd say it's worth trying the Dell. It's cheap, and they have a satisfaction gaurantee. With the $600 price difference between the next competitor, it's worth risking return shipping.

Next up check out the Samsung 244t. It may have input lag, it may not. You'll just have to see. Another poster in this thread says it doesn't. I'm not sure he knows what it is though.

Also check out the Philips 230WP7NS. It's also a next gen panel, but I don't know of anyone that has it.

I found a 37" widescreen that does 1080p in the same price range, so that's what I'm probably going with.
 

NeezyDeezy

Senior member
Oct 27, 2004
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I have the philips. It's better than the 244t IMO, which I have also seen.

I paid $250 more for the philips than the dell would have cost me after tax even with the 5% coupon, so to say $600 is more than a bit off. The Philips isn't HDCP compatible from what I can tell.

The main reason I bought it were for the blacks, which are unmatched even by the 3007, which an associate of mine owns and uses for dmd. I don't game, so I can't speak of lag, but there is no ghosting that's for sure.
 

darXoul

Senior member
Jan 15, 2004
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100 ms of input lag would be striking, even in regular desktop work. IMO.

As for online gaming, especially FPS, basically even 30-50 ms input lag is a deal breaker. It essentially doubles/triples your ping, just awful. You can trash your rail instantly ;)
 

Crescent13

Diamond Member
Jan 12, 2005
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Originally posted by: darXoul
100 ms of input lag would be striking, even in regular desktop work. IMO.

As for online gaming, especially FPS, basically even 30-50 ms input lag is a deal breaker. It essentially doubles/triples your ping, just awful. You can trash your rail instantly ;)


QFT!
 

Markbnj

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Sep 16, 2005
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As the owner of a 2405 who does a lot of gaming I was curious, and Googled for some information on this "input lag."

After reading the few available links I have to say I have no idea what the heck they are talking about. They seem to be linking some monitor characteristic to increased aiming difficulty in FPS games.

Unless some more technical person can explain this to me, I call BS. There are lots of reasons why aiming can be harder on a widescreen LCD. The number one reason is having a lot more pixels in native res. It requires some careful tuning of the mouse sensitivity and acceleration, and still I find having a Logitech with adjustable DPI very useful.

So someone tell me what "input lag" is supposed to be? The monitor is refreshing the panel 60 times per second. It's going to keep refreshing the panel 60 times per second whether you're moving the mouse or not. If you move the mouse, and the O/S updates the position of the mouse, then the mouse will show in the new position on the next refresh.

Haha, you know what's funny? You can Google "Samsung input lag" and find posts on the same "issue" with the 244t.

So what we have here are FPS games who are used to playing with 1600 pixels at most horizontally, now faced with setting up their mouses for 1920 pixels, and 1200 lines.

 

xtknight

Elite Member
Oct 15, 2004
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Well between my 19" LCD and my 17" CRT I can notice my 19" is about..hmm...a few ten milliseconds (maybe 30-50 or so) slower at the worst. Might just be the crystals themselves transitioning. I can hardly tell it side-by-side, half the time I might even think the LCD is faster, that's how hard it is to tell the difference. How exactly is that going to affect movies or graphics design? Or even games? I'm no stranger to fast games. I have played Quake 3 for more than five years and I can tell absolutely no difference whatsoever on my LCD. Perhaps the situation is a lot worse with the bigger screens (I'm guessing it would have to be) but if all that fuss is over this, wow. If the person was coming down a bridge and he just peeped out in your view and managed to actually use his 50 msec advantage on you I guess it would make a difference, but other than that, I really doubt it would make a difference no matter how hardcore you are. The 60 Hz limit would worry you far before this would. And this is only if you're playing really fast-paced games.

Network lag is a completely different beast, muddled with packet loss and client movement prediction issues.
 

Madellga

Senior member
Sep 9, 2004
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Same here. No idea what this lag is about. I play all types of games, from Guild Wars to Quake 4 and Battle for Middle Earth.
 

Madellga

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Sep 9, 2004
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Originally posted by: xtknight
Well between my 19" LCD and my 17" CRT I can notice my 19" is about..hmm...a few ten milliseconds (maybe 30-50 or so) slower at the worst. Might just be the crystals themselves transitioning. I can hardly tell it side-by-side, half the time I might even think the LCD is faster, that's how hard it is to tell the difference. How exactly is that going to affect movies or graphics design? Or even games? I'm no stranger to fast games. I have played Quake 3 for more than five years and I can tell absolutely no difference whatsoever on my LCD. Perhaps the situation is a lot worse with the bigger screens (I'm guessing it would have to be) but if all that fuss is over this, wow. If the person was coming down a bridge and he just peeped out in your view and managed to get a 50msec rocket on you I guess it would make a difference, but other than that, I really doubt it would make a difference no matter how hardcore you are. The 60 Hz limit would worry you far before this would.

Human reflex lag is higher than 50ms. I doubt also than you call tell a lag of 30-50 without measuring hardware.

In my work I deal sometimes with high speed video (1000 or 3000 frames per second). We use it to film high speed testing (like crash testing or airbag deployment). Everything happens under 150ms - believe me, you can't tell a thing from this tests with your naked eyes.

Lag in this case would be to film it using 30 frames per second. You would get just 4 or 5 shots, that I would call lag.
 

NeezyDeezy

Senior member
Oct 27, 2004
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Originally posted by: Nebor
Agreed, non-gamers input isn't too helpful.

wrong, considering the original post didn't mention gaming... I didn't realize this was the "videogame" forum of anandtech.com.
 

davet11

Member
Dec 1, 2005
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I am not a heavy gamer, but input lag is something that I really don't feel like dealing with period. It's not BS, just look at the hardforums threads about it. There's some fairly convincing videos and it's definitely something I think I would notice, gaming or not.

Thanks for the suggestions thus far, I've read that the Samsung is definitely better than the Dell in terms of input lag, so it's one of the top panels I'm looking at, colors are a huge deal to me though, so I'd like a true color panel.
 

Markbnj

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Sep 16, 2005
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If you want to pay an extra $600 to deal with a mythical issue, go for it :). Seriously, the Samsung is a great panel. I'm sure you'll be very happy with it. But this whole thing about "input lag" is crap, at least as far as it applies to different LCDs. All these people are seeing is the difference between moving the mouse around an 85 hz CRT vs. a 60 Hz. LCD. I personally don't think I could tell the difference, but some twitchy 15 year-old might very well be able to. Those differences, if they exist, will exist on _any_ 60hz LCD panel, which is why I was amused to see people complaining about input lag on the Samsung too.
 

videopho

Diamond Member
Apr 8, 2005
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But this whole thing about "input lag" is crap, at least as far as it applies to different LCDs


:thumbsup: I love my Dell 2405fpw. This whole thing is about bashing Dell LCD, IMO.
 

Elfear

Diamond Member
May 30, 2004
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Originally posted by: Markbnj
As the owner of a 2405 who does a lot of gaming I was curious, and Googled for some information on this "input lag."

After reading the few available links I have to say I have no idea what the heck they are talking about. They seem to be linking some monitor characteristic to increased aiming difficulty in FPS games.

Unless some more technical person can explain this to me, I call BS. There are lots of reasons why aiming can be harder on a widescreen LCD. The number one reason is having a lot more pixels in native res. It requires some careful tuning of the mouse sensitivity and acceleration, and still I find having a Logitech with adjustable DPI very useful.

So someone tell me what "input lag" is supposed to be? The monitor is refreshing the panel 60 times per second. It's going to keep refreshing the panel 60 times per second whether you're moving the mouse or not. If you move the mouse, and the O/S updates the position of the mouse, then the mouse will show in the new position on the next refresh.

Haha, you know what's funny? You can Google "Samsung input lag" and find posts on the same "issue" with the 244t.

So what we have here are FPS games who are used to playing with 1600 pixels at most horizontally, now faced with setting up their mouses for 1920 pixels, and 1200 lines.

That sums up my experience to a T. After gaming on a crt for over a year, I decided to give lcd's a try. The 2405fpw took some getting used to because is was so much bigger than my crt, but I don't notice any input lag, even with some of the fastest FPS out (UT2004 and HL2: Deathmatch). Give the Dell a try, like others have said you can always return it if you find something wrong with it.
 

Nebor

Lifer
Jun 24, 2003
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I can explain input lag to all of you non-believers.

Now, believe it or not, magic doesn't just make your video card's output appear on the LCD screen. Oh no, the monitor has a processor of it's own, called a DSP, or digital signal processor.

Now as we've gotten these larger and larger panels with nice fast response times, and increased resolutions, DSP technology hasn't exactly kept up. We're using basically the same DSPs that we were to do 1280x1024 to do 1920x1200. And they just can't keep up. So when you move your mouse, in your computer, it happens instantly, but there's a delay inside your monitor in displaying your cursor move. This presents a rather serious problem in video games.

And there are dozens of complaints of it happening with both the Samsung 244t and the Dell 2405fpw. But then there are plenty of people who say there's no problem at all.
 

xtknight

Elite Member
Oct 15, 2004
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I don't believe it's an actual technological limitation, but rather a method. When overdrive is applied there needs to be some 'anticipation' and this anticipation period is the input lag. That's my guess anyway. If the DSP weren't keeping up, the lag would get worse over time, and I don't think it does that. It is still real time, but there's an offset to anticipate the next pixel transition so it can properly apply the overdrive.
 

davet11

Member
Dec 1, 2005
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Originally posted by: videopho
But this whole thing about "input lag" is crap, at least as far as it applies to different LCDs


:thumbsup: I love my Dell 2405fpw. This whole thing is about bashing Dell LCD, IMO.

That's simply not true, and it's not about only the Dell, it happens on the Samsung as well to a lesser extent.