TFT DVI Vs CRT for mid range gaming rig? whats better?

[EviLRas]

Ok, here goes, my first jump into this forum!

Took ALOT of advise from these forums and have just built following rig:

advance 8803 thermal controlled 400W ATX case
Asus k8vse deluxe MoBo
AMD athlon 64 3200+
1024MB DDR PC3200 alum heat spreader mem (2x512MB geil)
ATI Radeon 9800PRO 128MB DDR (powercolor)
200GB SATA maxtor diamond max
NEC 2510 dual layer DVD burner
LG 16x DVD-Drive
windows XP PRO
altec lansing 5.1 speakers
creative soudblaster
5 sharkoon silent fans on case and a CPU cooler


I will be investing in an arctic cooler VGA silencer in the near future too. bit of an upgrade to my current athlon XP 2000, GF MX440. 256 RAM win 98se..

Anyway, getting this all on friday. cant wait! but at the mo i'm using an old 17" CRT 170 tco 99 valuevision monitor! a relic from back in the day when we didnt have a clue about computers. Now, i know the rig isnt as spectacular as yours! but i didnt have £2500 to blow! So now i'm stuck on the monitor to buy.

*************** Question here if you're bored of my waffling! ***************
do i go for a basic 17" CRT. or should i stump up for a new 17" tft? there's a 17" Samsung SM172V analogue tft screen. with a 25ms response time. or 17" LG Flatron L1710B DVI with 16ms.

what should i look for in an lcd? should i look for 12ms, or is 16ms ok? and is it worth getting one when all i really wanna do is frag people and play DOOM 3 (dear god, please let my rig handle doom 3... my old rig got 2200 on 3dmark2001!!!)

 

[yhelothar]

go for a 21" crt... :beer:
17" CRT is SMALL!

 

[EviLRas]

its a teeny desk though! 21" would Dwarf my HEAD!!! though you have put an interesting idea in my head. will hunt for 21" too from now on!

so CRT over TFT for you then?

Rascle

 

[jim1976]

Originally posted by: EviLRas
its a teeny desk though! 21" would Dwarf my HEAD!!! though you have put an interesting idea in my head. will hunt for 21" too from now on!

so CRT over TFT for you then?

Rascle

THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION!!! IMO YES...LCDs still aren't good enough to satisfy a hardcore gamer.Getting closer though.

 

[EviLRas]

cool, cheers jim. So 12ms is still to slow for an lcd?

I'd like a nice tidy sleek looking desk, but certainly dont wanna pay for that in gaming quality!

Rascle

 

[yhelothar]

Streaking isn't really a problem anymore. What you should worry about is the contrast and color vibrance, which is where LCDs fall behind. Also the fact that LCDs can only run on one fixed resolution, otherwise they turn very blurry.

For your budget, I think you would get a lot more bang for your buck with a CRT. Unless you are tight on space, CRT is definately the way to go.
I enjoy my dual 21"

 

[Tab]

THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION!!! IMO YES...LCDs still aren't good enough to satisfy a hardcore gamer.Getting closer though.

No, they are extremely close. You can find a decent LCD that does not ghost.

cool, cheers jim. So 12ms is still to slow for an lcd?

Absolutely not.

Streaking isn't really a problem anymore. What you should worry about is the contrast and color vibrance, which is where LCDs fall behind. Also the fact that LCDs can only run on one fixed resolution, otherwise they turn very blurry.

Do you own a LCD? They do not turn blurry, they just look pixelated. Beyond that, you will rarely go out of the 1280x1204 spec... The newer even have scaling opitions, you'll just have black bars.

I don't beileve a R9800 Pro will be able to handle all of Doom 3, I honestly don't. I would also suggest in maybe loooking at some other Ram Brands... That case doens't sound that great, I would invest a good power supply.

 

[jim1976]

No, they are extremely close. You can find a decent LCD that does not ghost.

Well Tabb, we could argue for hours on that. I've never owned a LCD,but from friends systems that we play a lot of hours I'm just not that satisfied yet to proceed with an expensive purchase.(I want a 21'' LCD). To me ghosting is visible sometimes and while scaling they do get blurry IMO. But it's truth that Samsung 172x and Benq FP767 are a step further from what I've seen. I believe that in a year or so we will see very high quality LCDs.

cool, cheers jim. So 12ms is still to slow for an lcd?

Absolutely not.

While this is correct, sometimes 12ms LCDs are no faster than 16ms. There are many things that play important role in the response time. So it all comes down to what you define acceptable for you.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: jim1976

No, they are extremely close. You can find a decent LCD that does not ghost.

Well Tabb, we could argue for hours on that. I've never owned a LCD,but from friends systems that we play a lot of hours I'm just not that satisfied yet to proceed with an expensive purchase.(I want a 21'' LCD). To me ghosting is visible sometimes and while scaling they do get blurry IMO. But it's truth that Samsung 172x and Benq FP767 are a step further from what I've seen. I believe that in a year or so we will see very high quality LCDs.

cool, cheers jim. So 12ms is still to slow for an lcd?

Absolutely not.

While this is correct, sometimes 12ms LCDs are no faster than 16ms. There are many things that play important role in the response time. So it all comes down to what you define acceptable for you.

Well, first of all there are no 12ms or even 16ms 21" LCD's to my knowledge; most 19" LCDs are also still 25ms (although 16ms ones are coming out now).

That said, a 12ms 17" LCD will look great in games; I play Warcraft 3 on a 19" LCD with a 25ms response time and it looks amazing. UT 2k4 and Far Cry do look ugly though (ghosting) -that's when I go with my other screen in a dual setup - a 19" CRT.


If you're just getting one monitor and you don't game much, I'd strongly recommend going for an LCD - I love the sharpness and personally can't go back to (just) CRT for day to day use. 17" or 18" LCD's with low response times are like the best of both worlds.

If you game a lot, especially fast moving FPSes, then I'd recommend a 19" CRT (21" is too big unless you can afford the desk space, IMO).

 

[EviLRas]

Ha! wow, so many different opinions. i really wanted to get an LCD. you can get benQ 12ms 17" lcd's. I only have a small room, so cant really go for more than 17". although hyundai do a 19" CRT with a 17" footprint, which is handy. so just a toss up between the 2.

I have a feeling doom3 will run, but i've never had the luxury of BLISTERING speeds on a pc game, so dont mind if i run it without AAAA+++ graphics enabled. i feel that the system is a reasonable spec. i couldnt stump for well named RAM, or case!! i might upgrade to a 460W PSU in a few months if i find i need it. after all, it will have cost the equiv of $2200!!! British prices are SOOOO expensive!

buying monitor and another 512 RAM on friday when i pick up my machine! cant wait!!!
will have to take a long think as to which monitor to get, tho people are leaning me towards the CRT.

was dying for a decent gaming lcd too!!


Rascle

 

[konakona]

i have no idea what this 'sharpness' deal everyone is talking about. school uses dell 1800fps hooked up to ati cards thru dvi, they do look nice, and maybe quite sharp, but not any nicer than my 22'' nf diamondtron / radeon8500 combo. i DO notice the lack of lushness and depth in color tho, kinda like the difference between a good tuby amp vs sterile SS amp. unless all you do is surf on the web and type word all day, i would suggest you get a crt. plus you sad mid range, from which i get an impression you dont have unlimited budget. crt's (especially used ones) can be had for less than a fraction of what LCDs go for with better and more saturated colors. go figure

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: VanillaH
i have no idea what this 'sharpness' deal everyone is talking about. school uses dell 1800fps hooked up to ati cards thru dvi, they do look nice, and maybe quite sharp, but not any nicer than my 22'' nf diamondtron / radeon8500 combo. i DO notice the lack of lushness and depth in color tho, kinda like the difference between a good tuby amp vs sterile SS amp. unless all you do is surf on the web and type word all day, i would suggest you get a crt. plus you sad mid range, from which i get an impression you dont have unlimited budget. crt's (especially used ones) can be had for less than a fraction of what LCDs go for with better and more saturated colors. go figure

Have you used the LCD for 2 weeks? It took me a couple weeks before I really appreciated the difference.

Also, a 22" NF Diamontron is a damn fine CRT; most CRT's (especially most new non-professional series ones) have crappy looking text and general blurryness. In particular, monitors like the NEC 955DF/Viewsonic P95F+ etc seem to have opted for brighter colours instead of sharper text. Diamondtron and Trinitron (especially Sony's GX20 series) do have great looking text, I must admit.

Edit: oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the Viewsonic P95F+ is not a true 'professional' (graphic artist, etc) monitor. It is just part of the 'professional' series, and a damn uninspired one for sharpness, that's for sure!

 

[EviLRas]

HAHA!! this really is an arguement no-one can win i think. it more or less comes down to what you're going to do with it (ie games in my case) and how much budget you have (i've already overspent by £500!!!). BUT, i have settled on one thing! if i ring the company building it tomorrow, and they've not quite done it yet, then i'm changing the 9800pro for a Powercolor ATI Radeon X800Pro 256MB DDR3 8x AGP. will cost £140 more than the 9800 pro, but read you get double the difference in graphics power! and its not as power hungry as the nvidia. After all, i'll be saving that much by not getting an lcd. will have to wait til faster times arise in a year. I know lcd's look amazing at times! but i'd rather have a kick ass gaming rig. than a web browsing monitor.


thanks to everyone for their comments though. hopefully this thread will help a few other people decide on their rig too!

cheers!


Rascle

 

[konakona]

Have you used the LCD for 2 weeks? It took me a couple weeks before I really appreciated the difference.

i use my diamondtron for about 12+ hours daily (yeah i got some issues and i am yet to notice this thing about 'eye strain' either), lcds prolly like 1-2 hours everyday as i go to the computer lab in between the classes or when i chose to 'self-study' during the lecture that cycle has been going on for about 2 monnths now, so yeah its been more than 2weeks i suppose...

as far as SM monitors go, i agree with everything you said. the thing is i been using AG based monitors for past 5 years or so, i could never imaging going back to SMs. yeah, these are the top of the line CRTs, but then again arent dell fp- series one of higher end LCDs? IMO this makes a quite fair apples to apple comparison

 

[jim1976]

Well, first of all there are no 12ms or even 16ms 21" LCD's to my knowledge; most 19" LCDs are also still 25ms (although 16ms ones are coming out now).

No I said I just want to buy a 21'' LCD in the future, I didn't say that they do exist.

That said, a 12ms 17" LCD will look great in games; I play Warcraft 3 on a 19" LCD with a 25ms response time and it looks amazing. UT 2k4 and Far Cry do look ugly though (ghosting) -that's when I go with my other screen in a dual setup - a 19" CRT.

If you're just getting one monitor and you don't game much, I'd strongly recommend going for an LCD - I love the sharpness and personally can't go back to (just) CRT for day to day use. 17" or 18" LCD's with low response times are like the best of both worlds.

If you game a lot, especially fast moving FPSes, then I'd recommend a 19" CRT (21" is too big unless you can afford the desk space, IMO).

Well Benq seemed better in animated picture than what Samsung did in my eyes. What bothered me was the speakers in it. :disgust:

We aren't saying different things. While in many games you can play really good, FPS still create a lot of probs IMO.(even in those 12ms 17'').They are better but still noticeable

The best is to have a LCD for everyday use and a CRT for gaming.