DescentBB

About to purchase a new monitor and would like to get one of the flat panels. Many moons ago when they first came out I seem to remember that they were not good for gaming (Descent 3). Is that still the case? Anything I should look for or avoid? Thanks

You need a "low" response time, as in 12ms or better. Otherwise you'll get "ghosting" kinda like speed blur.

Samsung has two 19" LCDs that are down to 8ms.

I have the Samsung SyncMaster 915N ($315 on NewEgg, sale ends today), and I play Descent 3 (among other games) with it.

I would recommend the SyncMaster 930B (both Analog and Digital interfaces), though, as the digital interface is supposed to provide better performance.


It's my opinion that 8ms is pretty darn good for gaming. An LCD won't give you the performance of a CRT, but the color and sharpness of the image is much better. Also, I don't get the same eye-strain I used to experience with my 19" CRT.

There is a particular issue you'll encounter, when using an LCD for gaming. These LCD monitors have a different aspect ratio than what you're used to--5:4 (1280x1024), instead of 4:3 (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, ...). In order for some games to look good, you may need to have a powerful enough system to run them at 1280x1024. Your typical game, running at 1024x768, will appear somewhat out of proportion--squished. Thankfully, D3 comes prepared, and the command line "-aspect 1.25" will cause your typical resolutions (640x480, 800x600, ...) to display correctly.

I've been doing a lot of research on LCD monitors and the one thing that I'm finding (and I've been told this by many others as well) is that the "specifications" as listed by the manufacturer don't mean all that much because there are currently no common standards for measurement of same. Thus, one Manufacturer's 25ms response time may well be equivalent (or nearly so) to another's 12ms response time. It all depends on what they're measuring, or rather, how they are doing the measurements.

Essentially those "specifications" are marketing, and may or may not accurately reflect the performance of the monitor you receive.

Given that, the Samsung 930B looks like a good bet, as are many other Samsung LCD monitors. They don't seem to be exaggerating their performance (or at least not extravagantly).

Good advice on the aspect ratios, Thorney. Thanks.

While LCDs have come a long way - they still have a long way to go. The only real issue I have with gaming on LCDs is the whole "native resolution" thing: if you have to drop the screen resolution from the native resolution then things start to look ugly.]

LCDs have "absolute" pixels, unlike CRTs where the pixels are painted by the Electron gun. That means when you move away from native res', the LCD is trying to stretch individual pixels across 3,4,8 pixels (or however many pixels your new res' occupies) and the result is (in my view) poor in terms of image quality.

If you can game at the LCD's native res, then it will look superb.

CRTs are still the best choice for gaming (and Photoshop work) I believe, but for general use, LCDs rock.

be careful about Mfg's stated response time....

(poor)some rate from off - on - (rise)
(good)some rate it from on - off - on
(better)some rate it from full white to full black to full white
(best)finally full grey to off to full grey (real world)

But they all will say 12ms...go figure

Best rated 19 LCD's for gaming and such

#1 Viewsonic VP191b
#2 Phillips 190P5
#3 Eizo L7778

#4 Samsung 193P

We just had a similar discussion a few days ago in another thread. Anyway, I just sold my 22 inch Gateway crt which was actually pretty sweet and I bought the Samsung 930b LCD and I love it. I play Battlefield 2 on it at 800 x 600 and at 1024 x 768 and it looks great and I don't get any ghosting. As for the age old discussion of crt vs lcd, as I stated in another thread I work with aerial photography, GIS and remote sensing and almost all our crt's are slowly getting replaced by lcds. The only crt's we have left are the ones we use to view the photographs in stereo where we need refresh rates over 110 to synch with our goggles. Otherwise we have completely switched to lcd's with no complaints. Again, I like my 8 ms Samsung 930b and am glad I got it.

Some low-response time LCDs use 6bits instead of 8bits. Just so that you're aware of it.

Thanks folks, really appreciate the help