CRT or LCD?

[legacy-Shizna]

I have an 18' LCD monitor, but from experience and researching I found that CRD are both more reliable, and give better performance. My LCD monitor will only support 75Hz refresh rate, where I could have bought a CRT for the same price and got 110Hz. The only downside to a CRD in my view is the obvious chunky physical side of it being like an anvil sitting on your desk.
My cousin has a 21' CRT monitor and it is a beast, but his UT2004 looks much smoother than mine, on a minimum spec PC.

UT2004 is really beginning to strain my eyes in 75Hz refresh, and it also looks so ugly when moving around fast with all the tearing. I tried vsynch on, although it solves the screen tearing it causes major lag.

What is better the good old fashioned cathode ray, or the liquid crystal?


EDIT: I heard LCD hardware is unreliable because they only have about 2000-3000 hours of life, where the CRT will survive untill you break it. Seriously, I have a 20 year old TV in the other room and aside from stains on the case and the colour fade from sunlight it is fine.

[legacy-TheGreatFoo]

LCD is still pretty immature as a home technology. Pricy for starters. Then there's the small screen sizes, and the ghosting effect when playing games.

However, looking at an LCD is much more relaxing than looking at a CRT. That, and the desk space concerns, of course.

I think for gaming, CRT is still the best choice. For office work, LCD.

[legacy-VampireGabriel]

I believe the closest you can get to a CRT with a LCD is this:

Samsung 172X

It has a response time of 12ms. NOT great compared to CRT which are almost instantaneous, but **** good in comparison to most LCDs. And it is expensive.

I game with a 17" 25ms Samsung that supports 1280x1024@80hz, and I love it. I notice almost no difference in my gaming from my CRT. The picture quality is much better than a CRT IMHO and I have yet to see 1 dead pixel in over a year. I rarely ever turn it off, and run a screensaver, not energy-saver.

My next LCD will be a 12ms panel.

As far as life? Hmm. 2000-3000 hours seems awfully short. That's 83.3-125 days of constant use. My guess is that number is closer to 20k-30k hours if not better under normal use.

[legacy-ChinksAhoy]

Re: CRT or LCD?

Originally posted by Shizna
I have an 18' LCD monitor, but from experience and researching I found that CRD are both more reliable, and give better performance. My LCD monitor will only support 75Hz refresh rate, where I could have bought a CRT for the same price and got 110Hz. The only downside to a CRD in my view is the obvious chunky physical side of it being like an anvil sitting on your desk.
My cousin has a 21' CRT monitor and it is a beast, but his UT2004 looks much smoother than mine, on a minimum spec PC.

UT2004 is really beginning to strain my eyes in 75Hz refresh, and it also looks so ugly when moving around fast with all the tearing. I tried vsynch on, although it solves the screen tearing it causes major lag.

What is better the good old fashioned cathode ray, or the liquid crystal?


EDIT: I heard LCD hardware is unreliable because they only have about 2000-3000 hours of life, where the CRT will survive untill you break it. Seriously, I have a 20 year old TV in the other room and aside from stains on the case and the colour fade from sunlight it is fine.

i'm currently playing on a 16" LCD of my laptop... 1280x1024@60Hz... looks fine to me...

[legacy-Prisoner1138]

you can get a nice big crt for less than you can get an lcd screen of the same size, and the picture is gonna look better in games.

now if you're staring at a monitor for 8 hours a day for office type work, then an lcd is great.

[legacy-wickedkae]

Originally posted by TheGreatFoo

I think for gaming, CRT is still the best choice. For office work, LCD.

:up:

[legacy-CavernTan]

I use a LCD for gaming, and it's great.

It's this one: NEC 1760NX (17 inch) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...ronics&n=507846

I got it off of Dell last year with a 20% discount, so it ended up being $370! Sweet.

It has a 16 ms response time, so there is virutally no ghosting in games. Also, don't worry about the low refresh rates on LCD's. LCD's don't flicker like CRTs at low refresh rates (actually, you can lower it to 60 and still see zero flicker - though, I've noticed that if I set my LCD's refresh to 75 instead of 60 Hz, the text and well, everything is much more crisp). What matters on LCD's is the response time, the lower the ms, the better (less ghosting with lower millisecond response times).

I don't only game, so the crisp LCD text is perfect for doing homework and writing papers. The way I see it, a low response time LCD is the best of both worlds.

[legacy-CavernTan]

Edit: Accidental double post!

[legacy-membrane]

LCD's suck, you'll never catch me buying one. But if you insist on wasting your money the only viable choices for gaming are:

Cheap, 1024 native, 16ms response:
Planar PL1700

Middle range, 1280 native, 12ms response:
Samsung 172X

Top dollar, 1600 native, 16ms response:
Dell 2001FP

According to maximumPC (the gods of PC gaming hardware) all three were exceptional LCD's for gaming, with good interpolation when running at non-native resolutions and minimal ghosting.

That is all.
-m3m

[legacy-Greyguy]

Refresh rate doen,t mean as much with an LCD as it does with a CRT. The resolution how ever does. Each LCD has a native resolution. ie: 1280x1024. Set your game to that res and it will look sweet. I am on a Samsung 19" LCD and it rocks.

[legacy-Mr. Roboto]

I'm both a gamer and an art student so I need a CRT. The color of LCD monitors not only tend to shift with viewing angle, but also have an issue with being fairly high contrast. No wonder why CavernTan says that the model I use is really bright (Mandible). For the best color you'll want a CRT monitor with a "Flat Aperture Grill", but if you're primarily doing text and spreadsheets you'll want a "Shadow Mask".

Admittedly it stinks not being able to haul around a 19" when the need to LAN arises, but that's the price that you pay for good color. My current monitor is a Sony Multiscan Trinitron G-420.

[legacy-KaneRobot]

As someone above said, native resolution is important for when you are gaming on an LCD. If you set the game to the native resolution it'll look pretty **** good.

Still, considering the huge price gap, I'll still gladly take a flatscreen CRT over an LCD anyday. It's not worth it to me to pay that much more for something that doesn't look that much better.

[legacy-[i][/i]]

Yeah you could have got a nice 21" Sony Trinitron with the money from that 18.1" LCD.

LCD's are good, CRT's are great. In a couple years that will probably change, but for now its pretty good advice. Go CRT next time.

[legacy-Lt.Doomsday]

i got for $150 a 19' inch CRT monitor. Mag Inovision 986FS.

[legacy-[LN]Gabriel]

They offered me dual 19" LCD's at work for doing graphics, and I told them I would rather keep my 17" and 19" CRT's, only because every LCD I have ever seen has had issues with color, sharpness, and contrast, which I guess has carried over into games.
Right now (at home), I play Unreal on my 19" Trinitron and do graffix on both the Trini and my Acer V771
I hope the LCD's do catch up, because I would love more room on my desk,
but I do love my Sony.