Crt Vs Lcd

[Arnout]

EDIT: This was in response to HellsPuppet.

I think that has to do with the variety in response times that LCD's usually have. A monitor branded as a 2ms response unit will not actually have a 2ms crystal response all the time. It's a peak measurement, a theoretical maximum. The average response time they will generally produce will be more like 15-20ms.

That said, I have always preferred CRT's. And I've tried LCD. I bought a Viewsonic VX922, one of the first 2ms "gaming" LCD's, and it was terrible. There was still ghosting and blurring, and perceivable input response lag.

The only real reason I see not to use a CRT is that LCD's are generally more energy efficient.

[bclagge]

1. You can view any resolution you want with CRTs without visual degradation. LCDs you can view in their native resolution and they look great - any other resolution and they look a bit fuzzy

They are not fuzzy. It's your monitor or hardware compensating for having to fill in more pixels than it has information. To do so it doubles up entire lines of pixels, making it as if you are looking through a funny mirror at a carnival.

2. LCDs do not have the color range of CRTs. Sad but true. And most of the photo editors I've heard of are still using CRTs

Unfortunately true.

3. Viewing angle - CRT's have no problem. LCDs obviously do.

Most people sit in front of their monitor.

4. Delay. This is the big one. CRTs have no delay. LCDs do. And LCD's delay are not limited to the 2ms or 5ms purported speeds. Here's a great website to show you the REAL delay difference between many LCD brands and a reference CRT. It is probably a lot higher than you think. (The website can also show you the color issues in many LCDs).

Delay is only a problem if there is ghosting. My LCD has an 8ms (so they claim) response, and I have no problems whatsoever when playing games.

But LCDs are a lot smaller and some people need the desk space. But for playing a game like UT3 I still think CRTs are better.

LCDs are smaller is an understatement. CRTs are to LCDs as 1970s era supercomputers are to modern PCs.

If you do decide to buy a CRT, do yourself a favor and get one off craig's list, probably for free. It's hard to get rid of CRTs. They're heavy and bulky. I would throw mine out except I can't throw away things that work. In fact, you want mine?

[[FfFC]_-(MAD)-_]

They never saw a real CRT in action. Trinitron is the word ^^

[Fixxer.Linux.T32]

They all right, LCD doesn't use refresh rate as CRT had done.
There is no refresh rate for LCD, it's meaningless :

The CRT (Cathodic Ray Tube) is a canon that throws ions through the right-top of screen to the bottom-left of the screen.
Because only one ion can be thrown at a time, the canon has to scan the first line of pixels, then the second line, the third line... up to the 1280th line and come back to the begining of the screen.
However, because there is no ion to lit up that first point of the first line, he could have had time to lit off. And so your screen flickers. The only way to avoid flickering is that the scan hits fast enough the first point. This what is called "refresh rate", which in hertz, roughly "FPS" if you prefer.
Knowing that, the more you increase the CRT resolution, the more there is lines to scan for the ion-canon, the more you need a high refresh rate to avoid flickering.
The fact is that ion-canon must lit again and again pixels that only tends to lit off.

The LCD is completely different. You have a light source behind cristal display. This light source is always on. The light appears on screen by switching the liquid cristal vertically or horizontally. The liquid-cristal acts as a door if you prefer.
Close the door, you get a black pixel. Open it, you get a white pixel.
And this door can be stayed open or closed without the need of being refreshed as the liquid will stay in it's position as long as it doesn't any other order to change his state.
The refresh rate is therefore here only for compatiblity reasons with the VGA D-SUB, so you can plug your LCD on plug that was made for refreshing a CRT.

Well, this doesn't explain why you get an headache when looking more than one hour, probably simply because the contrast or the luminosity of the screen was set far too high.
Many LCD have too high luminosity, which must often be set at only 10% of the total capacity of the screen to get a normal display.

Why is it too much luminous ? Because LCD manufacturers want to sell LCD that have the biggest "contrast ratio" possible (3000:1 for Samsung for example).
The contrast is a ratio between a white dot and a black dot.
A very luminous white dot is for example 300 cd (cd is the unit for measuring light intensity). A total black dot would be 0 cd. However, this is quite impossible to have 0 cd dot on a LCD because even if the door is closed, there is always some light that can pass through. So, rather trying making better closing door, the contrast ratio can be obtained by simply increasing the value of white dot.
A good black dot is above 0.2. But it's expensive to make a screen having such a value for black. So, our screen will be able of only 0.4.
This means that for a white dot of 300, the contrast ratio will be (300/0.4 = 750, so 750:1. This means that the white dot is 750 times more luminous than black dot). But this doesn't means that : the black dot is really black. And this doesn't means that the white dot is a good white dot as this dot is probably too much luminous.
Well, now, you want a screen with a contrast ratio of 3000:1 ? Simply, push the backlight of the screen up to ... 1200. With a white dot set at 1200 cd, you can achieve a 3000:1 ratio (1200 / 0.4 = 3000).
But 1200 cd is eye-killer.
You better get 3000:1 with white at 500 and black at 0,14. The white will be white enough and you'll get nice dark dots.
However, in reality, the 3000:1 ratio is never achieved. It's rather 1000:1, which is already a very good contrast ratio and know that 500 cd for white dot is far too much. 250 - 300 is a reasonable value for avoiding headaches.

Hope this is more clear.

[Mr Songwriter]

When it comes to monitors, different people seem to notice different things I supposed. If I could find an LCD monitor that looked as good as my CRT I would buy it, but the contrast ratio/colour accuracy just isn't there yet, IMO. As far as eye strain goes, you can get something called a screen filter that will cut down the glare (it's a sheet of polarised glass that hangs in front of the screen)

[Arnout]

Viewsonic P227f - 150Hz at 1024x768. You'll never want to go back.

[[FfFC]_-(MAD)-_]

TFT's have some other disadvantage. Especially on some larger objects with the same color (like dekstop background with one color only) you will notice pixel-wandering. Its a slight, flimmering, likesand falling down. Happens most on brighter, mixed colors. nexct disadvantage: pixel errors, and bad contrast. Even if they claim: 3000x1, its nothing to talk about.

[bclagge]

Fixxer.Linux.T32: Thank you for your very informative post. I feel I'll be better prepared whenever I next need a new monitor, especially about the contrast ratio.

Arnout: 1024x768 is just not enough detail! It's the new 640x480. I'm not buying another monitor until I can afford one that reaches at least 1680x1050.

[sekazi]

If a LCD says it is 3000:1 you can bet it is DC only. The real contrast ratio is probably either 800:1 or 1000:1.

I have a SyncMaster 906BW which is 2000:1 DC but it really is 1000:1.

Same goes with response time. Many monitors will claim to be 2ms but that is only G2G so really the response time is maybe 5ms.

[Arnout]

That brings in another buying factor - do you want it to just look nice, or do you want it to play smooth as well?

My screen can run 2048x1536 max. It's insanely crisp and you can see more details clearly, but it plays for **** because of the low refresh rate (and obvious FPS limitation that you would have regardless of which kind of monitor you use).

[Arnout]

By the way, I have to add to that - when you play UT a bit more seriously, details of the game become redundant. It's more like pointless decoration. At the speeds of games like UT it shouldn't really matter how pretty it looks anyway (in terms of texture resolution and anisotropy), because you don't have time to enjoy the scenery, and that's not why you're there in the first place. So it's a balancing act. Do you want to just murder people, do you want to look at some technical feats and the art of the game, or do you want a little bit of both? I think in my case I get the best of both worlds, at least to satifsy my needs. I don't need uber high texture and screen resolution and I'm willing to sacrifice some of that for better performance. It still looks amazing because texture sharpness is not even half of what I consider the beauty of the game.

[Leak]

The pixels on modern LCD's actually run at something like 10KHz.

Uh, no. The liquid crystal part of the displays actually takes several milliseconds to change from one extreme to the other, which is one of the causes of ghosting.

The display tech where every pixel gets altered several thousand times a second is called DLP, and that's used in projectors - but in that case it's piezoelectric micro-mirrors, not some substrate between glass panes...

np: The One AM Radio - What You Gave Away (Collected Remixes)

[HellsPuppet]

If you do buy an LCD test your machine out before you but it and see if it will handle the native resolution comfortably. So, if you are going to buy a 22" LCD with 1680x1050 resolution try turning UT3 to that resolution and see if your frame rate is decent. If it is not then you are going to need to upgrade your video card, too.

Also, someone said that the delay is only a problem if there is ghosting. That's wrong. I agree ghosting is a problem but the delay is too - even without ghosting. The delay will have a very similar effect on your play as the ping effects it. Can you notice the difference between your ping of 80 and ping of 100? I can.

That difference will be very similar to what you will introduce with a LCD monitor. It is small - but you may notice it - and more so with some monitors.

All that said I'd recommend the Samsung 226BW for gaming. Colors aren't perfect but the response time is.

[sekazi]

Actually you can use you native resolution in ut3 and still get the same performance if you were using half of that.

I am using 1440x900 but with screen percentage down to 50% it is like I am playing at 720x450. I could take it up a little more but I will wait for my new PC.

[UT3sysop]

GUYS i dont care about fps . i care about my eyes that start to hurt if im on an lcd monitor 1 hour \crt monitor on 85 refrash rate..


so what lcd mobitor should i buy to get performers that similer to the crt 100 refrah rate?

OK I run a BFG Nvidia Geforce 8800 768 OC Video Card Via DVI-HDMI to my 47" Vizio HDTV which is an LCD device. Its freaking awesome!!!! I run it at 1920X1080p @ 60 hurts! 60hz is the most you can have on most LCD monitors.

Cya