And so I got me a 17" LCD TFT.... [Archive]

Mochan

07-29-2005, 03:24 AM

Whoopee!

But.... a few things.

First off, this thing is HECKA BRIGHT. I'm very very happy that glare is all but gone and I'm getting less radiation blah blah on my face but but this thing is so bright, it hurts my eyes almost as much just looking at it normally! I've lowered the b&c settings as low as they'll go and my eyes still hurt looking at the white.

As for picture quality, I expected as much but I have to say that CRT tubes still give better picture quality. It's not bad but dark patches of the screen just have this "glow" about them, must be due to the backlight. Black is simply not "black" it's "black with a dull glow about it." This is the same phenomenon I noticed at work though so it's not like I wasn't expecting it, but I was thinking maybe the current gen LCDs had fixed this particular issue. I don't care what people say about LCDs having better colors and picture quality contrast brightness blah blah. CRTs still have the best picture quality, period.

Well now I'm stuck on 1280x1024, coolness. Things are looking a lot smaller than I'm used to though, so I maybe I'll be surfing with enlarged font for a while.

But there is no "ghosting" or any of that stuff, I fired up SWAT 4 to test and no siree, ghosting is not an issue! It's a 14ms monitor so no surprise there.

The screen is also quite a bit bigger than my 17" CRT! Gotta love that. It's almost a full inch bigger than my old 17" monitor despite both of them being "17 Inch."

And I did I say I love the lack of glare!? Now I can game with the damn curtains open without regrets. The ramifications are enormous; I work at a call center so I'm on the night shift, so my gaming is done early morning to noon. This made me very unproductive as a gamer since playing FPS at this time was a pain due to the glare. But now it seems this will no longer be an issue! And since the curtains can be left open, I'll get more air circulation in the room and it'll be a lot cooler and healthier!

And as a minor note, it's got DVI interface so I can finally make use of that DVI plug that's been on my last three video cards. And once I get an XBox 360 or PS3, I can probably hook it up to this and use it for both PC and console gaming. Sweet.

Anyway in summary it's not a perfect solution, but still a bit of a trade off.

On the plus side:
Less electricity consumption
Less heat
Bigger screen
Smaller size!
Less radiation
NO GLARE!!!!
Bragging rights
DVI

And the cons:
Expensive! More than twice as expensive
Too freaking bright
Slightly lesser image quality
Native res is 1280x1024, thus forcing me to game at 1280x1024

Suicides-by-Steve

07-29-2005, 11:12 AM

Heh... How do you make "black" out of white light? You're right, you can't. You can only dim it. That's one caveat of the LCD monitor in my opinion. You tend to get shades of grey rather than true black. However if your room is as bright as you say it is... then it should suffice. I would fine tune your brightness, and turn the Contrast way down. Contrast after all is the difference between white and black, ergo, turning down the contrast to 0 will be lowering the true "brightness" of the LCD backlight bulbs. Brightness controls the colour intensities.

The image is much sharper in my opinion, and less blurry than a CRT. I believe the only difference in quality is that CRT's can create true "real-life" colours, while the LCD, again because of using pixelated lights to project the image, tend to be a little wishy-washy. However, clarity-wise, my LCD rules the day.

Watch out for those DVI plugs... I hear they tend to cause users a lot of problems if you're unlucky.

E.T.

07-29-2005, 05:18 PM

Mochan

07-29-2005, 09:00 PM

In terms of sharpness, I have to agree, the LCD is better. The sharpness also actually turns out to be a a disadvantage in games, because it dampens the effect of antialiasing and makes the game look more aliased than it was on CRT.

Further, due to the contrast and brightness issues, for areas in a game which are bathed in shadow, I could always make out the minute details in them on a CRT tube as long as it was dark in the room (during the day it was hopeless). With this LCD, the dark spots become a splotch of black, I can't make out details. If I were a mercenary in Splintercell I'd probably have trouble finding the spy ops!

I also lowered the contrast as low as it would go, still no luck so I had to lower GPU video settings to make the image acceptable, but the dark parts of a screen still remain a messy splotch of black.

That, along with the notion that color quality is more noticeable in terms of overall image quality IMO, so CRT wins out in image quality.

But the glare! Look ma, I can play during the daytime now! It more than makes up for it. Now I can play those dark shadowy games day or night, doesn't matter!

Now what issues do the DVI plugs have? If they are major issues, I'll switch to the VGA plug.

To ET, I got CMV brand, got it for about $220US. Some little known Chinese brand. Well I've never had brand issues wiht monitors, though I have noticed that more expensive brands usually have an edge in image quality somehow. No dead pixel warranty, over here it's "if you unsatisfied with the product in anyway, return it in two days and you can credit it for anything you want." I tested the pixels though with black and white screens as SbS suggested, and I'm clear.

The Samsung that you mentioned is great, I would jump on that deal too but no such luck over here. I heard Samsung has poor dead pixel warranty support but since Samsung is known for quality monitors, this shouldn't be an issue. Regardless, the 17" is still such a sweet spot for the deal.... 15" go for about $200 or slight less around here and the 17" was just $20 more expensive. Can't go wrong with a deal like that. The cheapest 19" here is still going for about $400, almost twice the price for that extra two inches.

E.T.

07-30-2005, 07:14 AM

Thanks for the first hand experience on LCDs. This & other threads discussed earlier this week here have provided me w/much needed info on the subject.

What do you think about wall mounting a 19" or 20" LCD ? Would a sitting distance of say 24" from monitor be enjoyable?[ Im a minimalist & would love to wall mount to clean up desktop]

Mochan

07-30-2005, 09:58 AM

As for a 2 foot viewing distance, just keep in mind that your fonts are gonna be puny now that you're at 1280x1024. I know your monitor will be a good 2 inches bigger htan mine but just keep in mind that you won't want to squint at your browser. Of course this can be remedied by increasing font size (which is what I did). Other than that, I'd say a wall mount sounds good, and I myself am at more or less 2 feet away from the monitor.

Mochan

07-30-2005, 10:00 AM

I just cleaned up my room this afternoon, I took out my old setup which had an extra table behind my desk for the CRT. Now the LCD is on top of the desk and my room looks a lot bigger. I also took the liberty to clean up my cabling and sweep the dust off the floor. It feels great to clean up your room every now and then.

Now that I've spent a day with this LCD, the ugly head of LCD rears its head!

I think I may have fiddled with my Rad linker a little too much; AA and AF keeps messing up in the games now and I can only enable them if I start it up in the global GPU settings rather than the app-specfic rad link. That rather sucks, I guess I have to reinstall Rad Linker at this rate. Worse, Hieremias' fears were founded: the games which don't support 1280x1024 are giving me a headache! Pixel interpolation really looks ugly, and worse AA and AF simply do not work in these modes. AVP2, which I used to run no stops at the highest settings and looked really clean, now looks really ugly. Made me lose heart playing it.

I had to do a bunch of tweaks to get Battlefield 2 and Morrowind to run at 1280x1024. I hope I can get AVP2 to run on that as well. I'm giving up on Kult and Sacred for now and decided to go back to Morrowind for my RPG fix. Boiling Point will sit in a corner until I get an upgrade.

Well all things considered I love the monitor, daylight gaming is just sweet for someone who works at night! LOL.

E.T.

07-30-2005, 12:00 PM

"...fears were founded: the games which don't support 1280x1024 are giving me a headache! Pixel interpolation really looks ugly..."

YIKES! I dont like hearing this, I never gave any thought to games that dont run on 1280x1024......time for some researching.....

Mochan

07-31-2005, 06:56 AM

Well if it's scary, just get a 15" LCD, which has a native res of 1024x768. Of course, your screen's a lot smaller....

Overall I wouldn't worry about it too much. I just became a bit of a graphics whore ever since I got my Radeon 9800 (I think the old boys here don't remember me being this demanding of FPS) but there should be ways to get most if the games you play to run at 1280x1024. And even if not, I'm greatly exaggerating how ugly they look. If they can't run at 1280x1024 in the first place, likely they don't look good enough that you'd notice they look ugly.

Some games are exceptions, like AVP2 which looked really sweet at max settings but which became a bit of a downer when the AA and AF disappeared. Well hey, worse comes to worst just leave your CRT tube plugged in the VGA out of your vid card (and have two displays) and change between them as necessary (though that sort of kills the "Free the desktop" idea).

E.T.

07-31-2005, 07:43 AM

Ok Mocahn, that sounds a bit better, lol.

QUESTION: While shopping for Samsung 19" LCD, I compared 913V & 930B. The 930B has DIGITAL capacity & quicker response time [8ms vs 12ms of 913v].
Would you spend the extra $30 for 930B? Im thinking the digital option may be good in the future.

Gadfly2317

07-31-2005, 11:18 AM

So what brand/source did you end up with? Dead/stuck pixel warranty?

While 17" LCDs are a bargain, 19" units have also fallen considerably in price. The SAMSUNG 913V-Black 19" 12ms LCD for $300 is my pick, I'll take a gamble with online ordering this unit next week. I hear production qualities for most major LCDs have minmized chances for dead pixels....yet Neweggs return policy is " Replacement or Refund for 8 or more dead pixels only".

I got a 19" Acer LCD last week (I moved to a smaller place, got a smaller desk and didn't have room for my old monitor and its giant footprint.) It was only $256 at buy.com with a special on free shipping. Didn't have some of the features I might have liked, like DVI, and it is likely not the fastest monitor for high-end gaming (16ms), but the view-space is incredible and I just couldn't go back to 17" after having had a 19" monitor for the last couple years. No stuck pixels, great images and contrast, and does black reasonably well. For the price, and since I don't game much on PC except for low-end stuff like Zuma and Roller Coaster tycoon, I'm totally happy with this monitor.

I do plan on doing a lot more with photography and photo editing, and also for that, 19" vs 17". . .it makes a lot of difference.
----------------------------------------------------
Amazon.com Product Description
Acer's AL1912 19-inch LCD monitor offers good value and strong performance at a low price. Featuring 1,280 x 1,024 native resolution, fine 0.294 mm dot pitch, 250 nits of brightness, and a crisp 500:1 contrast ratio, the AL1912 delivers rich images in nearly any setting. And, with a 16 ms response time, the AL1912 is fast enough for gaming and watching your favorite DVDs.
The AL1912 features wide 140-degree viewing from any direction plus optional wall mounting for versatile placement. Additional features include a full range of front panel controls and Kensington lock compatibility. The AL1912 is backed by a three-year warranty on parts and labor.

Mochan

07-31-2005, 05:05 PM

I'd spend the extra $30 easy. The DVI in particular will prove useful when more hardware comes out to take advantage of it, like say, the XBox 360 or the PS3. I'm expecting these two consoles to have DVI out capabilities, and in case you don't have an HD TV then at least your monitor has it.

SbS was wary of DVI but I haven't seen any reason to so far. The 8ms time is also good, my LCD has this problem with fonts looking funny when I move the browser around, I think it may be a response time issue. If not, well, better to have 8ms than not. Although I admit my 14ms monitor already shows no ghosting issues or any of that. I'm perfectly happy with its performance.

I have to wonder though, if the next gen consoles will support 1280x1024 resolution. I get the feeling they won't, and we end up with "ugly" looking games if we try it. Hehehe.

Mochan

08-02-2005, 03:47 AM

Hmm, it seems to me I may not have made such a smart purchase. I took a look at the LCDs at work and I just realized the black for them is a lot blacker than the black on my LCD. I think this means that my backlight really is too bright. Well it's too late for me to have my LCD replaced now so I guess I'll just look forward to"brighter days" with my LCD lol. I wonder if the backlight will dim a bit after some burn in?

E.T.

08-02-2005, 07:32 AM

The nature of the beast gives cause to pause..... LCDs have difficulty producing black and generally have lower contrast than CRTs, making them less than suitable for use in dimly lit/dark environments [& I prefer lower light levels for gaming].

Im focused also on the effect the native res of LCDs have on font display. I know there are programs to enhance/improve LCD font appearance [i.e MS's old ClearType], but am wondering about real world results. Mochan: did you find any font programs to increase size yet?

Im out to do some hands-on shopping in the next hour for LCDs, maybe some real world answers will be forth comming.

Mochan

08-02-2005, 09:48 AM

Font size? You can increase that in Windows itself. Just set the fonts to Extra Large or something in Appearance settings I think. And in a pinch you can just press Ctrl-+ in your browser to increase font size.

Anyway I am using Cleartype right now, the fonts look amazing compared to before. It's as if everything is a PDF! And of a really good bookprint, too! I've gotten used to the smaller size of everything already (I compensated with font adjustment if it was too small), and in your case I really don't see it as a problem if you're going to go with a 19".

My only real issue with the LCD is the brightness. It's true, this thing is more effective in a brightly lit environment. I got too used to low-level environments for gaming, too but actually that's bad for your eyes. But it was necessary with CRTs due to the glare. Now that I'm using an LCD, glare is no longer an issue so I may want to change my dark gaming habits. And again, as I mentioned the anti-glare was a selling point since I work graveyard, meaning when I get home to game it's a bright morning. So this monitor really does fit my lifestyle better, so I have no regrets.

E.T.

08-02-2005, 05:18 PM

I made my decision on an LCD today. I decided on the 930B SyncMaster/Samsung with 8ms response time & DVI cabability.[$400 - $70 rebate from BestBuy brick 'n mortar]. I couldnt wait to demo my current game [Morrowind]....
WOW! The display seems huge! I had to scoot back a bit & slide the monitor forward a tad to take it all in. I'll load UT or RTCW to test the response time, but hear there should be near ZERO ghosting w/8ms.

Correct you are re: font size on a 19" Mocahan, its no problem. Agree also that these LCD are TOO bright in home [unlike in well lit stores]. I had to turn brightness waaaaaay down to get color saturation back. I havnt figured out all the controls yet [not as simple as CRT was]. I do like the software controls over push buttons on LCD though.

Thanks for help guys. [now lets see, whats next....perhaps an internal hardware upgrade?]

Mochan

08-03-2005, 04:29 AM

LOL, tis the year to splurge on your computer! I'll be doing a complete overhaul of my PC soon enough, sometime within the next few months. Glad the LCD is working out. I sincerely doubt you'll have any ghosting problems, I didn't and mine is only a 14ms model. The only real issue you will have is the brightness, I will assume.

moya

08-03-2005, 06:19 AM

You and Renz seem to be on a different PC upgrade schedule to me and Aku. I think Aku and I coincidentally upgraded to entirely new PCs at around the same time (mine was coming up on two years ago this month--confirm/deny Dobian), and I'm not gonna be able to afford to do that again for at least another year or so: doubt I'll be playing Oblivion when it comes out! But I *am* going to upgrade my graphics card to a 6600GT just as soon as I get my hands on the cash. Should be next month or so I reckon. I believe Aku has also just upgraded his vid card too...

Mochan

08-03-2005, 06:36 AM

Looks like it. It really depends on your current hardware. Definitely Renz and I are both feeling the age of our hardware at more or less the same time.

What's your CPU though moya? We're doing a lot of speculation on the Bethesda boards on the actual spec requirement for Oblivion. The devs were developing the game on an Athlon XP 2600+ with a Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB video card and 1GB RAM. I reckon the game will be playable on that kind of PC at the very least. Not on the best settings but you should get 30fps with med-high settings on that kind of setup.

I would expect optimal performance to be on a 3200+ class system with a 256MB SM3.0 GPU like a 6800GT though.

E.T.

08-03-2005, 06:44 AM

You and Renz seem to be on a different PC upgrade schedule to me and Aku. I think Aku and I coincidentally upgraded to entirely new PCs at around the same time

I recall Aku & I also replaced entire systems aprox same time two years ago, with very similar system specs.

Im on the fence for entire system replacement this time around, what do you think:
P4 2.66
512 RDRam [pc 800]
128bit G4 Ti 4200
80gig Ultra ATA
16x/48x DVD r
SB Audigy [forget model]

Im thinking upgrading GPU, ram & addition of DVDRW drive.......would this carry me another year or two?

Mochan

08-03-2005, 08:22 AM

I think your CPU is pushing it. Not familiar with what upgrade path you have for your board, but if you can get a 3Ghz Pentium on it then you should still be good for another year at least if you can get a good GPU and double your RAM. If you can OC your CPU I think that would help extend it as well so you don't have to replace the entire rig yet.

And_so_it_goes

08-03-2005, 08:58 AM

Moya, the 6600 gt is a great bang for the buck upgrade. i just got an evga one from newegg for $144 after rebate. finaly feels like my comp has no more bottlenecks. graphics are superb on games that were almost unplayable before, and I haven't overclocked anything.

Mochan

08-03-2005, 09:32 AM

Man, I long for the day when my PC feels like it has no more bottlenecks. Well, it doesn't for games that are like 2002 or older. ;0 Though Morrowind still feels like a bleeding edge game with its performance!

moya

08-04-2005, 12:35 AM

My current specs are:

Athlon XP 2500+
512MB DDR RAM
Asus A7VN8X N-Force 2 Motherboard
Geforce Ti 4800 SE
Soundblaster Audigy 2
120 GB Hard Drive (can't recall make)

As you can see, I definitely need to upgrade my graphics card and RAM before I'm even in with a hope of playing something as bleeding edge as Oblivion. Otherwise I think things are okay for now, although the next bottleneck will obviously be the CPU. Not sure how far I can upgrade that on this motherboard, but I reckon I'd need an Athlon 3000+ or over for it to make any really noticeable improvements.

Mochan

08-04-2005, 05:35 AM

Your CPU will definitely become the bottleneck, your mobo is better than mine and will bring you all the way up to an XP 3200+ but frankly there is little reason to get that over an XP2800+. And actually there is little reason to get a 2800+ over your 2500+; they share the same core and you can pretty much reach around the performance of a 2800+ by tweaking your 2500+. The 2500 is one of the better chips to get on the Barton core, best they say is the 2800 but the 2500 will be able to reach similar heights of performance.

There is little point in upgrading your CPU, it's time to ditch the board and move on to Socket 939.That's what I'm doing, there is very little point in upgrading my 2200+ to a 3200+ or 2800+ and even less for you to do so. I at least can reap the rewards of moving to a Barton core and getting twice the L2 Cache, but you won't see much improvement moving up along that chipset.

Further, even the 3200+ isn't really capable of realizing the 400Mhz FSB on the NF2, and in the 3200 class you're better off with a 3.2Ghz Pentium. Intel beat out AMD as AMD reached the end of their processor architecture life with the new Prescotts. Of course the real deal is to get an Athlon 64 3200 class processor, which in turn kicked the crud out of the Intels.

moya

08-05-2005, 12:49 AM

Yeah, I had worried that was probably the way things were looking.

Trouble is, if I move up to a better mobo (not that I can even afford that right now, so it's all hypothetical), then I'd be stupid not to get a PCI-E graphics card (ker-ching $$$). And if I got that, then I should really get a great processor so as not to bottleneck it (more ker-ching $$$). And 1 gig of good quality fast RAM... And on and on.

Anyway, as I say at the moment all I can actually afford is a new graphics card. So that'll have to suffice for the time being. It's good to know that the 6600GT is good bang for buck cos that's really what I need!

Mochan

08-05-2005, 02:31 AM

The 6600GT looks like your best option then. Believe me, it will give you a huge boost in your performance over that 4800.

Also, at this point you might want to OC your 2500 if you haven't done so already. That chip is a good overclocker (usually chips that are at the start of the next core model OC well) and you can reach 3000+ speeds on it. Your board is a good overclocker so as long as your XP is unlocked you should be set to go.

OC your chip and then add the 6600GT, and you'll feel like you bought a totally new machine.

Myself, earlier last year my PC was a 2200XP with an Asus A7V8X (KT400), and a Ti4200 with 512MB RAM. I was chugging along with games but then I upgraded the GPU to a 9800 Pro, doubled the RAM, and OC'd the 2200XP to 2800+ speeds and suddenly I'm coasting along in Doom 3, Far Cry, Half Life, and doing good in Battlefield 2. Oh and UT2K4 runs flawlessly at the best settings. I can't run them perfectly mind you but I run them well enough.

Still I predict that both our PCs will not have much life left by next year (or even by the end of this year). Which is why I'm already planning my next PC.

moya

08-05-2005, 07:36 AM

Yeah, you're right there. However, I'm not so sure about OCing since I think I'll need better cooling.

What I tend to do, once my PC is reaching the end of its life-cycle, is go out and buy some of the better games released during my PC's lifespan. Since I don't buy that many games (1 a month usually), there's usually a good dozen or more good games that I've missed in that time. Also, by that time they're cheaper and still run fine. By the end of the year I'll probably be in that sort of mode again...

Mochan

08-05-2005, 08:14 AM

Cooling Schmooling. Just OC it as far as it goes, if you want to push it further then buy better cooling. It's not like cooling is expensive or hard to find anyway; you can buy average coolers off the shelf in even crappy computer shops and they're all better than stock cooling. But from my experience, if you're not going to do hardcore overclocks those new coolers you'll be using won't let you push the CPU much more than stock cooling does.

It's cooler in the UK on average than down here in the tropics, right? You should be fine even without good cooling. Bane OC'd his Athlon by about 400Mhz and he's on stock cooling.

I too appreciate going back to good games I missed. I just went back to Vietcong, for instance. Far Cry and Doom 3 were also flashback games for me (though only by about half a year or so).

Sometimes though there are those games that you just WANT to play as soon as they come out. Although I don't get in that mood too often, right now I'm anticipating some games like I haven't in the past three years. When I get in this mood I'm usually off to a spending spree.

And_so_it_goes

08-05-2005, 08:38 AM

yeah, i tend to do the same thing with slightly older games. in fact, i still have yet to play far cry.
interesting, i also upgraded to the 6600 gt from the ti 4 4800. it does make a huge difference. now, my pc with an amd 64 3000+ and a gig of ram actually feels like it is running like it should. i've also heard that pci express isn't really all that much faster than agp 8x. besides, the 6600 gt is built on a pci e core and then converted and both variants of the card run at basically the same speeds.

Mochan

08-05-2005, 09:01 AM

PCI-E has a lot more bandwidth than AGP but video cards don't really take advantage of it that much, so the difference isn't all that great. I got a huge diff from the Ti4200 to the Radeon 9800 Pro, back on the Ti4200 I was still having trouble running things smoothly on 1024x768 at high settings but on the Radeon I'm running even current games at 1280x1024 at 4x AA with no performance loss! Not all games though, and some games are still a bit slow or lagging since my CPU is bottlenecking them (like Doom 3, Thief 3 or Far Cry).