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LCD Round-up
TheKillerBee writes "The TechReport has posted a nice comparison of several different LCDs. A plethora of benches are present to help you decide how to spend that Christmas bonus check!" The screen update times still aren't fast enough for gamers, but they still are ever so delicious.
The display control panel may say 60 Hz, but that's not how fast the LCD updates. LCD updates are dependent on how fast the diode can turn on and off, usually called response time. It's generally in the range of 30 or 40 ms (about 25-30 Hz), though they are getting faster - I think I've seen some as fast as 20 ms (50 Hz) recently.
If you look a the ones they're comparing, they are all 15" and 17" displays. Apple has one 17".
They are comparing these displays for the "PC" market - in order to use an Apple display on a non-Apple computer you have to get an expensive adaptor in addition to the already over-priced display. The ones reviewed are relatively inexpensive displays.
Cut them some slack, journalists have the right to review whatever the hell they damn well please - if you want a review comparing the Apple displays to other people's displays, do it yourself.
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Sexy LCD 17" Monitors - Part I
Comparison of 17" LCDs: The Heavyweights Enter The Ring - Part II
Cheers
Personally, I would only consider the Dell 1702FP (a beaufiful 17" DVI panel) or the Dell 2000FP (a huge 20" panel that can be had for $1300 if you apply some Dell discounts). Samsungs are OK but I don't like their panels' piss poor black reproduction. If you want your computer to look hip go get a Samsung, but if you want a screen that delivers beautiful images then Dell is the better vendor even if their case styling isn't as nice.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Moderators: Check this guy's history for yourself, a known troll. He throws as many buzzwords together as possible. Look into it yourself, there is no USBII.v bus in development. And "full-duplex" communication has nothing to do with LCD screens.
This is not informative, this is pure BS.
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I have to say that my viewsonic va800 (17.4") is quite the awesome peice of eq. I'm a software eng by day and a gamer by night... As for the programming side of the coin, any monitor will do, bug screen space is king... that paired with crisp fonts makes the code flow. As for the game side, the lcd I have is very good for games. I have owned 2 other LCD flat panels that were just plain too slow (disposal of pixels) to play games on, but the va800 has it down. Scrolling, full motion, no bluring in the least. Don't get me wrong, not all viewsonics are great for games.. their 15 inch one was just terrible, and a friend of mine claims his 19 inch black viewsonic was too slow for him. Something about the va800 made me keep it for gaming where the others went back to the store. Just my 2 cents for the gamers.
;)
Oh and some of the other PRO's of LCD that make it totally worth it if you have the extra cash and have found one with a quick pixel disposal rate that you are comfortable playing games on:
1) one touch auto sync / setup. Match the res and contrast with a click of a button. No black boxes around your viewing area. BTW 17.4 means 17.4 VIEWABLE.. unlike in the CRT world.
2) no more areas of the screen that you just have to deal with distortion on... Cant count how many monitors are just slighly curved or crooked in the corners or discolored in a fashion that even a degaus coil won't fix.
3) LIGHT and small. This one is under rated. I had a 21 inch monitor at work that was soo big, I couldn't get it all the way in the corner section of the cube where the computer should go and still have a keyboard on the desk. What a joke.. I don't need a big set top TV thank you. LCD's pivot, twist.. all that... turn the screen show a friend. Move the screen to a new location, don't break your back.
4) low power consumtion... quit dimming the lights when you power on your RAY GUN.
5) multiple input and or tuners built in. Some of the lcds have multiple inputs (svideo, multiple analogs..), some even have tv and radio turners with PIP built in (I had a samsung that did that.. TITS!). I can have my ultra 60 and my game PC plugged into mine and hit the 'switch input' button and boom.. there's the other machine. And with all that space i saved for having an LCD, I can have 2 keyboard and mice! JOY!
Thats's about it. I like mine overall... it was 1600 bucks back in the day, now it's like 700 retail. I'm very happy with it... the moral is 'try em all' cause loads of them just do plain suck for disposal rates. I made the guy at the computer store play a DVD on all of them before I considered purchasing one
All the lcd panel reviews seem to focus on the same thing, cost. When people review crts they don't go out and find the cheapest monitor they can consider that the standard (That's why you have 'budget' reviews).
I've been using an AG Neovo 17.4" monitor for about eight months and it is absolutely fantastic (IMHO better than the mac 17's). The text is crisp and the color reproduction is oustanding. Yes, it's expensive (~$899US), but if I have to look at something for 10+ hours a day I'm going to spend the extra cash. Besides, how many slashdotters are there that don't seem to have a problem buying $400+ video cards twice a year to make sure they get the extra 200fps out of quake3?
As for gaming, I play UT2003 on it all the time without a single bit of ghosting. One thing from the article that the author should have made manditory was the use of DVI. Why anyone would buy a DVI-only lcd is beyond me. Having both inputs is great for using my laptop (analog output only), but the picture is noticebly better through the DVI connector.
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Look, let me clear up some common misconceptions.
LCDs do not refresh at a certain rate per second like CRTs. In fact, once a pixel is set on an LCD, that pixel remains set to that color until it is changed.
THERE ARE NO UPDATES ON AN LCD. Each pixel is wired, and stays the same color until it's signal changes.
This is why there is noticable blur on an LCD. On a CRT, we would just see the whole screen getting updated at an incredibly low rate and call it insane flicker. But LCDs simply have a certain delay between when you change the pixel's color signal, and when the pixel gets updated. It looks blurry because it's not uniform rederawing of the screen like a CRT refresh.
There are three problems presently with LCDs that manufacturers will have to address before they overthrow CRTs:
*Even highend LCDs do not have the response time to even deliver 60fps video without blurring, and by far games are the worst thing to view on an LCD with a slow response time. As you look around and maneuver, the whole scene is blurred. The best LCDs on the market right now have around 25-30ms response rate, which is barely above 30fps. I believe we had this debate years ago ( 60 vs 30 ), and if the horsepower in today's video cards is anything to judge by, I'd say 60fps minimum won. I know personally I can't live with anything less. Sure, not everyone needs this kind of response time, but making it avaliable for the performance player is still a necessity.
*Most lowend mass-market LCDs have even worse response times (~45ms), and end up looking terrible when you view a video, or even when you're just scrolling through Explorer. People have come to expect a certain responsiveness and capability after paying for a multigigahertz toaster.
*Very few LCD screens have addressed the fact that their contrast ratios are terrible, even compared to cheap CRTs. I know a lot of you are proponents of LCDs because of their lack of flicker, but the truth is low contrast can cause just as much strain on the eyes, especially when reading.
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