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Does Your LCD Play Catch-Up To Your Mouse?
Dishes of Ryan writes "I fell in love with the idea of an LCD monitor, so I ended up buying a nice, shiny Dell 2001FP. However, nowhere, and I mean *nowhere* did I read about LCDs having an input lag on them. For instance, if I scoot the mouse across the screen, there is a noticeable delay between when I move the mouse and when the cursor moves. To prove it to people, made a video showing exactly what I mean. You can almost forget being king of the hill on twitch FPS games like Unreal Tournament. Are there any other Slashdotters out there that are as annoyed as I am? What did you do?"
I'd recommend popping in Knoppix and see how it works. It will probably pick an open driver made for your graphics card family. You say this happens with the mouse, what about typing?
Never, under any circumstances base buying decisions off of reviews from Newegg. Half the reviewers state they're first time system builders with no real idea of what there doing. The other half try to sound like they know what they're talking about, but obviously have no clue, or are just flat out lieing. Then you have the problem that newegg removes the reviews that are less than pleasant. Your best bet is to read a site that focuses on reviews and sells no hardware. Maybe Slashdot could start a hardware review section and do some unbiased hard journalism!
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
I'll join the chorus of people saying "no". Either it's a problem somewhere else in your system, or a really crappy LCD.
:-), which has made a complete convert out of me.
... "we're stylish and we're not going to let you forget it!").
I used to not like LCD monitors, especially the kind that use the analogue video out, but at work I got an NEC MultiSync LCD 1760v (17", 1280x1024 -- I know, yesterday's news, but a great step up for me
Not only does it have far better contrast and brightness than other LCD monitors I've used, but it has no ghosting of any kind, and tracks the analogue video output of my computer flawlessly. Even the industrial design is great, much better than typical "we've got a really expensive CAD system and no design sense whatsoever" designs, and I'd say on par with Apple's wonderful creations (without Apple's tendency to be a bit poncy
The display gamma seems to be much different than my old CRT, so it did take a bunch of adjustment to get pictures looking the same.
Anyway, 3 thumbs up for the 1760V from me (this model is a few years old I think).
We live, as we dream -- alone....
I'll bet the monitor in question is connected with a VGA plug. I've never seen that happen with a laptop display, and your Cinema display uses DVI. It's also a Dell, so what can you expect? "Dude, you're going to Hell!"
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
the original quote is from John Glenn, when he was asked what it felt like sitting atop the rocket, ready to launch:
"I felt about as good as anybody would, sitting in a capsule on top of a rocket that were both built by the lowest bidder." (Senator John Glenn, Colonel USMC, Retired)
Rockhound is applying the sincerest form of flattery.
If you forget about the future, the future will forget about you.
Waffle Iron,
THANK YOU! Excellent post my friend. I just created a small bmp in paint with different sized black squares on a white background, then tiled it for my background -> Autoadjusted my LCD.
It looks fucking fantastic, text is smooth and clear, unbelievable. Thanks a million man, most useful post I've read on slashdot. Note, and this isn't even at my LCD's native resolution (1280x1024, whereas I am running 1280x960). Amazing, didn't think this was possible.
That's my guess. A lot of things happen during the vertical blanking interval or on some other similar periodic interrupt. In most OSes, this includes screen updates and mouse pointer redraws. This could be anything from a buggy driver to an IRQ conflict, or possibly even a bad trace on the motherboard (though the latter isn't anywhere near as likely).
If an OS reinstall doesn't solve the problem, there's probably something weird going on in the BIOS settings and/or the motherboard itself. Pull the BIOS battery for an hour. Try again. If that doesn't work... is your clock running slowly, too? If so, buy a new computer. If not... buy a new computer. EIther way. :-p
<rant>And speaking of IRQ conflicts... why hasn't any motherboard manufacturer broken with tradition and actually added enough distinctly addressable interrupt lines? I mean, the Mac has supported 64+ interrupts on its interrupt controller since 1995. Does it really take a decade of engineering to figure out how to cascade two interrupt controllers and add a driver to support it? Sheesh!</rant>
Sigh. Another victim of a 2004 computer crammed into a 1981 architecture....
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
sub-pixel sampling on fonts does not work very good at all unless you use a DVI connector for your LCD.
Funny, the sub-pixel antialiasing looks virtually identical on my laptop, my pair of aging 15 inch LCD panels, and every other LCD I've tried. All except for the laptop(s) are analog.
I changed from a VGA to a DVI connector on my LCD panel at work and the difference is astounding.
If you are seeing that much of a difference you might want to learn how to adjust you LCD. So far, every single time I have seen an LCD look bad it has either been poorly auto-adjusted or is running at the wrong resolution.
It helps some if when you hit the auto-adjust button you have an image with nice sharp edges up on the screen. If it is still not quite clear, you may have to make some (probably minor) adjustments to the phase/clock yourself. If you still have issues you might want to change your refresh rate. My old panels "flicker" quite a bit at 60hz, but look fine at 72hz.
BTW, companies now make excellent DVI/USB KVM switches, so there is no execuse to use a VGA connection on a LCD panel anymore.
Cost is probably a good excuse, especially for the 90% of consumers of which you are speaking. It would be better to educate them on proper configuration of their equipment.
THANK YOU. Awesome trick. I put up the images as you described them. These worked for me. I did notice my LCD acting really weird when these images were being displayed. I don't recommend keeping the image on the monitor for any longer than needed. http://www.hackermedia.net/downloads/lcd-cal
Hacker Media
I have used 2 LCD monitors with VGA inputs for the past 3 years and I have never seen lag like that. Something is wrong with his OS/Drivers or maybe some trojan has infected his system(maybe a hidden vnc server is lagging his system :).
IIRC, the infamous "code to explode a monitor" trick involved setting monitors to refresh rates that the monitor could not handle, causing the monitor to burn out or, in extreme cases, explode. It was a small subset of the monitors, but it was one of those things that made it into popular lore. I belive they even referenced it in Cryptonomicon, having a character who supposed had his face mangled by an exploding monitor triggered by a virus of some sort.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Most people are just not aware of it and take it for granted. I cannot count how many time I showed my fellow co-workers how confy they get by pushing the refresh right higher (75Hz is great).
Regarding eyes and such. You will more easily get headaches or eye-aches if you keep a low refresh rate. That will also cause your eyes to get tired faster, and they will have to make more efforts to adjust. Your eye muscles will take much of that effort and probably get tired after a while. After a long while, they won't be able to adjust as they used to.
That is part of the reason why I browse at -4.75 with contact lenses since I am 12...