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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?"
No offense, but you need to get another monitor. I notice no "lag" between my iBook and CRTs, nor do I notice any lag on my new 17" KDS for my desktop. Having developed a few video games and GUIs, I have a fairly well trained eye. I can see the problem in the video, but I see no such problem on my systems.
Conclusion? Dell buys parts from the lowest bidder. Ergo, they are the lowest quality. Therefore, you need a better monitor.
Sorry.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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?
What did you do?
I posted a 800K movie of it on Slashdot so I could suck up all the Internet's available bandwidth and make everyone else's game run at the same fps as mine. =)
It's the buffering in the driver.
Flat Panels *will* ghost and blur, however they do not lag.
What causes this is buffering of execution commands in the drivers, which makes some games at certain resolutions lag really really bad on input.
Change drivers, and it will usually go away.
I've used lots of LCDs, including plenty of DELL LCDs. The LCDs we've used at work were faded, and the colors looked awful after a copule of years. but I've never never seen any kind of lag like this in any kind of monitor.
My guess is that there is something wrong with the video drivers, or the mouse drivers, or some other part of his computer that's causing these problems.
I can't see the vid because the file is apperantly slashdotted.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
rtfa?
the lag is not coming from that.
hell, just read the damn blurb.
here's for the stubborn people:
two monitors, fed from the same computer. other one is some flatty dell and the other one is a crt. now, the movie is about doing something with the mouse that affects both screens, and happens at the same time in the video cards memory, and having observable(with a vid cam..) lag between the two monitors.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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
Since when was /. an online PC troubleshooting forum? Any doofus knows LCD screen don't suffer from "lag" -- why doesn't he call Dell or ask on a newsgroup, not take out an article on the front page of Slashdot???
http://www.vtnetworks.net/CrtLcdComparo.wmv
DoR> Um, my mouse lags on my Dell LCD.
DoR> How's that gonna' help?
You might get even better results if you tried using the video card's outputs.
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I'll have to say BS on this. My suggestion is to borrow a second CRT and hook it up the same way. Most likely the lag will still be there. I have no idea what OS as the video is down. My answer is to upgrade the video drivers and check for some stupid setting being messed up.
I have never seen lag attributable to a USB mouse.
In face, USB mice typically lag LESS than PS/2 mice because they update their position far more often.
The option in games isn't "REDUCE MOUSE LAG", it's "SMOOTH MOUSE", which is specifically designed around the problem of mice with low update rates (namely PS/2 mice, and in some cases REALLY crappy USB mice can have a slower update rate than a PS/2 mouse but it's RARE.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Hey, will even throw in shipping. :)
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
UT2004 specifically has two options:
1: Smooth Mouse
2: Reduce Mouse Lag
The normal usage of USB mice should be fine without lag, but when the computer is using all of its resources, USB doesn't get updated as quickly as it should, thus causing the mouse lag.
PS/2 mice have better access to Windows resources and the mouse position gets updated properly and on time.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
Dude, no human has reflexes like that.
You're either:
a) Not human
b) Jedi
c) Stoned/Drunk
Go become a fighter pilot or something like that.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
For some reason, all of my games ran like crap after picking up the display... Game after game simply ran like a slug after the LCD was added to the mix and I couldn't figure out what the problem was.
I finally noticed that if I took my hand off the mouse, things ran smoother.. After some trial and error I discovered my first generation optical Intellimouse Explorer didn't like the USB hub on the Dell monitor (I plugged it into the 2001FP's USB ports to add some slack on the mouse cable). While the problems were not readily apparent on the 2D apps, they were incredibly apparent in the games.
So after moving the mouse back to the PC's main USB ports, everything improved dramatically. It gave me an excuse to pick up that new fancy Logitech laser deal.
www.lonseidman.com
You can probably do the same thing with Gimp, but it's not immediately obvious to me how to do it.
This was a big problem with passive matrix screens. I've had old-school (black and white) PowerBooks that did this, and my first ThinkPad (365X) did this too.
However, I have *zero* problems with this on any active-matrix screens I've ever worked with. ThinkPad 600E: lovely, crisp screen, no lag, cursor right there where you want it. PowerBook G3: the most awesome LCD I've ever seen this side of a Cinema Display. I even have a cheapy Taiwanese 15" LCD panel, Envision is the brand, and it's splendid. No lag, no lost cursors, nice and crisp.
That sort of thing shouldn't happen with a modern TFT active matrix screen. There is something very wrong with it.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I have owned several Dell displays and have had no problems. I HAVE had lot of problems with "mice" over the years. In fact I had to replace my first generation Intellimouse optical wireless as it just did not work well with my new system. I would put the blame on the mouse, more than the LCD screen. It's amazing that this obviously minor problem has gotten so much attention: I.E. try another mouse before filming yourself and complaining to the entire internet community. Heck, I was having problems all around till I unplugged my bluetooth adapter.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Slashdot as we know it would cease to exist!
Slashdot - where else you can be utterly wrong and get hailed as informative and insightful? Yeah, yeah - I meant besides FOX news.
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.
The following sequence seems to do the trick w/ GIMP 1.2.x:
That should get you a checkerboard pattern on a 1-pixel increment. I haven't seen what this does for an LCD monitor's ability to fine tune an analog signal (since I don't own such a display), but I think it's the pattern you're using. It's the same fill pattern the old monochrome Macs used for their desktops. LOTS of edges to sync on, on every line! :-)
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
I submit articles about the chips in "missile defense" systems being faulty, and they're shelved. Someone incorrectly configures their cheap monitor and it makes front page? WTF?
Here's the amazing answer: If it sucks, take it back.
Shit.
I'm at work right now, and I have two Dell 2001FPs running dual-monitor. I was able to replicate *exactly* what's shown in the video--when dragging a window that spans both displays, the window moves faster on the primary display (on the left) than on the secondary display (on the right).
It's not the monitor. It's not CRT vs. LCD. It looks like that's the way Windows deals with multi-monitors.
I humbly suggest that the article submitter swap his displays and use the LCD as primary, and see if the CRT then displays the lag. Bet you dollars to donuts that it will.
First of all, thank you, everybody, for taking a look at this. I received a characteristically Slashdotty wealth of "you're an idiot" replies, and a good number of "I didn't read the full article and/or watch the video so I'm jumping to conclusions" replies as well. =) Those of you that read the article and offered your genuine insight, thank you.
It's all fine, though. I'd like to answer a few randomly culled questions here, and also summarize what I've found based on all the feedback so other potential LCD owners can get a better feel for what they're up against.
The overall summary, which you may or may not agree with is: Most LCDs are laggier than CRTs (I'd be jumped in an alley if I went as far as to say *all* LCDs are, but I try to avoid sweeping generalizations). Do your own tests, and come to your own conclusions. If you're a gamer, be careful. And lastly, my Dell 2001FP may in fact be one of the laggiest LCDs in existence, *or* I just received a defective unit.
Thanks again, everybody, for the replies. I hope this helps some people. I know that I at least saw one person in the comments that learned something new, although it was, in fact, for something unrelated to the immediate post. =)
If you're running games at the native resolution of your display (1600x1200), the most probable reason for the lag you're seeing is that your video card simply can't keep up. It takes a pretty beefy video card to push that many pixels per frame. Try cutting the resolution to 800x600 and see if your results improve.
Another thing to try would be toggling the "vertical sync" option in your video card's advanced properties. This option specifies whether your video card synchronizes frames with the monitor's refresh. Your CRT probably refreshed at 100Hz, and your LCD is probably just 60Hz, so vertical sync could be slowing you down even if you haven't increased your display resolution.
It turned out his keyboard had a faulty K key, and the K was not appearing on his screen either.
And thus the GNOME project was born...