Are LCD Displays Ready For Gaming?

Player issues this query: "Since the holiday season is rolling around, I've been contemplating shelling out the big bucks for a nice LCD display. I'm a die-hard gamer, with several choices of monitors in the market today, it can get a little confusing. Ghosting seemed to be a problem with intense games, but with displays reaching 8ms-16ms response time, is it really an issue anymore? Is it time for this gamer to move on to greener pastures, or stay the course with my trusty CRT?"

Comments

It's About You Too

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't just about the response time bla bla bla, but also you. Depending on your eyes, your brain, etc you may see ghosting where others do not, just like some people see the rainbow effect with certain projectors.

Your best bet is to go into a store and try them out. If the store doesn't have some games to test them with, take a demo cd or something. Additionally, buying in a store is one of the few ways to guarantee you don't get a bad pixel or ten.

Re:It's About You Too

[Twanfox]

I don't know how you'd know if the LCD you were buying had a bad pixel in it. It's not like they unbox YOUR purchase, power it on, and let you see it in action before you call it good. They generally grab a box from a stack and say "here you go."

Weigh up the benefits

[the_unknown_soldier]

For a regular lan gamer, i think that lcd is the only way to go. with response time getting down to 8ms there really is no excuse to carry that 100kg monstrocity around with you to a lan. I play on a 152x, and it is fine, I don't see any ghosting on a 25ms screen. If people say they can, i think it is just a placebo.

Probably

[cuteseal]

Regarding ghosting, I think you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless you sat a CRT and LCD side by side.

For digital photography, that's another matter. I find the colours very muted and less vibrant/realistic than CRTs.

Sooo.... why upgrade?

[Dr. Spork]

It sounds like your nice 19" Samsung CRT is working just fine, so what's the deal? Is it that you're running out of space on your desk? Or did you find another use for your CRT monitor? If not, I think you need to tell us more about why you need a new monitor in the first place.

Are you sure you're not posting here just because you want the world do know that you're a "gamer" and that you're cool and rich enough to upgrade gear without any good reason?

Re:16 is borderline

[moosesocks]

You're right. 60hz is pretty bad for a CRT. It hurts the eyes.

However, you've got to consider a few facts: The time it takes each pixel to begin to change is near-instantaneous with DVI. It just take 20ish ms to fully and completely change. Since it's also rare for every single pixel to be dramatically changing each and every frame -- while a higher latency will cause ghosting, motion on an lcd today looks quite fluid and natural.

Also, the reason why 60hz is awful for a crt. The screen redraws itself 60 times. In between the times the screen is redrawn, it is blank (though you would never notice it with your own eyes). This is because of flicker which is the main reason why 60hz just sucks so much on a CRT. I've read that in double-blind tests, most humans couldn't distinguish framerates once they went over 30fps, and virtually nobody could distinguish over 45

The only departments which LCDs can't match a CRT for is Brightness and Contrast. Right now, most LCDs can perform equally to a decent CRT, but nowhere nearly as good as a professional-level one. This is a fundamental problem with LCDs which is never likely to be solved completely. Still, I find it adequate.

LCD Way fast enough

[Gorgoth]

the human eye cannot see much beyond 30-50fps (movies are 25fps) so anything faster than a 20 is not noticeable the only problem is that the advertised responce times for lcd displays is the optimum and often the diplay will not have a responce time anyawre near as good a advertised for all colours most of the time when people have problems with ghosting on 20ms displays it is because it has a good peak (ie lowest) and has a crap average responce time

Re:motion blur != ghosting

[adolf]

Good points.

I'd like to add that ghosting is usually due to bad or damaged cabling, and that all high-frequency analog signals (including those used by LCD monitors with VGA inputs) are susceptible to it.

It's easy to demonstrate, too: Just take a length of VGA cable, and bend it in half, hard, as if you were a secretary busily rearranging "all those ugly wires". After that, bundle it up with a bread tie, and place the corner of your desk on it.

Or just pretend you're a gamer, strung out from seventeen consecutive hours of cheap beer, bad coffee, and Counterstrike. You're loading the PC into the car, and slam the trunklid on the monitor cable, crimping it something nasty.

Ghosting? You betcha. We expect these cables to run up to about 350MHz. If you thought Ethernet over Cat5 was finicky, you haven't pissed off a VGA cable lately.

[/me patiently awaits the return of monitors with replacable, BNC-equipped cables...]

Re:motion blur != ghosting

[GrandCow]

Ghosting is when you get a faint duplicate of the entire on-screen image, slightly offset from what it should be. I don't think this can even occur on LCDs, I think it is a CRT-only problem, but if you use crappy analogue VGA cables, then who knows?

Motion blur is what you thing ghosting is. It is caused by poor refresh times, more specifically it is caused the amount of time it takes for a pixel to become unlit, or "switch off". So LCD screens that have a poor response time often show a trail after a moving object that looks like a ghost of the object.


Well since just about anyone who uses these, sells them, or just talks about them refers to the effect as "ghosting," I think it's pretty safe to say that it's the right term. Languages adapt to the way people use them. See Homer Simpsons 'doh' in the dictionary as a great example.

Any BenQ users?

[rsax]

I recently came across a BenQ 19" LCD monitor and the price was pretty reasonable. Call me ignorant but I haven't come across any BenQ monitors before. Is anyone out there using any of these displays and has any comments about them? So far I haven't come across any useful reviews.

Native resolution and price...

[antdude]

I don't like how I cannot use other resolutions than its native resolution. The image looks weird especially with pixels. I also don't want those black sides. I use resolutions from 800x600 to 1280x1024 depending on games.

Price is another issue especially for a high quality LCD monitor. I am still sticking with CRTs for now.