Alright here it is.... first of all, let me just say that I upgraded from a Sony 24" gdwmf900... in fact it sits right next to me right now. The sony is an excellent monitor and nearly flawless except for... I wish it was bigger... hence the need to go to 32"... and now on with the review...
The Samsung LN-R329D is a beautiful monitor... samsung did an excellent job designing this monitor and it shows. It looks great sitting on my desk...
The colors and visual display are phenomenal for a 32" display... all the text is clear and easily legible. Unfortunately that's where it ends...
Gaming on this LCD TV is subpar... its filled with issues from mild ghosting to resolution limitations. What a 32" display does is fully emphasize the true limitations of an LCD! Even though this may be a 8ms monitor... mild ghosting is still present. This is further degraded by the piss poor 60hz refresh rate... 60hz makes for poor response in quick games... belive me, i've been gaming at a refresh rate of 100hz on a crt for years... i'm not just talking about flickering... I'm talking about over all response of the graphics. There is no flickering on the LCD... its just that the 60hz refresh rate is too slow for high speed games like Counterstirke. Any attempt at changing the resoltion to something non native is a mistake and results in a big degradation in quality.... on the plus side you could eek out a 75hz refresh rate at the non native 1076x768... but it wasn't worth it. It was wrought with tearing and fuzzy graphics. In addition, what doesnt make any sense to me is all this push for faster response rates for lcd pixels to change and yet no push to increase the refresh rate at the same time... think about it... althought your pixel may be a blazing 4ms fast and be equivalent to 125+ frames per second... your refresh rate is still locked at 60 ro 75hz... which means that the monitor only requests 60 frames per second. So despite what your graphics card may push out, despite the respone rate of your lcd monitor, you're still cappped at a refresh rate of 60 NEW framers per second... I'm sorry that is just unacceptble... Believe me i wanted to think differently,, but after doing a test on this LCD monitor... I've been disappointed.
Some of you LCD diehards may be crying out, "turn on the vsync and tripple buffer" Well, vsync was tried on and off... i really didn't notice a difference primarily since my x800 pro pretty much handled everything i was playing. The tripple buffer sucks... it lags the mouse or screen... i'd whip the mouse around and the screen would have a noticeable (10ms or greater) lag behind the crosshair... that's unacceptable... it felt like i was drunk...
LCDs are definitely NOT ready for fast pace games... especially if you've been playing with a high quality CRT. The quickness isn't there and the increased real estate just isn't worth it... all the larger screeen does is emphasize the lackluster performance.
I have no doubt this LCD is great for movies and such... but for FPS games, its a two thumbs down. I'm going to pack this huge mother back in its box, get a RMA number, and ship it back. My 24" Sony is here to stay... until SED or OLED provide something that is comparable.
The Samsung LN-R329D is a beautiful monitor... samsung did an excellent job designing this monitor and it shows. It looks great sitting on my desk...
The colors and visual display are phenomenal for a 32" display... all the text is clear and easily legible. Unfortunately that's where it ends...
Gaming on this LCD TV is subpar... its filled with issues from mild ghosting to resolution limitations. What a 32" display does is fully emphasize the true limitations of an LCD! Even though this may be a 8ms monitor... mild ghosting is still present. This is further degraded by the piss poor 60hz refresh rate... 60hz makes for poor response in quick games... belive me, i've been gaming at a refresh rate of 100hz on a crt for years... i'm not just talking about flickering... I'm talking about over all response of the graphics. There is no flickering on the LCD... its just that the 60hz refresh rate is too slow for high speed games like Counterstirke. Any attempt at changing the resoltion to something non native is a mistake and results in a big degradation in quality.... on the plus side you could eek out a 75hz refresh rate at the non native 1076x768... but it wasn't worth it. It was wrought with tearing and fuzzy graphics. In addition, what doesnt make any sense to me is all this push for faster response rates for lcd pixels to change and yet no push to increase the refresh rate at the same time... think about it... althought your pixel may be a blazing 4ms fast and be equivalent to 125+ frames per second... your refresh rate is still locked at 60 ro 75hz... which means that the monitor only requests 60 frames per second. So despite what your graphics card may push out, despite the respone rate of your lcd monitor, you're still cappped at a refresh rate of 60 NEW framers per second... I'm sorry that is just unacceptble... Believe me i wanted to think differently,, but after doing a test on this LCD monitor... I've been disappointed.
Some of you LCD diehards may be crying out, "turn on the vsync and tripple buffer" Well, vsync was tried on and off... i really didn't notice a difference primarily since my x800 pro pretty much handled everything i was playing. The tripple buffer sucks... it lags the mouse or screen... i'd whip the mouse around and the screen would have a noticeable (10ms or greater) lag behind the crosshair... that's unacceptable... it felt like i was drunk...
LCDs are definitely NOT ready for fast pace games... especially if you've been playing with a high quality CRT. The quickness isn't there and the increased real estate just isn't worth it... all the larger screeen does is emphasize the lackluster performance.
I have no doubt this LCD is great for movies and such... but for FPS games, its a two thumbs down. I'm going to pack this huge mother back in its box, get a RMA number, and ship it back. My 24" Sony is here to stay... until SED or OLED provide something that is comparable.