Fastest non-CRT available for use as monitor...

RatLabGuy

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Hi guys, new to teh forum. Seems to be "the place" to get info from a collective of gurus...

I work in a research lab, doing studies on visual and auditory perception. Currently I'm setting up a new lab and getting equipment.
I an very particular about having good precise/accurate stimulus delivery; thsi is not so easy these days with LCDs.
Here's the deal. I'm looking for a unit that can be run as a monitor (e.g., PC-driven through Windows-based apps) at as high a refresh rate as possible. Due to other issues (mostly EM interference with EEG equipment), I need to avoid CRTs... which is a shame b/c that's teh gold standard for good timing. Reason is that higher refresh decreasest he time bins for stimulus lengths and (more importantly) getting lags/jitter in your presentation times. E.g., 16.6 ms bins @60 Hz (unusable) vs 10 ms @ 100Hz or 5 ms @ 200hz = ideal.

I've seen the several LCDs sold as "120Hz", but after some digging, it seems this is not "really" 120Hz, at least in digital mode, right? E.g., I could not change teh stim every 8.5 ms?
What I'm wondering is 2 things.
A - any units labeled as being able to run this high rate as a standard refresh, and
B - could I just change to analog input? It seems to me that if the phosphor change latency is low enough to support 120Hz as repeated frames at 24p (teh way it seems toi be used), it would be logical that they can be driven at thsi speed for an analog signal as well. Just means it needs a pretty high pixel clock, like conventional CRTs do.

I saw the recent notice about Sony's 240Hz models.... that would be magical if I could actually get Windows to lock at 240Hz at any decent resolution. The thing is, I don't even need 1080p or anything... god ole 800x600 is fine. Requires a screaming RAMDAC vid ard, but that's available... and I'm not using millions of polygons, more like a few circles.
 
What you're looking for does not yet exist.

Viewsonic announced a real 120hz computer LCD at Nvision last week and had a prototype on display, but they are not yet available (release date was listed as Q4 '08.) There are a handful of current LCD's which can do 75hz without skipping frames, but that's about as good as you're going to find.

Currently CRT's are the only option for a high refresh. You could probably put shielding around the monitor to deal with the EMI issues.
 
It doesn't matter what hz LCD manufacturers say they can sync to, they're still running at 60hz true. Viewsonic's new LCD is the only thing looking somewhat promising at this point.
 
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