Refresh Rates LCD's & CRT's Help?

[Zetsu]

I'm new to these forums, but felt that since HardOCP has such a good reputation that there would be plenty of hardware savvy people on these forums.

I recently purchased a NEC MultiSync 1770NX 17" LCD Monitor 12ms. It comes equipped with a DVI-D port so I thought I would take advantage of it's DVI capabilities, which unfortunately presents absolutely no visual difference between it and VGA (analog).

The monitor's max refresh rate is 75Hz, anything forced above 75Hz shuts the monitor off. So by switching from my Viewsonic 17" Flat CRT I went from 85FPS in Counter-Strike: Source to 75FPS, since I use Vertical Sync as the tearing in my games is terrible (no crappy pun intended).

So basically I've downgraded. But recently I had the pleasure of using a 19" Trinitron with the ability of up to 120Hz. Which appears to make working around the desktop super fast and would be most enjoyable having my FPS capped at 120Hz which my 6800 is capable of.

My question is what monitor do I have to get to obtain a refresh rate of 120Hz? How can I tell what refresh rates a monitor is capable of before purchasing it? Is 120Hz an exclusive feature only to 19" monitors? Could I purchase a 19" LCD and have a higher refresh rate than 75Hz, or do no LCD's boast such a great feature?

I've been looking to replace my new super crappy LCD with a nice NEC CRT found here:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=24-002-037&depa=0

Would this be a good choice to fulfill my gaming/refresh rate needs? Sometimes I really wonder if LCD's are really not the future of displays, as a CRT outperforms them in every way except for their size.

Any feedback would be most appreciated as I'm really lost and frustrated here. Thanks

 

[Zetsu]

bump

 

[IdiotInCharge]

Well, a couple things. LCD's are different than CRT's- you do not need to run a high refresh rate, because there is no flicker (which high refresh rates reduce, making the screen less straining to focus on). Next, you should not be worried about FPS caps- benchmarkers worry about this, game players turn on vsync and let their FPS be capped, because yeah, tearing sucks ass (my opinion and experience). Get off the 'my crt does 120hz therefore my GPU does 120fps therefore its better than my LCD that only lets my GPU do 75fps.' It's totally irrelevent (please don't take this is rude- if this doesn't make sense, try doing some more research, read reviews and what not). On replacing with a CRT, well, good CRT's are no longer made- the ones that were left have been gobbled up. What you are looking at is an older generation what was considered the best 19" CRT out there, that being the NEC 912/Mitsubishi 930. These are gone. The NEC 991 has similer specs to my P95f+, which I think is a POS- and it's going out on me now. The .25-.27mm dp is killer. LCD's ARE the future of displays, especially PC monitors which require such high resolutions.

To recap- no, you cannot purchase LCD's with higher refresh rates, 75hz is standard, and 60hz is just the same. The only difference you can percieve is the frame counter. Keep the LCD- if you don't like it, find a better LCD.

Further note: Response times are not everything, and generally the lower the response time the crappier the display, in terms of color reproduction, viewing angles, and other wierd effects (screen door anyone?). Almost everyone you see posting about going from a CRT to LCD praises the LCD- even if gaming performance is slightly detracted by ghosting, all of their other advantages stack up in a hurry.

Something for research- I've been following the leading edge of Samsung's S-PVA technology- this is their premium panel, which exhibits near perfect viewing angles and excellent colors, right out of the box.

 

[Zetsu]

Sorry but refresh rates do matter to me as I stated in my post. The 120Hz refresh rate would make all the difference because I always use V-Sync, which syncs the framerate to the monitor's refresh rate.

So what your saying is LCD's are just better all the way? But how can that be true if it just severely underperforms when compared to CRT's in color, text sharpness, viewing angles, refresh rates, etc?

 

[Roger]

Sorry but refresh rates do matter to me as I stated in my post. The 120Hz refresh rate would make all the difference because I always use V-Sync, which syncs the framerate to the monitor's refresh rate.

So what your saying is LCD's are just better all the way? But how can that be true if it just severely underperforms when compared to CRT's in color, text sharpness, viewing angles, refresh rates, etc?

Text sharpness? LCDs have far sharper text than CRTs do. Even an analog only LCD will beat the best CRT when it comes to text sharpness.

 

[Zetsu]

With whose eyes?

 

[Roger]

With whose eyes?

Maybe we don't think of the same thing when you say "text sharpness" but this is what I mean. CRTs are by their nature a bit blurry so they "smooth" the fonts out but by no means they are sharper than LCDs when it comes to text. I say if your text actually looks sharper on a CRT, there is something wrong with your LCD.

 

[Zetsu]

I think you may have provided me with the best answer yet. I'm starting to think this thing really is a piece of junk.

The viewing angle sucks as it immediately becomes super dark when I pivot myself in my chair the slightest bit.

No matter how high the brightness goes up on the monitor and in-game I still can't make out entire rooms in-game.

The text is smudged greatly in certain places.

I could keep going on and on. This was my next choice of monitor:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=24-116-347&depa=1

DVI-D Capability
8ms Response Time
View Angle: 160° / 160° (H / V)

What more could you ask for?

 

[burningrave101]

Sorry but refresh rates do matter to me as I stated in my post. The 120Hz refresh rate would make all the difference because I always use V-Sync, which syncs the framerate to the monitor's refresh rate.

So what your saying is LCD's are just better all the way? But how can that be true if it just severely underperforms when compared to CRT's in color, text sharpness, viewing angles, refresh rates, etc?

What does it matter if your frame rate is sync'd at 120 fps or 60 fps? Your brain can't tell a difference. And just because you have v-sync enabled and the refresh rate set to 120Hz doesn't mean your getting 120 fps. Unless your able to maintain 120 fps or higher then your fps is going to drop to a fraction of that automatically because of v-sync. If you have trible buffering enabled then it will limit that frame drop a whole lot though.

Point is you shouldn't worry about the refresh rate on the LCD in terms of gaming performance. All you should be worried about is responsiveness as that is whats going to affect how good the gaming performance will be.

Color reproduction on the better LCD's is also as good and sometimes better then that of CRT's. Text sharpness is much better as well. The only drawback would be the viewing angles and the response time. Even with an 8ms response time its still 8ms slower then a CRT.

Try out the LCD, if you dont like it then go back to the CRT. There is nothing else you can do though because your not going to find an LCD with higher refresh rates.

 

[Zetsu]

Like I stated in my original post my 6800 can more than handle the FPS. My 6800 runs Counter-Strike: Source on average of 121FPS with V-Sync set to off. Triple Buffering is currently not supported by the Source Engine.

There is a huge difference between 60-120FPS in terms of visuals, unless your blind you can clearly make out a performance difference between the two.

When capped at 75FPS it has the ability to hit 40FPS in areas. 120FPS would let me use my cards full potential and not have such big blows in FPS.

I know to some people here I'm talking vanity FPS and comfort, but it truly bugs me, and right now I have the money to fix what I don't like about my computer.

 

[Synful Serenity]

I can definitely tell the difference between 60fps and 100fps...I haven't tried 120 lately.....but it's already been established on this forum that people's abilities to perceive motion varies, which is why baseball players who have 1/10th of a second to react and hit a ball thrown at 100mph 60 feet away make millions of dollars. So obviously not everyone is able to distinguish such fast motion, but there are those who can, so there is no general rule about what can be noticed.

As was already said, response time should be the number you are concerned with. The LCD hardware can run at a refresh rate above what the pixels are actually capable of. You can't go by the rated response time to figure this out either. These numbers are hyped, fluffed, and spun for marketing purposes, and do not give a clear and accurate picture of relative speeds between screens. Independent testing has shown some LCDs that don't even hit their rated ms at all, some 16ms displays that have outperformed 12ms displays, and that most response times usually average out somewhere over twice the rated amount. If a display is being asked to change the state of its pixels 60 times every second, and it takes the average 8ms LCD at least 20ms to do this, then the LCD would need at least 1.2 seconds on average to do this, yet it only has 1 second. Obviously, to fit those 60 screen refreshes in 1 second, some motion artifacting is going to be introduced. Try changing to 75Hz, and all you've accomplished is squeezing in 15 more screen refreshes that the monitor already isn't fast enough to display properly. So by going above 60Hz, you're not really improving much. There might be some other reasons such as gameplay for doing this, but there is nothing to gain as far as image goes. Even the fastest LCD available still isn't fast enough to render 60 screen refreshes in a second without having any trace of blurring. They are getting closer, but as of today there are still people who can see the blur.

If you could get even 60hz on an LCD without any trace of blur, that would be a good buy, and the smoothness from the pixels being always on would more than make up for the drop to 60Hz. As for the 120Hz on a CRT, I say stick with 100hz on a monitor like the 2141sb. I wouldn't be surprised if you could notice the difference between 60 and 120, but not 100 and 120. 100Hz is already way above what most of us are getting, and you can run it at 1600 x 1200 too. If your video card is fast enough to do this, then more power to ya!