Samsung 215TW

So I have been testing the hell out of my new monitor for the last few nights. I played some COD2 and it was wonderful. The framerates were pretty fluid at the resolution below 1600 (I forget the number).

Otherwise the gradient stepping is somewhat annoying. Luckily it is just about as bad as the backlighting- meaning it is tolerable.

Since LG's suffer from the same problem (their 21" widescreens), I will stick with my Samsung. NEC's are glossy so I would not even consider one of those- allthough they do produce a great picture.

Now, I just finished testing that input lag which many of you complain about.

Heres a photo showing it:

inputlag1.JPG


Basically you cannot see the CRT. This is due to the fact that I used a camera with a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second. That light bar is the scanline. I timed it just right so the camera caught it. Sorry the photo is so dark. I dont have enough light in my room for a shutter speed that quick! Oh, and yes that is clone mode that the 2 monitors are set to.

I may post some more info later if anyone requests it.
 
DaRkF0g said:
So I have been testing the hell out of my new monitor for the last few nights. I played some COD2 and it was wonderful. The framerates were pretty fluid at the resolution below 1600 (I forget the number).

Otherwise the gradient stepping is somewhat annoying. Luckily it is just about as bad as the backlighting- meaning it is tolerable.

Since LG's suffer from the same problem (their 21" widescreens), I will stick with my Samsung. NEC's are glossy so I would not even consider one of those- allthough they do produce a great picture.

Now, I just finished testing that input lag which many of you complain about.

Heres a photo showing it:

http://home.comcast.net/~bromilead/comp/syncMaster/inputlag1.JPG

Basically you cannot see the CRT. This is due to the fact that I used a camera with a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second. That light bar is the scanline. I timed it just right so the camera caught it. Sorry the photo is so dark. I dont have enough light in my room for a shutter speed that quick! Oh, and yes that is clone mode that the 2 monitors are set to.

I may post some more info later if anyone requests it.
Click to expand...

Would you mind explaining this a little? I'm not up on this(input lag) and I'm seriously considering buying this monitor. Thanks.
 
According to that pic, 62ms input lag. That means 62ms between what's happening in the game and what you see. I don't know if anyone's done the 2007 or 2407.
 
Raven01- From Wikipedia:

Input lag is a phenomenon experienced in relation to LCD displays. While the response time of the display is usually listed in the monitor's specifications, there is often a delay between an operation being performed and the corresponding image being displayed on the screen.

This property is particularly irritating in relation to online gaming and displaying video on an LCD monitor, since it is a complex problem not related to ghosting or other side effects of the display itself, but instead the speed of communication between a graphics card, the monitor, and the operation of the keyboard and mouse by the user.


FitzRoy-

Yeah 62 is a lot of time between the two. Oh well. Its some thing I will get used to. On top of that I do play a lot of FPS games though, but at the same time I am not sniping a lot. There may be other things which I can "tune" to help knock that input lag down a bit.Either that or take more pictures. Keep in mind that could be the worst of the lag. That was only a single picture which I took. I know the 2405's are getting anywhere from 10-50ms lag.

Also, I read that the 2405's gradient banding was fixed through a firmware update, so who knows, maybe Samsung will warrant a firmware upgrade. I am pretty sure the ones on retail shelves are porbably the same firmware these days anyway.

On a better note, heres a picture comparing my old Dell P780 with my new Sammy 215TW:

monitors.JPG



EDIT: Allright, I got bored and did some more random input lag tests. These results were all over the place. Ill share them all. Oh, and dont worry about the screen door in the photo above. That does not happen on the actual LCD. The camera did that.

LCD CRT
06.224 06.265
07.762 07.823
09.691 09.753
11.657 11.698
14.895 14.957
16.832 16.852
52.968 52.989
54.896 54.917
​
 
here's my weekly line update on my 215TW.

I still haven't sent mine back and today soon after getting home a YELLOW line appeared a few millimeters to the left of the first blue one. so now I have 2 blue and 1 yellow vertical line :p
 
I am so scared this will happen to mine. I have been reading a lot of reports like that lately. I really dont want a refurb or something which has poor backlighting and dead pixels. Hopefully if something bad is going to happen it will within the next 13 days. This way I can always return it to Best Buy and pickup another.

As for yours, I would jump on a replacment. From the sounds of it the pannel is going bad. Who knows it may not turn on one of these days.


Lastly, anyone know how to check the firmware version? Its probably in the service menu (which I do not know how to get to). Im jsut curious what the different firmware versions are.

Oh, and I have one more question. When you called Samsung, did they say that they can do cross ships- meaning they send you a new one, then once you recieve it you can send the old one back?
 
fitzroy, darkfog thanks for the info.

I'm going to hold off on buying this monitor for now mainly because of the reports about red lines appearing on the monitor after a few hours of use.


Is it me or does it seem all the monitors you would think are good have had problems lately? :) The first monitor I was going to buy was the new dell 2007WFP but it had banding issues (reportedly fixed now). Then I was looking at the NEC but it's a little expensive and has a glossy screen which I persoanly dont like.And now the samsung has issues with lines appearing from nowhere...

Trying to choose which LCD to buy is turning my hair grey ;)
 
No lines here yet. Hoping it stays that way considering 100% of my pixels are properly working! :D
 
Allright I have been doing some research on this color banding. Apparently it is a widespread issue through other manufacturers as well. I know the 2007 Dell's use LG's pannel, and they are apparently having the same issue.

I tried playing around in MagicTune and Natural Color with no avail.

I still am satisified with this monitor (I am now watching digital cable via PIP :) ).

For those of you who are curious what the banding looks like here is a great representation.

Both photos are taken with different shutter speeds. I had to lengthen the shutter to minimize the screen door effect (again something which cannot be seen with the human eye).

Using the app found here: http://xtknight.atothosting.com/tools/gradlin-v0.3-mix-fs.exe
I produced the following images.

banding1.JPG


banding2.JPG


How about you other 215TW users? See the same effect when running the above LCD test?

Lastly anyone know how the heck I get into Samsung's service menu? I want to take a look at a few things in there (no, I did not say change anything). I know unlike their TV's mute 1-8-2 power doesnt work with a LCD monitor :p!

EDIT: Oh, and ANY wallpaper with a gradient in it shows banding. The banding corresponds with the dimensions of the gradient.

Sure wouldnt mind hearing what Samsung has to say about this. They MUST be aware of this issue!
 
Wow, if that is what it looks like in reality, thats not bad at all. I am sure shutter speed, and brightness levels also play a major role in how much the stepping shows through.

As for that input lag, yes it does spike at times. It does factor into gameplay by a minor amount. I prefer the eyecandy though. :)

When was yours manufactured BTW? Mine is April of this year, in Mexico.
 
I don't post very often on the site, but just have to add that I picked up a 215tw from newegg after trolling a couple different sites for the last week. I have to say I was concerned about the input lag, red lines (cross my fingers that this won't happen), etc. but upon receiving it yesterday, I am very happy. The image quality is fantastic. I'm also a pretty frequent fps'er and i booted up HL2.

I was very disappointed at first when there was a really noticeable input lag to the point of the game being unplayable, but after doing the following things:
- uncheck the following boxes in ATI Catalyst Control Center
Reduce DVI frequency on high-resolution displayes
Alternate DVI operational mode

Basically you want your computer to do the least amount of video processing as possible during games. These two settings above are only suggested if you're experiencing visual artifacts, etc., which luckily I don't.

Another thing you can do is to go in to the OSD of the monitor and select the name of the input as "Game", supposedly this results in the monitor operating in a more optimized fashion, reducing the overdrive usage that is apparently to blame for the horrible input lag.

After following these steps, i found no noticeable input lag in HL2 and it was quiet playable, there was maybe a smidgeon of input lag, but after I turned up my mouse sensitivity (it was really low b/c my previous monitor was tiny) I couldn't notice it anymore. I ran through COD2, GRAW demo, HL2, and will try BF2 tonight. So far, so good!

Hope this helps everyone.
 
Has anyone else here notice the left 1/4 side of the screen is lighter than the rest. I have seen a few posts about it. I took mine back because of it. Went and got the Viewsonic widescreen, but it's got really bad backlight issues as well as a 'dark' spot on the left side of the screen. AAAAHHHHHHH! My Dell 21" CRT may return to my desk.
 
chuey- I am glad to hear you have been having a positive experience chewy. The lines that appear are isolated incidents. I have yet t o see anything like that.

I have also been VERY happy with this monitor. The only thing that makes me unhappy is a problem dealing with Windows (or I should say Half-Life 2 in particular). If I try to run any 16:10 resolution lower than 1680X1050 the game crashes with a memory error. Still am trying to troubleshoot that one.

gman- my monitor is allmost perfectly backlit. Aside from the extreme corners which show a slight bleed, the right is just as even as the left is.

FYI I picked mine up at BB, and the pannel itself was made on April of this year.
 
I said so above. Its a common problem with HL2 and widescreen monitors. All of my other games work fine.

PS. Just finished playing the Prey demo. Holy ..... that game is what doom should have been like! I am allready sold on it!
 
after spending some more time with this screen (215TW) I ended up going back to my 19 LG tft due to the input lag, now rather than just leaving it in the box I thought I might as well use it on my secoundry system while I wait for samung to get some more in stock to swap it out, thing was tho I connected it via the vga and not the dvi, today I fired up UT2004 and the input lag did'nt seem half as bad, is this b-cos it's going through the vga ?, has anyone else tried/noticed this ?,

also do all the 215tw's have the same input lag or do they all of varying degrees of input lag, some bad some good ?
 
lowrider007 said:
after spending some more time with this screen (215TW) I ended up going back to my 19 LG tft due to the input lag, now rather than just leaving it in the box I thought I might as well use it on my secoundry system while I wait for samung to get some more in stock to swap it out, thing was tho I connected it via the vga and not the dvi, today I fired up UT2004 and the input lag did'nt seem half as bad, is this b-cos it's going through the vga ?, has anyone else tried/noticed this ?,

also do all the 215tw's have the same input lag or do they all of varying degrees of input lag, some bad some good ?
Click to expand...

I too would like to know this, and what cause input lag? When will there be another revision of this monitor? Are the ones made in Asia really that much better than the ones made in Mexico?

So many questions...
 
mine says it's made in Slovakia May 2006, so it's pretty dam new off the factory line, is'nt it the overdrive on these panels that cause the input lag, surely samsung could change that by updating the firmware and lowering the overdrive to improve the input lag, I'd put up with 16ms response time if the lag was improved enough, is there not any kind of hidden engineering menu on the 215TW, this input lag is so bad through the DVI that even on the desktop it's a chore to hit click on the right stuff with precision :mad: , I'm warning anyone now who is contemplating buying this screen ****DON'T****, they look really nice on the outside and 21"'s is just right but they just can't perform.
 
lowrider007 said:
mine says it's made in Slovakia May 2006, so it's pretty dam new off the factory line, is'nt it the overdrive on these panels that cause the input lag, surely samsung could change that by updating the firmware and lowering the overdrive to improve the input lag, I'd put up with 16ms response time if the lag was improved enough, is there not any kind of hidden engineering menu on the 215TW, this input lag is so bad through the DVI that even on the desktop it's a chore to hit click on the right stuff with precision :mad: , I'm warning anyone now who is contemplating buying this screen ****DON'T****, they look really nice on the outside and 21"'s is just right but they just can't perform.
Click to expand...
I agree what you said,I'd rather put up with 16ms response time if the lag was improved to
<20ms.My 244t is suffer the same issue.
 
I now have an LG L203WT and it's a very nice monitor. Very, very little backlight issue, some banding, but not too bad and no lag as least in VGA. I know it's probably a TN panel, but it looks good, bright, uniform color, etc. Just a thought, but if the Samsung 215wt isn't doing it for you as it wasn't for me, then you may want to check it out.
 
What exactly is input lag? Is it a delay from the time you do something to the time it shows on the monitor. Such as moving the mouse or typing or something? Because, if so, I notice none.
 
Lord Rahl said:
What exactly is input lag? Is it a delay from the time you do something to the time it shows on the monitor. Such as moving the mouse or typing or something? Because, if so, I notice none.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what it is. I think it varies from monitor to monitor.
 
Basically to test it you need a CRT monitor, a camera, and a OSD stopwatch.

Anything that displays milla seconds will do fine. I just happened to use Adobe Audition.
 
chuey101 said:
I was very disappointed at first when there was a really noticeable input lag to the point of the game being unplayable, but after doing the following things:
- uncheck the following boxes in ATI Catalyst Control Center
Reduce DVI frequency on high-resolution displayes
Alternate DVI operational mode

Another thing you can do is to go in to the OSD of the monitor and select the name of the input as "Game", supposedly this results in the monitor operating in a more optimized fashion, reducing the overdrive usage that is apparently to blame for the horrible input lag.

After following these steps, i found no noticeable input lag in HL2 and it was quiet playable, there was maybe a smidgeon of input lag, but after I turned up my mouse sensitivity (it was really low b/c my previous monitor was tiny) I couldn't notice it anymore. I ran through COD2, GRAW demo, HL2, and will try BF2 tonight. So far, so good!
Click to expand...


Could anyone please test and measure how much those things affect input lag?
 
Just a little update: My birthday is this Saturday, and I will be getting a Samsung 215TW. I plan on testing it with my desktop (obviously), notebook, Xbox 360, Xbox (original), GameCube, and a PS2. Since I'm going to be conducting so many tests, it may not be until next week that I post a thread with pictures, as I have finals at school until August 8th. But if you're still on the edge about whether or not to get the 215TW, I just wanted to let you know that my impressions with pics will be on the way soon.
 
zero002021 said:
Just a little update: My birthday is this Saturday, and I will be getting a Samsung 215TW. I plan on testing it with my desktop (obviously), notebook, Xbox 360, Xbox (original), GameCube, and a PS2. Since I'm going to be conducting so many tests, it may not be until next week that I post a thread with pictures, as I have finals at school until August 8th. But if you're still on the edge about whether or not to get the 215TW, I just wanted to let you know that my impressions with pics will be on the way soon.
Click to expand...

Any Impressions?
 
I still say the input lag is the most annoying thing. I've had mine since June 20th, and have been very happy with it. Its still an excellent screen.

Youll really notice it in FPS games. If you snipe a lot you will see it.

If you play a lot of FPS games, avoid this monitor. If you are using it for other apps (internet browsing, photoshop, music editing, etc), then it is a GREAT monitor. The color accuracy is also great on it!


And for the record I only have one dead pixel so far. Its 1/2" from the bottom of the screen, and is impossible to see unless you have your nose pressed against the screen. :)
 
Returned a 205bw and got a 215tw since they were both about the same price after rebate (I wanted to get both locally). Much nicer than the 205bw regarding features, colors, and viewing angle. The extra inch really shows, but that may just be me. It was made in March 2006 in Mexico, so hopefully I won't have any problems.
 
I've been following a couple of threads about this monitor with great interest, as i bought this monitor a couple of months ago. As I always been a gamer, but do alot of 3d work/graphic, and enjoy movies like everybody else, this seemed like the perfect lcd for the price.
However in alot of games, most noticable in older games like warcraft 3 and the fps games i used to play, there was a major input lag for whenever i moved my cursor.
Didnt bother me too much in games like wow etc, but in a fast paced FPS where you play online, it nearly felt unplayable.

I tried some of the "fixes" people wrote, but mostly was for ATI cards, and i saw people commenting that it had to be driver problems in most cases. After reading through a tweaking guide for oblivion, i stumbled upon this fix, that worked for me in all cases.

Max Frames to Render Ahead

It is usually hidden from the normal Nvidia Forceware control, but by downloading
NVTweak. Run it, and tick the "Additional Direct3d box".
Then go back into Forceware control, and under performance & Quality settings, there will be a new item called Additional Direct3d settings.. voila!

Its default on "3", and this is probably something you gotta experiment a bit with. On Dualcore/HT systems, you might notice reduced performance by setting it to 0.
On my system 2 was great, 1 worked nice to. I no longer noticed any input lag in other games like quake/hl2/war3/oblivion, and im sure there's more tweaks available out there
 
I wish there was more information about the causes of input lag, because I really like this monitor but seeing as no store locally will accept a return after purchase I cant risk purchasing with reports of input lag. Seems like there are many factors which could influence input lag if driver teaks can reduce/remove it
 
It's hard for me to conceptualize how the screen can be at fault here. It simply displays the information given to it by the rig....the USB interface, through the MB, etc. It would seem to me the problem would have to be upstream with the video card, port or whatever else the signal passes through. The LCD panel doesn't do any signal processing, right?
 
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