Thoughts on Samsung 226BW?

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slorch

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 6, 2000
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Hi, All,

I finally made my first LCD purchase, and picked up a Samsung 226BW.

The TN panel is rated for 5 ms B-t-B, and 2 ms G-t-G, but I'm not completely sure if it's "fast" enough for me.
If there's a great deal of movement on the screen all at once (NFS Most Wanted, for example), it seems to "stutter" regardless of the resolution I use. I can't get NFSMW to go past 1280x1024, so I understand it's not the native resolution, but it looks terrible.
I'm fairly certain it's not a CPU/GPU horsepower issue, either: running it at just 800x600 with lowest details it still looks like it's "clipping" with lots of motion.
I've tried enabling and disabling vertical sync--no effect.

My system is an X2 4400+ (standard clock) with 2GB of OCZ DDR on an AsRock 939 Dual-SATA2. Using a BFG 7950GT OC via DVI.
Everything was fine at 1280x1024 and below on my Samsung 997DF CRT monitor.
Is this just the way LCD's look/operate at the moment, even with the some of the fastest "gaming" panels? Or do I have a dud?

Thanks for any insight on this.
 
Have you tried a game that actually supports widescreen resolutions? What're your results?

I don't think your problem is the fact the screen isn't "fast enough". I see 0 ghosting in the games I play. This isn't a monitor faulty, you're not running the native resolution the screen was designed for.
 
Yes, I've tried the CNC3 demo, which does support 1680x1050. It looks fantastic.

NFS2 Underground, oddly enough, looks a great deal smoother than NFSMW. Both in 1280x1024 or 1280x960. Weird.

Hmmm... any advice on what to do with older games, then? I saw some weird scaling options in the nVidia driver settings. I might try experimenting with those to "upscale" the 1280x1024 to run at the monitor's native 1680x1050 - who knows, could be worth a shot.

I understand not running it in the native resolution won't be as clear, but I didn't know there would be motion problems to boot.

Thanks for the info. Looks like I have a lot of reading left to do in the other thread before I make a decision on keeping or returning the monitor.
 
goofy question - is your backlighting even? just currious because i tried one of them, returned it for uneven backlighting and the second was the same so i got a refund.
 
Backlighting is superb on this one. Very, very happy with the static display, but I really wanted a good gaming monitor. :(

I wonder... should I go for a 19" instead, that would support the more standard 1280x1024 resolution? If so, is there a "king of all 19s" for gamers?

I would need both DVI and VGA, but don't care about speakers...
 
slorch, did you update your nvidia drivers after you swapped the LCD? I had a similar problem with BF2. Half Life 2 ran flawlessly, but BF2 was lagging.

I found that the nvidia global settings were conflicting with my BF2 .exe. So I un-installed the nvidia driver, re-installed the newest version...

Viola!

Now BF2 maxes out at 60fps at 16x10, highest settings, just as it was before only more pixels and more LCD in all it's WS glory.
 
Thanks for the reply, dbthump.

I didn't reinstall the drivers--I already had 93.71 installed for use with my 6800GT. Would it do any good to reinstall the same version?
 
slorch said:
NFS2 Underground, oddly enough, looks a great deal smoother than NFSMW. Both in 1280x1024 or 1280x960. Weird.
Click to expand...

NFS Underground 2 is an older game than MW, so it won't be demanding as much from your gfx card, hence the better smoothness.
 
Silent Shark said:
NFS Underground 2 is an older game than MW, so it won't be demanding as much from your gfx card, hence the better smoothness.
Click to expand...

I would agree with you there... but even with the LOWEST detail settings possible and no FSAA it's horribly unsmooth. I don't think that's GPU-related...

NFSU2 with full details at 1280x1024 would require at least as much, if not more, processing power from the GPU than NFSMW at 1280x1024 with the lowest possible settings.

At least, that's the way I see it... could be totally wrong about it, though.
 
slorch said:
Thanks for the reply, dbthump.

I didn't reinstall the drivers--I already had 93.71 installed for use with my 6800GT. Would it do any good to reinstall the same version?
Click to expand...

Driver are buggy sometimes. It can't hurt.
 
slorch said:
I would agree with you there... but even with the LOWEST detail settings possible and no FSAA it's horribly unsmooth. I don't think that's GPU-related...

NFSU2 with full details at 1280x1024 would require at least as much, if not more, processing power from the GPU than NFSMW at 1280x1024 with the lowest possible settings.

At least, that's the way I see it... could be totally wrong about it, though.
Click to expand...

NFS:MW taxes DirectX 9 capabilities rather hardcore. It surprisingly takes quite a bit out of your video card to run it than other games.

I was surfing Google to see if anyone was able to force the game to use 1680x1050 but couldn't find anything. Nothing more than the fact that the game doesn't support widescreen ratios and had to be force to the 1280x1024.

I agree on the drivers. I've seen many people have a completely different result out of the monitor after trashing the drivers and starting fresh. I think some went as far as reformatting... though what you're experiencing shouldn't warrant something that extreme.

Good luck!
 
I think I'm going to hook up my 997DF CRT and see what it looks like with the exact same settings. If it's super-smooth then I may just return the LCD and wait another few years.

I don't do a lot of games, but I do like them quite a bit, and the visual distortion/tearing is quite distracting.

Will report once I've had a chance to do this tonight.

Thanks again to everyone for your thoughts!
 
Well, crap.

At least I found the problem.

Unfortunately, it _is_ the monitor.

I've never run games on my 997DF CRT at anything beyond 1024x768, since I had a 6800GT forever, and only very recently acquired a 7950GT OC.

1280x1024 @ 85 Hz:

Lowest details (exact same as when using 226bw with 1280x1024 @ 60 Hz) = super smooth.

Set the CRT to 4x FSAA, high details on everything, fully expecting a slideshow.
Holy crap--beautiful AND still playable--did NOT expect that.

Also--no tearing. None. Nada. Zip.

Disconnected CRT, hooked up 226bw. Verified monitor driver was OK, then ran same stuff.

Yuck.

Switched to analog display cable, just to check... worse yuck--fuzzy.
Replaced DVI cable with spare. No change.

I guess I'm just a CRT junkie. One of the fastest gaming monitors can't keep up with my eyes. :(

Guess I need to go read that huge thread on the large CRT on eBay or something...

Oh well. Thanks for the replies, all. Guess I need to stick with CRT's for a bit longer yet.
 
So you get tearing? I just played at the game at both 1280x1024 and 1680x1050 (from the hack) and got no tearing (the kind you get when your FPS isn't synced with your monitor refresh rate, where v-sync saves the day) and no ghosting. The only thing I got were some weird moments where the game would almost fast-forward for half a second and that'd be it. Even then that'd happen maybe once a minute. That's more of a slow computer problem than anything.

I honestly don't think this is a monitor problem but more of a problem with the game itself. I am not trying to bow before the monitor and try to get you to not return it... but something just isn't adding up at all. If you can narrow the problem straight to NFS:MW only then it's going to be a NFS:MW only problem, which then tells me it's a game/inability to reproduce the screen correctly to a widescreen monitor problem. You can already see that EA didn't give a flying hoot about native widescreen resolutions when the highest thing you can get to is 1280x1024. Now you're stretching that resolution to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio and that alone will cause the graphics to render differently.

The only noticeable difference between a CRT and a LCD, through fast-paced gaming, is ghosting. If you are getting no ghosting then the monitor is doing what it's supposed to be: really fast at 2ms. Tearing != slow monitor.

I'm sorry if I come across rather snotty but I am not trying to be. Just trying to help you out and get to the actual bottom of this.
 
zigaroo,

You don't sound snotty at all--rather, I greatly appreciate your analysis and insight.

I really miss the higher-resolution display--I have to admit it. I may try hooking it back up and trying it again.

The thing that got me was I tried running a "ghosting" test web page I saw mentioned in the 57-page 226bw thread. This most simple test is a red square bouncing around the inside of a rectangle--and I could "tearing" every once in a while, even with just that. Yikes.

I verified it's an "S" panel, and it's my understanding that's the one to have.

I'll try some other games on it tonight, but I really don't think it's a CPU or GPU issue. I'll report back then.

Thanks!
 
I get tearing in that when the square squishes. Then again who knows what FPS that Flash animation was rendered at. Certainly isn't 60 Hz. :p
 
OK, now I'm curious. I'm going to see if my CRT shows that same tearing as well on the ghosting test. I wonder...
 
zigaroo said:
Have you tried a game that actually supports widescreen resolutions? What're your results?

I don't think your problem is the fact the screen isn't "fast enough". I see 0 ghosting in the games I play. This isn't a monitor faulty, you're not running the native resolution the screen was designed for.
Click to expand...

some people see ghosting, some dont, you dont. All lcds have ghosting, its that simple. Response times aren't yet low enough to eliminate that effect.
 
Tutelary said:
some people see ghosting, some dont, you dont. All lcds have ghosting, its that simple. Response times aren't yet low enough to eliminate that effect.
Click to expand...

I have to technically agree with you on that. Since companies have to report the screens refresh rate you can say, "Well there's going to be SOME ghosting here..."

Okay. But lets be honest here. Who is going to eventually tell the difference if we were to theoretically get a monitor down to 0.5ms response time? 0.000001ms? Ghosting is there though! It has a refresh rate! Yeah... do you see it?

That's the point I was getting at with "0 ghosting" is that I do not see it. Though I agree with you again it's my opinion... but I have good eyesight and ninja reflex skills. :p

slorch said:
Cool, so maybe I'm not losing it, then!

Always encouraging :)
Click to expand...

You test that PRAD ghosting Flash animation on your CRT monitor yet?
 
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