Time for a new LCD Screen!, Any suggested sites for product comparisons? Options

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I have put off buying a new screen for a while, but the time has come.

Do you guys have any suggestions? Any good comparison sites? What about all the specs, what should I look for and avoid?

[Old Man Mike]

There is a lot of hype about LCD response time. Let me try to clear up a few things:

1) For gaming, the most important thing is refresh rate, not response time. Almost all LCDs run at a 60 hz refresh rate. That means that the image frame changes every 16.7ms. As long as the LCD can show an image frame and then get it off the screen in time for the next image, there will be no ghosting effect or afterglow effect. This measurement is called gray to gray response time. Anything less than 16ms is good enough.

Actually very low response times of 2ms and lower will make the screen appear to flicker at the 60 hz rate. If you've ever seen a CRT (big tube type displays) at 60 hz, you know what I am talking about.

2) Some LCDs are claimed to run at 75 Hz. Almost all are really running at 60 hz and throwing every fifth frame away. Talk about false advertising. Someday we will have 85 to 120 hz refresh rates for LCDs and that will mean a real improvement in gaming performance.

3) Native resolution is also an overlooked item of LCD performance. This is the LCD's actual number of horizontal and vertical pixels. A 1280 x 1024 native resolution LCD is better than a 1680 x 1050 LCD if you are playing at 1280 x 1024. This is because the video card has to take additional time to convert the image and there will be round off errors (artifacts) generated in the final result. This effect can be minimized if the LCD native resolution is a multiple of your gaming resolution.

4) Wide screens (16 x 10 or 16 x 9) are very nice and can allow you to see more of the game view than a player running in normal width (4 x 3) screen. But also realize that everything is a little smaller in wide screen mode and that it will put additional processing demands on the video card to keep up.

By the way, I run two wide screen LCD monitors: Samsung 243T and Dell 2405FPW. Both are 24 inch, 1920 x 1200 native resolution monitors. My dream monitor would be a 30" widescreen with a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 (not higher) and a true refresh rate of 85 Hz. Nothing like that is yet available.

Good luck with your decision,

Old Man Mike