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Originally Posted by jaxa
GWX is incoming quickly and I'd like to play it with better view 1280x1024. I want to change my monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 700IFT 17', 1024x768) for 19' LCD. What do you suggest?
PS. I've checked hardware forums and found BenQ FP91GP (MVA) and BenQ FP93GX (TN with 2 ms), cheap but good. What will be better: TN 2 ms 16,2 mln colours or MVA 8 ms 16,7 mln colours?
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Possibly in no other area in computer components can specs be trusted less than with LCD monitors. To put it bluntly, nearly everything that the manufacturers tell you is next to worthless. I'll tell you why.
In the most simple terms, LCD displays work by passing light from a source from behind a crystal helix (the "liquid crystal") towards the front of the screen. By varying electric impulses the helix can be twisted more or less, thus varying the amount of light that passes through. To get colour each pixel has three subpixels behind an RGB substrate, so there are three helixes per pixel.
The time it takes for the screen to go from black to white is called the Rising response time, and the time it takes to go from white to black is called the Falling response time. Adding these times together gives the Average Response time. IOW, an average response time of 8ms means it takes an average of 8ms for the all the helixes in the monitor to completely twist and untwist. It's the single most quoted spec and it's the first one you should mistrust. Pixels rarely spend their lives going from white to black to white again. It's just not a worthwhile measurement.
A far more important measurement is the Grey-To-Grey time, and nearly all manufacturers won't give it to you. Most pixels spend their lives going from one stage of partial twistedness to another stage of partial twistedness but due to electrical modulation the GTG time can be slower (sometimes a lot slower) than the average response time. It can be faster too, but how are you to know?
Even if manufacturers do give a GTG spec it's usually just a single number. A 6-bit LCD subpixel has 64 potential positions. If the cited GTG time is only the time takes to twist from one of those positions to any of the other 63 then it's nearly as bad as the average response time spec. To be most useful the GTG time spec should be the average of all the GTG response times but you'll rarely see it.
Since making these helixes twist and untwist fast enough is difficult, the manufacturers sometimes play a trick to get better speeds. They reduce the monitor's bit depth. An 8-bit LCD can potentially display the full colour spectrum, 16,777,216 colours, since each subpixel has 256 possible positions. However, to get extra performance many cheaper LCDs are 6-bit, with only 64 positions per subpixel, meaning they can only display 262,144 colours. To display the "missing" 98% of the colour spectrum these monitors must dither, which sacrifices sharpness. A monitor with a spec of 16.2 million colours is a 6-bit LCD with dithering.
This probably won't be an issue for gamers playing a FPS. It may be acceptable for SH3. If you want to use your LCD for things like graphic design or whatever, then it's a real problem.
Another spec which is almost completely untrustworty is the contrast ratio. It is supposed to measure the difference between the luminescence of the lightest and darkest areas of the screen. Because there is no standard way to measure it manufacturers play all sorts of tricks to get a better figure. Some use different test patterns, some even measure from angles other than 90°, all sorts of things. Consequently, even though there are a mere handful of substrate manufacturers in the world supplying the monitor manufacturers, you get many different specs from monitor manufacturers who are in fact using the same substrate! It's nonsense.
There is more to all this but that's the basics. Don't rely on manufacturer's specs. You must read reviews by review sites with technical expertise, like Tom's Hardware Guide or Anandtech, and avoid fanboi sites that give 90%+ to everything they review. You must read as many user reviews as you can find. You must read, read and read more. And when you're done reading you absolutely positively must see the unit you're interested in in action. Do not buy from a vendor who has an "x dead pixels or no return" policy - expect zero dead pixels and check it in the store before you take it home.
Without considering budget, I suggest you look at units like the Dell 1907FP (their LCD monitors are first class - yes, I was just as surprised) or the Samsung SyncMaster 915N. In the LCD monitor game if you buy cheap you'll very likely be very disappointed.
Alternatively, you can do as I did about 2 weeks ago and grab a 19" CRT cheap before they disappear forever. No native resolution issues, no motion blur issues (often wrongly called ghosting, which is something else entirely), no real viewing angle issues, greater colour depth and contrast.