TFT Monitors

My parents are getting me either a 17" or 19" TFT screen for my PC, since the 15" CRT I have now is 10 years old and one of the guns is starting to fail. The only thing is, I have heard TFT arn't any good with fast moving images such as games, and so look "blury" on the screen.

What I'm asking is would a CRT screen be better for me playing games, or would a TFT screen be the same?

[nffc]

Depends on the response time, and even the way that's measured.

[Caspar]

I'm planning on a Dell 24" 2405FPW Widescreen 12ms 1920*1200 LCD Monitor

Originally Posted by nffc

Depends on the response time, and even the way that's measured.

Well I think my dad is going for an LG 17" TFT, with a response time of 16MS.

IMO 17 inch is the best as 19 and 17 inch tfts tend to have the same res of 1280 x 1024 16 ms should be ok although aldi of all places were selling one at 8

One thing to remember response times are measured on the white and some can be tuned to give better response rates than with colours,best thing is try to see them working instead of buying blind.Also find out the dead pixel limit on the screens as some companies have better replacement than others,some companies policy on this can leave you with a screen with loads of problem pixels and nothing you can do about it

I myself wouldn't buy a tft if im gonna mostly play games I got a nice flat 19" crt that im very happy with

[Ramrod]

Originally Posted by Electrolyte

Well I think my dad is going for an LG 17" TFT, with a response time of 16MS.

That should be fine...........mine has a response of 20ms and it's no problem when gaming.
CRT's do my eyes in..............
__________________

Originally Posted by Caspar

I'm planning on a Dell 24" 2405FPW Widescreen 12ms 1920*1200 LCD Monitor

Showoff!

Originally Posted by Ramrod

That should be fine...........mine has a response of 20ms and it's no problem when gaming.
CRT's do my eyes in..............

What size is yours though? 17"?
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I've got another question aswell. My laptop has a TFT screen, that supports up to 1024x768, but if I have a resolution lower than that (such as 800x600) the screen looks weird, as if the screen was using too many pixels to render just 1 pixel (so basically, it looked very blocky).

Do TFT monitors STILL do this? Or do they switch resolutions just like CRT monitors?

[danielf]

Originally Posted by Electrolyte

What size is yours though? 17"?

Are you really asking Ramrod if his is 17"?

Yep, the lower the response time the better for any fast-moving action like a game. Same goes for a LCD TV. Response time is ms as in milliseconds. However, the better the response time, the more expensive the monitor.

Beware of the way the response time is measured. Not all measurements are of equal value - for example you will often find the calculation based on the time taken for the screen to go from completely black to completely white, or vv. Which is so useful, because what we all really want to do with our screens is sit there watching them strobe.

[dilli-theclaw]

Originally Posted by Electrolyte

Do TFT monitors STILL do this?

Yes - although my 17inch tft can show 1024x768 (which isn't it's natural res) ok.

Originally Posted by Electrolyte

Or do they switch resolutions just like CRT monitors?

They switch just fine - just can't show it properly.

edit - you can get it to show a sharp picture on a lower res - but you have to make it a smaller picture so there's not much point. It can end up like having a postage stamp in the middle of the screen.

If you're going to play a lot of games at less than 1024x768 (presuming you get a 17/19inch tft) then you need to decide if you can put up with the 'bluriness'

Thanks dilli.

EDIT: Can some one rep dilli for me? I've already done it too many times

Originally Posted by Electrolyte

Thanks dilli.

TFTs are so much crisper to start with, when you deliberately run them at a lower resolution you can tell that the screen is using more than one of its own pixels to draw the bigger pixels being sent to it by the PC's gfx card. CRT monitors are not so crisp so the effect is not so noticeable. What do you have that you need to run at 800x600?

Originally Posted by Chris T

What do you have that you need to run at 800x600?

Almost all of my games. Halo runs at 640x480, everything else except MOHSH runs at 800x600, which MOHSH runs at 1024x768.

I can't have them at a high resolution, as my frames drop big time (I only have a Radeon 8500LE )

Originally Posted by Electrolyte

EDIT: Can some one rep dilli for me? I've already done it too many times

'tis done.

By the looks of it I will have to go with a 17" Flat CRT.