im looking for a 19 inch monitor (19inch veiwing area). im looking for the best monitor available for gaming, and im not sure whether to get a 21inch (19inch veiwable) crt or 19inch lcd. my freinds say get the lcd cause it looks cooler bla bla bla, but i also know that crt's are better for gaming. i also want to know if there are any lcd monitors that can handle resolutions up to 1600x1200? cause i wanna how a game actually looks at that resolution... thanks in advance
First off, without a doubt get a 19" LCD It'll have the same physical (viewable) screensize as a 21" CRT, CRT's are huge, especially if you get a 21", they give off alot more radiation and you will experience glare from lights or windows, making gaming harder. For gaming what you are looking for is a quick refresh rate of your monitor. Any monitor has an "MS" rating, such as: 8MS/12MS/14MS/16MS/20MS/24/25/30 e.t.c MS stands for: Milliseconds. What this is is a measurement of the number of times the monitor can refresh the picture on the screen per millisecond. For gaming you want 8MS - 12MS, and you can't go wrong. I have a 19" VideoSeven 16MS LCD and i can play any games on my AMD64bit including the likes of Doom 3 / Far Cry / HL2 / CS:S / DOD:S at any resolution and not have ghosting. Any higher than 16MS and you'll start to find you get ghosting, which is whereby your video card is outputtin to the monitor more frames per second (screen refreshes) than your monitors "refresh rate" can handle. Basically if you get a 8MS - 16MS you will not find that you experience ghosting. Also, CRT's are actually quite hard to find now a days as LCD's are taking over the benefits: LCD's: - Have a greater viewable screensize per inch (19" LCD = 21" CRT basically) - Take up ALOT less room - ALOT lighter in weight - Are not suseptable to glare from lights ( meaning gaming in any amount of light (low or high) - no more gaming with the curtains closed) - Are reasonably cheap, if not the same price of the CRT - Produce alot less radiation than a CRT (allowing you to play longer & safer - although i recommend not working infront of a screen for more than 1 hour at a time without a 10-15 minute break - not including TV or cinema ) CRT's - Are HUGE - Heavy - Suseptable to glare - any lights in your room or behind your monitor or you will make gaming very hard, LCD's allow you to play in any light no matter how low or high contrasted - it's alot more comforable not having to draw the curtains as mentioned before, u can play in natural light. All you have to remember, is to make sure you get an LCD that has an 8MS - 16MS refresh rate, and check for the resolutions they support so you can run @ 1600x1200 ( almost all 19" LCD's support this resolution @ 8-16MS) You can pickup a good 19" 8MS LCD for £180-£230 ($300-$390) Hope this helps
The way i see it is this. Get the Lcd if: -you go to lans and you need to carry your monitor -You want a stylish monitor -You have limited desk space ie from you to the wall cuz you dont want it in your face -You have the cash (there pricy) I have no problem with my lcd in terms of response times ghostiong etc as long as you get 8ms response time or less.( make sure this quoted time is rise and fall of pixel added together cuz some companies quote only the one misleading a potential buyer into thinking he's getting a super quick screen)
thanks for the info guys, really helped, i think ill go for lcd. but i still cant seem to find any 19" lcd that supports resolutions up to 1600x1200, i mean, they say that their native resolution is 1280x1024, but does that mean that it is the recommeded resolution or the max? if it is the max then i cant find any that have a native resolution of 1600x1200, can you help me out? thanks again
from what you guys recommended to me, i found this monitor, Samsung SyncMaster 193P+ Silver 19" LCD Monitor , the only problem is, it doesnt go up to 1600x1200.
ive done a bit of searching and found out that i need to go to 20 inch so that the resolution can support 1600x1200, is this true?
with lcd the native resolution is the actual number of pixels in the panel so logically you cant get any higher than that cuz there wont be enough pixels. NATIVE RES IS MAX RES Im glad youve decided to go with lcd cuz mines awsome and its only a 17" so you should be realy happy The reason youll have to go to 20" is because they probably cant fit 1600x1200 pixels into a 19" area.(follows logic but not too sure on this one) Good luck finding you dream screen and keep in mind the response time(rise+ fall = <12ms for gaming).Take your time in choosing your screen cuz youll probably have it for a while. It should be fun
