Do flat-panel's work well for gaming? (1 Viewer)

[Ted Lee]

hi all -

i did a search, but didn't find any answers.

i'm thinking about getting a new pc soon. part of my decisions will be whether to get a crt or a flat-panel.

some factors:

1. i'm not a hard-core gamer...but with a hi-speed pc, that could change. my fear is that the flat-panel won't perform well for this task.

2. do i require any special hardware of software when using a flat-panel?

3. my desk has a frosted-glass surface, so i'm afraid of putting a really heavy 19 or 21 inch crt on top.

i visited a friend last night. she had a 17" viewsonic flatscreen and i thought the picture looked really nice.

i don't know a lot about this stuff, so any advice is appreciated!

thanks!

 

[Joel Mack]

AFAIK, the current generation of flat panels have no problems with high-speed games (at least the 15" Viewsonic that a friend of mine has doesn't have any probs).

You shouldn't need any special hardware or software, although it's generally accepted that if you have a video card with a DVI (digital video) output, you want a panel with a DVI input for the best picture.

 

[Thomas Newton]

One disadvantage of LCD screens is that they only look really good when fed pictures in their native resolution, or in resolutions that scale evenly to it.

For example, a LCD with a resolution of 1600 x 1200 would look good at 1600 x 1200, and at 800 x 600 (where each of the computer's pixels would cover a 2 x 2 transistor area on the LCD screen). But it wouldn't look as crisp if you displayed a 640 x 480 picture full-screen. You would get some fuzziness/jaggies, especially in text.

Computer manufacturers try various means to get around this, such as putting in more sophisticated video scaling circuitry (to reduce the jaggies), or making the computer use only part of the LCD. The latter method, which I saw on one PC notebook, avoids the jaggies at the cost of reducing the effective display size.

How does this relate to gaming? Some games (may their number not increase) like to force you into a particular vendor-chosen, non-customizable resolution setting (e.g., 640 x 480) for the duration of the game. These games are not likely to look as good on LCD displays as they do on CRTs.

 

[Michael Boyd]

I just got a Dell 20inch FP with DVI and a resolution of 1600x1200. Don't have my system yet, but I'm hoping that games look good. I have some serious PC Gaming to catch up on. Havent played anything on a PC in 4 years. So far I've picked up Return to Wolfenstein, No One Lives Forever and will be getting Jedi Knight 2 and probably Allied Assault Medal of Honor. So I'll post when I see what these games look like. Unfortunately my system is delayed until March 1st. I don't know if I should cancel or what. :-(

 

[Ted Lee]

i just read an article on tomshardware. no lcd got a glowing review and most of them were not recommended for gaming due to their slow response times. the article also stated if you do any kind of graphic work, you should probably stick to a crt.
here's the link if anyone's interested:
http://www4.tomshardware.com/display...114/index.html
the general impression i got was that lcd's are not yet up to speed for gaming. but i'm looking forward to michael's review...i'd like to hear a 'real world' sampling. that is if he ever gets his system...

 

[Glenn L]

This is definitely one of those "your mileage may vary" situations... but as for my mileage:

I've owned a 19" flat-panel for a year now, and you'd have to drag me kicking and screaming back to a CRT. The single biggest problem with it has already been mentioned: doing things outside of the monitor's native resolution.

Most older games (Baldur's Gate is the one I just played thru recently, for example) will force you to a lower resolution... but most newer games (BG-II for example) support playing the game in a window. So I keep my native resolution, and the game is crisp.

As for refresh times, that's not as big a deal as tomshardware makes it out to be. If you play 16 hours a day, you might get bugged by the delays. As for FPS's... I've played countless hours of Quake 3, Alice twice, Wolfenstein and ST: Elite Force, and I have no complaints.