Chippy and others, i spent an inordinate amount of time researching LCD's over the last 3 months checking out every press release, article and forum that i could find. Some thoughts on gaming and other topics:
Gaming: It is apparent that just about everyone has a different idea of what ghosting is. Half the people see it, the other half don't. I do! However, the ghosting is minimal or to me at least acceptable. I am judging this mainly with Urban Terror, a Q3A mod though i did test briefly with Q3A, MOH:AA and RtCW. I definetly have given up something to have a clear desktop. The ghosting is more pronouced with the dark maps with light areas - its the transitions that are more noticable. This is of course accentuated in a high motion ambush where one is turning around in circles rapidly. Running down a hall and seeing someone appear around a corner in front of me is no problem as relative motion is minimal.
At the end of the day though like with my CRT i have some days were i am "on" and some where i "off" - the state of my head (tired, over-caffienated, distracted) remains the key variable in whether i play well. The planar 174 i got (25ms) is good enough that i can adjustfor what ghosting there is. I love gaming, but the majority of my time is working/surfing in 2D. The tradeoff is acceptable. If gaming is everything to you, stick with CRT.
FFD: I had been holding out for implementation of the FFD technology as described in the extremetech article linkes somewhere above. I have been a PC, A/V, toy junkie for years and can recognize when a product is not ready to be released and FFD is a classic example. As someone else pointed out the only buzz about this was in the forums and all people were doing was x-referencing the same xtremetech article. Someone in that forum pasted in a note allegedly from NECmitsu stating that FFD is a year off - I believe them. This led me to decide to buy now rather than wait it out.
Where to Buy -- Dell: I bought there and i think you would be crazy not to as well. The couponing and discounting available got me a 17.4 Planar for $605. the same couponing has gotten the Dell branded 2000fp for under $1350. Thier online stock-keeping and inventory may suck but you would be crazy not to take advantage of their deals.
Specs: if you can't find a spec on response time don't trust it...probably a last gen panel. As someone pointed out the brightness specs are pretty pointless - they are all too bright. Response time is all important and don't consider a panel unless it is at least <25ms.
Bang for the buck: over xmas i had my finger on the proceed button on the Dell 2000fp but held off. I decided that for me at least the prox $1350 cost was overkill for a monitor that i probably would replace when the FFD panels did show up. With 18-19" panels in the $1000 range, I decided that the $600 for a 17.4 panel with near best in class specs was a no brainer. Its not the most asthetically pleasing model out there (thin bezel NEC's or Compaqs), but to me that wasn't worth the extra $300+.
DVI: I am not such a convert. Last week i replaced a GF3 with a GF3-ti200 w DVI. There was an improvement in 2D (no noticable change in 3D performance) but it wasn't that much compared to the vga connection. However, as a GF3ti200 card can be aquired for reletively little money ($160 v$300) for a GF3ti500 or the >$300 that my original card cost i have no regrets.
just my $0.02 worth
badga