LCD: Planar or Samsung?

[ksdavis]

Ya, I meant turned ON, not off... whoops. Dmitri, you did a much better job saying what I was trying to say, thank you.

I hope that going to a GF3 isn't a "downgrade" but, if its true that it's high FPS leading to more ghosting, it may serve as such.

Then again, it might _not_. I tried Half-Life last night as well as RTCW again, this time with features off/higher FPS (60-80 FPS). I didn't notice nearly as much ghosting as I had before. One wacky theory about that: when I first tried out my Planar 17.4 yesterday afternoon, it was straight out of the hot little FedEx guy's hands, and the box was very, very cold. The monitor was cold to the touch when I first used it. I'm wondering if that would have contributed to the excessive ghosting? That afternoon (the first hour I used it), ghosting was *awful* -- everything appeared twice on screen in RTCW. But last night it was almost unnoticeable, both at < 40 and > 40 FPS. So ... perhaps it was just the cold temps?

Sorry to be going back and forth on this -- this is an expensive monitor and I'm sure those of you waiting/thinking of buying one want some accurate info. I'll do some more formal tests, with both the GF2 GTS VGA and the GF3 Ti200 DVI and let you guys know what I see in re ghosting.

 

[Jen]

thats what i am wondering about does room temperature affect the monitior



Jen

 

[badga]

I think another factor with this is simply the adjustment that your eyes/brain makes after playing for awhile. I was beginning to wonder if my next upgrade was replacing my GF3Ti200 with my old GFDDR!. Great to hear your experiences. MOH:AA is waiting at home so there will be something else to experiment with.

 

[ksdavis]

Awright... did up some stats for y'all... LMK if this is helpful. In a nutshell: I put in the GeForce3 Ti 200 tonight and have been very happy with it. Under DVI, text quality is much improved (sharper), colors are brighter, the whole thing looks great.

In general, my tests seemed to show that higher framerates mean "bothersome" ghosting. The sweet spot seems to be around 50 FPS -- less than that and I see no ghosting or at least not enough to bother me. More than that and it's noticeable and bothers at least me. In the end, of course, an LCD has a 60 Hz refresh rate so anything more than 60 FPS is, like the old saw about bosoms, a waste.

Without further ado, the tests. I ran these on my T-Bird 1.33 with 256 megs DDR RAM running Win2K Pro SP2, all under RTCW 1.0 (full edition, mp_beach level):

With my old MSI-8815 GeForce2 GTS, VGA connection, MSI-provided 21.88 Nvidia drivers:
Scenario 1: 1280x1024, 32-bit color, high geometric detail, high textures with trilinear filters: 10 FPS, unplayable, too slow!

Scenario 2: 1280x1024, 32-bit, medium geometric detail, normal textures with bilinear filters: 40-45 FPS average. Some ghosting noticeable, didn't interfere with my gameplay.

Scenario 3: 1280x1024, 32-bit, high geometric detail, normal textures with trilinear filters: 30-40 FPS average. Ghosting was very slight -- I could hardly notice it. My favorite way to play.

Scenario 4: 1024x768, 160-bit color, low geometry, low textures, bilinear filters: HUD said 80 FPS (LCD woulda maxed out at 60). Significant ghosting: playable, but really annoying.


Tonight I installed the GeForce3 Ti 500 (the Leadtek TDH) and put it on DVI. Nvidia 21.83 reference drivers.

Scenario 1: 50-70 FPS average. Looked very good -- some ghosting, but did not interfere with game play.

Scenario 2: 70-75 FPS average. Good, a little more ghosting, still playable.

Scenario 3: 90 FPS all the time (so really 60 Hz cap). Ghosting very noticeable. (I'm not sure why this would look worse than Scenario 2? Should both be capped at 60. Perhaps psychological tricks?!?)

I also did another scenario just with the GF3: Max everything! high geometry, super character detail, general textures high, trilinear texture filters, and yes to anisotropic filtering. 30-45 FPS typical. The game looked awesome! Great detail, practically no ghosting, a beautiful way to look at the game.

Now... even when I say "no ghosting" most gamers would, I think be able to tell _some_ difference. Basically the tradeoff seems to be much crisper/more accurate textures and images versus some level of blurring. Me, I use my home PC mostly for working from home, WWW, ssh, etc., with maybe 3-5 hours of gaming per week, and it now (after the DVI card!) seems worth the doing. If I were a true hardcore gamer, I might stick with a CRT. But in the end, the lesson I've learned from this is, you really need to see one to see if you'll like it.

Good luck!

 

[badga]

that was some great feedback. this has to be the first effort ever to REDUCE frames per second in FPS gaming. Playing Urban Terror (Q3a mod) with all the eyecandy maxed @1280 i am still getting 70-90 FPS depending on the map. I am curious, did you play with Anti-aliasing at all? I wonder what the effect would be? I loaded Medal of Honor last nite and maxed every detail...looked wonderful on the Planar and was quite playable.

 

[Jen]

ksdavis thank you for the great information



Jen

 

[ksdavis]

<< that was some great feedback. this has to be the first effort ever to REDUCE frames per second in FPS gaming. Playing Urban Terror (Q3a mod) with all the eyecandy maxed @1280 i am still getting 70-90 FPS depending on the map. I am curious, did you play with Anti-aliasing at all? I wonder what the effect would be? I loaded Medal of Honor last nite and maxed every detail...looked wonderful on the Planar and was quite playable. >>



Thanks for the kind words. Out of curiosity, I turned on 4x FSAA last night and tried RTCW with it... ick. 5-20 FPS max. I'll try the Quincunx FSAA next time instead.

 

[badga]

For all and any who are on the brink of a PV174 purchase, they dropped the price and are running a 10% coupon deal again at Dell, free shipping to boot. It can be had for under $600 now.

 

[Dimitri]

Why only the black one I wonder?

 

[Tummy]

Hi All! I just hooked up my Planar PV174 with GF3ti-500 via both dvi and analog. Thought I'd share some feedback as well. For me, let's start in 2d. Desktop is very purdy, clean, clear and hella sharp. I can notice that when I move windows around, if the window contains something like black background with white text, you can really see the pixels moving as you grab the window and move it around lots/fast. Kind of annoying, but not impossible to get used to.

In 3d, I notice ghosting when running 3dmark2k1 in most tests regardless of what resolution I run at. Perhaps it is because I have too many FPS, I don't know, but it is kind of annoying but not impossible to get used to. Also in RTCW, I notice the ghosting as well, it's not nearly as sharp as my Panasonic SL90 is.

One other thing I've noticed so far is that the colours in my games seems totally off, they look completely washed out and I'm not too sure why that is just yet. 3dmark looks okay but wolfenstien looks bad, as does starcraft (starcraft actually looks pretty blurry). Too bad there is no way to sharpen the 640x480 modes. In my 2d modes, black backgrounds show up as black backgrounds, but in everygame I've tried so far, black looks grey, and I haven't figured out a way to play around with this yet.

I remember a program that let you set color adjustments for 3d games, does anybody know what program that was since I can't remember? Thanks in advance!

 

[Omer]

so is the planar 17.4 really have a 50ms response time instead of the advertised 25ms ? that would be a big deal for most of us thinking of buying one.

and for those playing quake engine games on your LCDs. There is a command to max the fps so it doesn't go over a certain number ( com_maxfps I think *updated* ). Anyway, it might be useful to set it to 40 or 50 to avoid ghosting -- wonder if that helps.

 

[Tummy]

Oh good, I was wondering if there was a way to max the FPS.

I will look around tonight or tomorrow and ses if that helps/makes any difference and let you know.

 

[test99]

It is highly doubtful that PLANAR PV174 has 50ms responce time.

This monitor was introduced in December 2001.

No one makes monitors with that high of a responce times anymore.

It should be the same LCD as the VG175 from Viewsonic which has the 3X response times.

there is ghosting because you are playing games with too high of a FPS count. the best way is to keep at around 40-50fps.

 

[Big Lar]

Off the Planar site:
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Model Number PV174
Planar Part Number 996-0524-00 (Black)
996-0523-00 (White)

Display Panel 17.4" color active matrix LCD (TFT)
Color 16.7 million
Viewing Angle 160° Horizontal and Vertical
Brightness (typical) 220 cd/m2
Contrast Ratio (typical) 400:1
Response Time (typical) 15 ms rise, 10 ms fall

As you can see, The response time is 25ms typical

 

[Tummy]

Well, whatever it is, it's too slow!!!!

I locked my fps to my vsync so it's stuck at 60fps, but I could still see ghosting in that. Is there another way to lock games to a slightly lower FPS?

 

[Big Lar]

You could max out the settings in your games, and vid card........ My lcd dosn't show any ghosting at all now, could be I am just not seeing it, or going over to a digital connection may have cleared it up.

 

[Tummy]

I'm using a digital connection too and i can still see it.

I guess you're lucky if you don't see it, I'm jealous. I'm still hoping that faster lcd's come out soon, I'd definitely be in line for an upgrade if they're not too expensive.

 

[badga]

yeah i maxed out fps at 40 which should be about where a 25ms panel will perform at. no change, still ghosting, but liveable. Is suspect this is about as good as it gets for a year or so when the next gen or gen after this makes an upgrade worthwhile. In the meantime i will enjoy the wonders of my cleared desk.

 

[Tummy]

badga how did you max out at 40fps?

 

[badga]

Tummy, somewhere above, Omer indicated a command for Q3a based games \com_maxfps "xx" where xx = whatever max fps you want set. This works with Q3a and Q3a mods...not sure with tweaked engine games like RtCW and MOH:AA