Monitor Response Time

[Bijo]

The monitor I have now is an LCD with a response time of 16 ms. I never really paid attention to this, but as I found out I was shocked, thinking it's too much.

So now I'm thinking of getting a new monitor with a refresh rate of 2 ms. The question is if it matters enough to be worth it? Will I see any noticeable difference, and what other important related information can you give me?

[Beirut]

Response times are variable to say the least. One company will measure the time it takes for a pixel to go from black to white to black, for example, and another company will only measure the time for black to white, and so on.

Best to read reviews and use your eyes. What you see is what you get.

Are you getting ghosting with your screen now, fast moving graphics not keeping up with themselves? If so, you will see a big difference at 2ms.

I have a 19" Viewsonic VX922. It has a listed 2ms response time and got good reviews. Decent price too. I mostly fly flightsims and have never experienced any ghosting or image tearing even when things get fast and busy on-screen. Other games like M:TW run very well and look great.

The only downside to this screen is that movies don't look as good as they could. Animated stuff like Finding Nemo look fantastic, but ordinary movies look a bit blah. Good, but not outstanding. As a game screen, I'm loving my Viewsonic. Wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

Some other people here really like the new Samsung screens. Not sure which model.

[sapi]

Put it this way - if you didn't notice enough to care about the response time before reading about it, there's probably no need to upgrade (anything under 8ms looks fine and there's some fantastic monitors that run at 16ms).

If you do want to upgrade, the sweet spot at the moment is 22" widescreen (in my experience). I recently got a viewsonic one and it's been great, but your milage may vary ;)

[Bijo]

Well, I get some image tearing sometimes, so I assumed V-sync would take care of that, but it didn't. The fast-moving graphics not keeping up, etc., yeah.

Some games recommend certain settings, which actually give the sense they are okay, but something's in their way bottlenecking the whole shebang. I'm thinking processor, and/or monitor.

[Beirut]

What are your system specs and what games are giving you torn graphics?

[Bijo]

AMD Athlon XP @ 1.82
1.5 GB RAM
Radeon X1600Pro 512MB
Lots of hard disk space


As you see, it's low-end. But the games I play (M2TW, Counterstrike: Source) run smoothly, though with the torn up graphics.


(I should totally upgrade anyway, hrrm )

[sapi]

What do you mean by 'torn up graphics'?

If you mean that textures are stretching across the screen (and not just blurring if you turn too quickly) then you've got a graphics error, probably caused by heat, not a monitor one.

Oh, and i wouldn't bother with v-sync, especially with a low end card, though that's just my opinion (i don't see much point in locking your output to your refresh rate when you're never going to hit it anyway.

[lars573]

The standards for response time are ms gray to gray (pixels) or colour to colour (pixels). But for gamming 8ms (CtoC) is best. Low ghosting. But LCD monitors take a minute to "warm up". During that time they ghost like crazy.

[Bijo]

By torn up graphics I mean a "stuttering movement", as if it moves in chunks. Imagine a 3D screen, then you move it in one constant direction, then imagine a hackley jerky movement (especially below in the screen). The FPS is fast, but in that certain part it moves jerky, as if skipping images.
All video settings are set to normal/default.

@lars
Thanks for the info.

[sapi]

That sounds really strange

@lars, i've never heard of that, probably because the warm up period (if it exists) is usually used in booting windows :P

[Caius]

Two questions:
How i know the response time

and

(sorry for bein' off topic, but it is for monitors)
Why monitors have a "interference" with cellphones?

[lars573]

That sounds really strange

@lars, i've never heard of that, probably because the warm up period (if it exists) is usually used in booting windows :P

Well I have unique environmental situation. My garage apartment has virtually no insulation. So it's really cold, but not outside the safe operating range. So in winter my LCD TV has to warm up and in that process it has crazy ghosting. It only lasts for a minute then it's great. Also when I was working for the computer wholesaler we were testing this low end LCD monitor. and we turned it off one friday and when I turned it back on on monday it ghosted for a few minutes.

Two questions:
How i know the response time

and

(sorry for bein' off topic, but it is for monitors)
Why monitors have a "interference" with cellphones?

1.It should be in the manual. If not check the manufaturers website.
2.Strong RF signals (like from a cell phone or wireless router) can interfere with them.

[Bijo]

@sapi
Well, maybe it's more clear if I say: it looks like a kind of frame-skipping (at the bottom of the screen). Let me apply it to M2TW.
You move the camera upwards/forwards, and in the distance (most of the screen) the movement is smooth and the FPS is fast, but nearby at the bottom of the screen there's frame-skipping (or whatever it is to be called).

[sapi]

@Bijo - no idea what that could be :(