19" CRT or LCD for gaming

Exfoliate

Assuming you get a trusted brand I think you'll be very satasfied. The contrast, brightness, and color accuracy are great these days, to the point you honestly won't miss a thing if you get a good model. 8ms is just fine, lower is naturally better but it pretty much comes down to different degrees of 'good'. LCD's also are proven to cause much less eye strain over prolonged periods of use (no refresh rate flicker like you get with crt's) so if you game a lot for hours it's a nice investment.

The only issue you might want or need to change resolutions a lot, especially with newer demanding games and CRT's are more versitile and adept as this as there's no real native resolution like with LCDs. This may have improved but it's something to look out for.

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LoneStar

As always, thanks for the in-depth reply exfoliate. Also, most LCD's max out at a 85Mhz refresh rate. With V-sync on, that means all my games will also max at 85 fps correct? Some CRT's however can have up to 140-150Mhz refresh rates.

However I still am leaning towards the LCD, because from experience, they are better to look at, for long or short periods of time.

Big B

Displays are one thing that you just need to look at and decide for yourself. The biggest issue with LCD's is they're targeted for one particular resolution. They look fantastic at that resolution, but moving off that they're less than pleasing to the eye.

And yes, IF you have Vsync on, you'll be limited to the refresh rate. Unless you're experiencing visual tearing, there's no good reason to leave V-sync on.

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Exfoliate

You're welcome Lonestar, happy to help. And yeah you'd be limeted to 85fps but there's nothing wrong with that. Most modern games won't run that well anyway and you won't notice any extra fluidity after 60fps anyway. Nothing to worry about dude.

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edijs

Well, i personally suggest you take the CRT. The tech has simply more history of evolution than the LCD does. Hey, don't get me wrong, nothing against LCDs - they're cool, but you gotta have luck buying a good model.

Gar0foli

Wait a minute!!! CRT's are better?

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Big B

Depends on your needs.

CRT:
--Pros--
-No optimized resolution
-Cheaper than an LCD

--Cons--
-More power used
-Heavier than LCD's

LCD'
--Pros--
-Lightweight
-Power-efficient
-Small foot print

--Cons--
-Optimized for one resolution
-Typically more expensive than a comparable CRT

The biggest deciding factor, IMO, is the resolution issue. Unless you know for a fact that the LCD's optimal resolution will serve your gaming needs, a CRT is a better choice. You will not run Quake 4 and Oblivion at the same resolutions and get the same performance.

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harrack52

Well past an average of 60fps, your eyes can't possibly see the difference, so getting 150fps is useless. At that point, you should turn the eye candy on. Of course a higher max fps increases the average fps, but it also increases the delta between the min fps and max fps, which can create tearing.

Basically 85hz is plenty enough, and vsync should always be turned on imo, along with triple buffering which will prevent your frames from cutting in half under heavy load, preventing stutter. Vsync and triple buffering go hand in hand. If one is turned on, the other should be too.

In any case, modern games at decent resolutions will not give you anywhere near an average of 60 fps, let alone 150, unless you have top of the line hardware.

DaRuSsIaMaN

What the hell is the difference between fps and refresh rate?? Am I understanding this right: the frames of a game are like the parts on a film strip or the individual pictures in a cartoon which are moved in front of a projector quickly to produce what appears to be a moving picture, right? Weren't there ever any games that didn't have any frames? Like when u move your mouse around on your desktop, the OS isn't using any kind of fps to produce that motion, right??

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Exfoliate

This a lot to take in but should help a bit I hope> Frame rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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LoneStar

One more question, is there a huge difference between a DVI and an Analog cable? The monitor I'm thinking about doesn't come with a DVI and they are like 12 bucks. Is the image that much sharper?

Swansen

um my monitor has a respone time of like 3 or 4ms and its an lcd

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Exfoliate

LoneStar, you'll be fine with analog, I hightly doubt you'd notice a difference by switching, but at least if you do have some issue for any reason you can just put down $12 and go DVI.

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DaRuSsIaMaN

Ahh wikipedia to the rescue -- typical.

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My computer is not much to brag about, but I shall do so anyway.
AMD 1800+ Athlon XP..............SoundBlaster PCI 512
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