AMD 64 3000+ vs AMD 64 X2 4200+

I don't blame you for supporting CRT's they're a great technology that's lasted for years and years. If you have the deskspace and don't mind a limeted screensize they're a tremendous value. Contrast is not an issue for CRT's and therefore will give you perfect blacks and great color balance and infinate viewing angles out of the box. But LCD's are a rapidly evolving technology that is not to be ruled out. Aside from the obvious space saving design we've heard a million times. It's really a godsend when you have to move them around compaired to a 50 pound+ CRT. And with an LCD when it says 19" you're actually getting your 19, unlike CRT's where you loose about an inch off what they're actually listed as. I don't think anyone with an 8ms LCD will complain about ghosting of motion blur, you're eye will not be able to pick up any real delay at that speed. Similar to why you're eye can't discern a faster speed than 60fps in games. LCD's have become much brighter over the years, as well as having vastly improved black levels. They save a lot more power than CRT's, often have tilt and swivel adjustments and frequently include usb ports even. It's also worth noting you can easily use you're LCD as a HD TV, the DVI interface as opposed to CRT's vga gives guarenteed support for a 1080p image for instance, provided that your screen support it.
I will knock some LCD's for their native screen resolution. It looks good on that for sure but in some cases if say you need to take it down to 800x600 for a demanding game you notice some degredation in image quality and stretching. This however is not really apparent in new screens and generally appears on older of lesser quality LCD's.
Concidering graphics professions are rapidly adopting LCD's I don't think there's anything to worry about in terms of color accurary today, provided you go for a quality monitor. It really comes down to what you can afford. Do you want a highly function 19" (well 18") screen for cheap. CRT is a great choice. Or do you want a big huge 24" but have money to blow?
 
Let me tell you, this is my second attempt at this post. I'm a little agitated because my first attempt was cleared when an advertisement forced the browswer to switch pages. Yeah it was somewhat lengthy too, nice and detailed.

I pretty much said this:
Let's remember he's upgrading his computer - purchasing a new monitor is a bad buy when he doesn't need one and the fact that his existing one is probably better than any LCD. Though, I do agree with most of what Ex has posted except for the ghosting. I've seen good quality LCDs and bad ones, but they still cannot compare to CRTs. Why? Because LCDs are digital, they run a finite number of colors amonst other things, CRTs are analog - their options are infinite since they can run across the whole spectrum. If you did want a good gaming LCD, I think they run around $770 and up. But even then, there is no benefit over a CRT other than deskspace.

By the way, I have a 19" CRT and while the casing is big, it is not a 17" with a 19" label. Screen sizes are labeled on the size of the screen, no matter how big the casing is. Flat panels just look bigger because your eyes are playing tricks on you.

My video card is an All-in-Wonder so I watch TV on my computer, listen to the radio, etc. I guess my computer is a Tivo since it records my shows when I'm not home. This said, I do have an actual 37" flat panel LCD TV and Tivo, so I don't use my computer as much for that area (mainly for gaming).

Final point, just because people are adopting it, it does not make the technology better. Experts continue to say that CRTs have better images and rightly so - because they do. But as you said, many professionals and gamers alike are turning to LCDs. Why? I think because its more ergonomical. Again, like you said, they're lighter weight, provide more space, plus they just look better. I am considering getting one myself, but that will not change the fact that CRTs produce a better image. And for the purpose of an upgrade this would be a poor buy.


My suggestion:
Anything Below 20" you should want to do CRT
Anything Above 20" you should want to do LCD
Anything Equal to or Around 20" should be a toss-up.

At this point, I think a 19" monitor is perfect for gaming and a 20" should be as far as anyone should go. If you go beyond 20" you're probably doing more than just gaming and the space saver will definitely be a factor.
 
wow theres alot to take in there.... i think its important to look at all factors here, but with the CRT being free and an LCD not being free i think ill go with the CRT from my dad, and then get the 7600GT for my card, thanks for the tremendous info on monitors guys, i appreciate it
 
Sure dude, if it's free definately go with it.
vol7ron, you've got some great points but I just thought I'd add a bit just for discussion purposes. It's really not hard to find a good LCD for cheap, even in the 20"+ category you don't have to spend more than $400 to get something great, even less oftentimes. For example.
Newegg.com - Once You Know, You Newegg
Here's a good resouce which sums up a lot of good points: http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/Pub/LCD_vs_CRT_AH.pdf
Also most new LCD's are widescreen which is great for DVD's if you're into that sort of thing. This isn't to say that LCD's are the way to go for sure but with dropping prices and improving technology it's a good choice when it does come time to upgrade.
 
wow, thats alot to take in again.... lol idk if you guys what to anser a new question i have, but i was wondering how much faster would DDR2 ram(800i think) over DDR 400?
 
halfpipehippie said:
wow, thats alot to take in again.... lol idk if you guys what to anser a new question i have, but i was wondering how much faster would DDR2 ram(800i think) over DDR 400?
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Make a new thread for this and we will answer it there.

Ex, I know what you're doing and I was looking at if from purely a gaming/performance perspective. If you're watching DVDs or doing something else, you would still get a better picture on a CRT but you wouldn't lose much on an LCD. If that's what I was doing, I would get an LCD to save space (as I said, I'm looking into buying one). But again, as I said, you will never be able to top the quality display/performance of a CRT; you can only try to match. This is why I was somewhat shocked when Mut said his LCD is better than a CRT - I was really surprised - my mouth fell open and I was just amazed. Consumers are being swayed to buy it because of the ergonomics and because its a "new technology", but they don't see that its not the best technology.
 
vol7ron,

Sorry for hurting your CRTs, but when I shared my opinion I was not referring to each and every CRT and LCD out there. I actually shared an experience - before I bought the LCD I was doubtful for the same reason, would I be buying into a negative effect upon my games?
The answer from my LCD was no. I am experiencing a better quality of image - arguably since my CRT was older technology (a rounded glass face - where the brightness and quality fade in the corners).

Though one downside is that unless the LCD is set at its native resolution while gaming, the quality is greatly lessened (more than on CRT). If you can run 1280x1024 in-game then it looks superb.
 
Now I agree with that, especially older CRTs have their problems. Just had an old Gateway (very old - mid 90s) sizzle up the other day. It is not as likely that the board will fry in an LCD, but LCDs will burnout their pixels.

You can normally change the beveling of the screen on a CRT, but if you get a CRT I would recommend getting a flat screen. Get as close as you to making it look like an LCD, but keep the quality.

I was reading a review of the best 25"? 27"? (somewhere around the mid-20s) LCDs and they were going into how great the image quality is..yada yada yada. For high definition movies and other tasks, sure it was good. Response was low (if not noticeable at all) they commented on how sharp it looked and how great it was. But when they went into the gaming they didn't harp on it so much, they tried to downplay. Of course they were on some nice size resolution (something like 1600x1200) but they (this is on AnandTech) showed a screen shot of WoW (World of Warcraft) in a desert-like setting. The sand looked so granular and pixelated it was just ew.

They mentioned how they showed the shot there because LCDs have trouble in high contrast areas and places like those - they were just letting you know the $1000 LCD they were looking at was better than other LCDs at this time, but still not as good as CRTs.

In my personal preference I don't care so much about the point-click games like WoW, EverQuest2, Age of Empires, etc. I'm more worried about FPS (first person shooter) games likes Counter-Strike: Source, Unreal Tournament, Halo3 (released sometime next year), etc. FPS are more dependent on mouse responsiveness.
 
Yeah I am pretty sure my CRT was on its way. I just tried it now in America's Army. And it is certainly slower - the colours are also starting to get a little messed.
Since I am not gaming 24/7, I spend time watching DVDs, web design and browsing the internet, an LCD is much better for me.
 
I can see what you're getting at with the WOW problem there but there could be a lot of reasons why that screenshot looked junky, not necessarially due to LCD.
For starters screen shots almost always look terrible. They're taken in mid motion and it's often blurred (if you've ever seen screenshot in magizines especially they look horrid, extreamly grainly and pixelated) and if v sync isn't enabled the textures can tear regarless of weather you're using a CRT of LCD. I'm assuming the detail settings were maxed but that's no guarentee either.
FPS's are a concern as you mentioned though, if you've got a junky responce time, or a misleading one like black to white vs. grey to grey or whatever fast twitch based games might smear quite a bit. The only other concern I can think of is viewing angle. Newer screens have pretty good viewing angles, CRT's have infinate angles where you can read what's on screen. But I've seen a lot of LCD's, on laptops especially that or horrid. If you're not directly in front of the screen things come off really dark, distorted and totally discored and washed out. That's something that should be taken into account with the rise of SED technology.
 
You see, for me, viewing angle is not as bad for gaming because you're going to be right there in front of your computer and usually you won't change the swivel of the monitor. But if you're going to be watching a DVD from a distance, then yes this could be an even bigger factor.

In response to the picture they're showing, I wasn't makign remarks to the vertical lines, as those are refresh lines that you wouldn't see. Much like when you capture a TV show with a handheld videocamera, you see a vertical line go down the screen every so often - it's not noticeable to the naked eye, but is caught by the recorder. The same is happening with the photo (I assume they took the picture with a digital camera).

I, on the other hand, was trying to make notice of the quality of the sand disregarding the other elements of the photo. If you read the article they did set the resolution to high which could account for some of this, but I was giving an example of how LCDs muck up the image - and this wasn't even a bad image, it's a photo of one of the best quality LCDs out there. Again, I doubt there would be as much of a problem for the monitor on lower settings, but I've seen LCDs cheaper LCDs that just put out poor quality images.

I will find pictures. By the way your post earlier to the newegg site about cheap LCDs, those are not good quality, and in my opinion "gaming", LCDs. They have an 8ms response and I just, ... no,...no. I couldn't recommend that for gaming over a CRT, despite how much space it would save.

Again when I'm talking about gaming, I'm talking about the Money-making First Person Shooter games that demand more response from your monitor, mouse, and system. I am making mention of this time of gaming (not only because that's what I play) but because they demand more of your box, otherwise who care cares what you have if all you're doing is playing Solitaire or online poker.
 
Matt said:
amd rates whatever00+ on the minimum performance vs intelP4. so what that basically means is that an amd 3000+ will normlly demolish an intel of a 3ghz rating.
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That's a common misconception. The performance ratings are NOT making comparisons to Intel, although they do work at giving rough estimates. The performance is equal to the Thunderbird core Athlon running at x speed. For a 3000+, it'd be if the T-bird was running at 3GHz.
 
vol7ron said:
I will find pictures. By the way your post earlier to the newegg site about cheap LCDs, those are not good quality, and in my opinion "gaming", LCDs. They have an 8ms response and I just, ... no,...no. I couldn't recommend that for gaming over a CRT, despite how much space it would save.
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong, I'm saying those are superior alternatives to CRT's in gaming. But seriously there's nothing wrong with 8ms, 8 thousands of a second isn't going to be noticeable. I might have my doubts too but concidering the sheer volume of raving reviews I'm not too worried about their quality. Especially concidering they are pretty cheap.
 
Exfoliate said:
Don't get me wrong, I'm saying those are superior alternatives to CRT's in gaming.
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I really don't think they are though. There is no way that an LCD is superior, the best it can be is equal. But yes in the last two years there have been advancements to improve their performance.

Some LCDs are posted having 2ms but really don't deliver that quality, so what makes me think 8ms will be any better? When I look at LCDs I'm going to look for ones that also can be made a TV. Why? Because I figure if it's a TV there's probably a better chance that there's less ghosting and that the response time really will be accurate as posted. So far I haven't been upset with the LCDs that are also TVs.
 
Shoot, my bad, I typed that last post a bit too fast, believe me I did mean to put a 'not' in there as in "I'm not saying those are superior alternatives..." as there's no way that even 8ms is going to trounce a CRT among other factors. I still stand by my statement that those LCD's I posted off newegg aren't too shabby, I mean that many voters can't be wrong.
But again I apoligize for my rather major error.

I'll have to check out some more LCD's of my Friend and play stuff like FEAR and Quake 4 etc. to see if they can hold up to the fast action.
 
The problem with reading a lot of people's ratings is that they're biased. If the thing doesn't work when they receive it, they give it 1 star, despite having got a replacement that is excellent. Shipping errors happen and lemons do show up, but those consumers generally are not rating only the product, they're also rating the experience in buying the product.

Another problem is, if it works as intended they will say it's the best thing ever. Again, most people have bought into the hype that LCDs are a superior and better technology - they're going to think that it's better.

Another problem is that sometimes the needs of other consumers don't meet the needs of your own. If someone was looking to save space, any LCD would be great, but a lot of consumers aren't the hardcore gamers. For this reason, you have to pay particularly close attention to what is being said and who is rating the product.

Finally, if you haven't heard of buyers remorse, it's the feeling you get when you receive the product and feel you paid too much for it. At the time it seemed it was worth the buy, but after buying it, it just doesn't somehow seem as it was now that you have it. Well I haven't read or heard of anything about this, but I believe there's also an opposite to buyers remorse, which my friends regularly hear me refer to as "Buyers Prestige". It's the condition after you buy something where you want everyone to believe you got the best - that it wasn't a wasted buy. It can be either a concious or subconcious condition that is onset to make a buyer feel better about his/her purchase - I'm sure we've all experienced this where we buy something not worth the money but gloat about just because it's "new", even if it's not as functional as you thought it would be. Well it's these actions that are also shown in user ratings.

And the final, final thing to be worried about is employees that feed the ratings. Some companies will purchase one of their products so that they can leave feedback and skew the perception of how a product is. Purely as an example, it would be like an Intel worker buying an AMD so that he can bash it and say that it underperformed. In some cases this is illegal, but when its an anonymous user, there's generally no way to detect.

All I'm saying is just be careful. I do typically use the user-ratings to guide my decisions though. In most cases they do reflect what I'm looking for and on places like NewEgg they can generally be trusted. But I do still hold a form of skepticism when reading posts, just so that I'm not blind-sided when a product arrives.
 
Yeah totally man, I always make sure they're actually informative, well founded and look like the guy actually knows why the product is actually a good buy and his/her experiences with it. If it just says "It's sucked" or "This thing is awesome!" I'm not really going to be all that swayed. But sometimes when there's just a massive amount of positive reviews, for example many hundred very positive reviews for some Corsair value select ram I can be sure that it's not a junk product. It also helps that I do all my computer shopping off newegg. It makes it easier for payments, shipping, and god forbid, RMA's.
 
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