Are these ideal for gaming? What should one look for in specs. Are the
technologies good enough to replace a good CRT maonitor for sharpness?
They are good enough now. I was skeptical like you. I saw some early
LCDs my neighbors bought at super high prices and I thought they
really sucked.
Theyve looked OK for a while now but the response times were poor for
gaming. People in general dont seem to mind actually. They seem to
overlook most faults and almost all the LCDs get rave reviews by
consumers nowadays even if they do have faults.
My big complaints with the early ones when they actually had two
different screens since TFT/active matrix screens were expensive --
the cheap ones often were really poor. They had really narrow viewing
angles and the dark shades often looked really bad and the colors
washed out.
Now almost all of them look rich and vibrant though when you look at
extreme angles LCDs do look different so they have the viewing angle
spec still listed and the dark shades --- I often cant stand watching
movies with dark scenes on them cause its hard to tell whats going on,
the differences contrasts between dark shades doesnt seem to be that
good on many of them. Its mentioned once in a while in reviews like on
LCD TVs. They all tend to have colors that look vibrant and rich as I
said but their color accuracy isnt always that great so I wouldnt use
them for high end graphics work unless you really know the model you
are getting is decent.
Theres also native res issues. LCDs are only really sharp in native
resolution and many of the 19" are 1280 x 1024. There are 20" LCDs Ive
seen at that have native resolutions of 1200x1600. at far far higher
prices. There might be some 19" ones too I dont know probably at far
higher prices if they are around.
The other thing is reponse time, Its kind of related to the above. The
makers started coming out with faster and faster LCD screens for
gamers - less than 25 ms. You see claims of 4 ms now. Besides the
fact there are ways to interpret these numbers , you cant swallow all
the numbers at face value ---- the main claim was they did this by
using 6 bit panels instead of 8 bit so that many of the shades were
dithered resulting in banding and not the most accurate shades of
colors. Anandtech used to point this out a lot in reviews and it
seemed like it was more of a big deal at Euro sites than the US
consumers. So once again the fast 6 bits might not be the best panels
for people into graphics work.
I ended up getting a VIewsonic which is a 6 bit panel and frankly
though I was all worried about it I really dont notice any problems
though Id sure like to get a LCD next that was fast and wasnt a 6 bit.
They are talking about SEDs displays coming out next year so who knows
maybe there might be a new and better technology or maybe some
breakthrough in LCDs. Im sure not all 8 bit panels are good at
graphics work so its not that simple. I dont know if there are any
fast 8 bit LCD screens.
As I said though Im satisfied and everything generally looks OK to me
but then I dont do critical graphics work and Im not crazy about
watching movies on my LCD screen. I prefer watching them on my TV CRT.
