Yes said:
I expect to have to buy a new monitor soon and would like to get some
input as to which brands to focus my research. The market has changed
a lot since the last time I bought a monitor (2005). Google provided
over 100,000 hits for the terms monitor review recoomendation 2012 and
the reviews I read were not useful Tom's Hardware resumed reviewing
monitors, but they only do three or so at a time.
FWIT, I'll be using it for everyday things such as browsing and office
stuff but also to play some older CRPG games, not current, bleeding
edge games. It'll sit on my desk, so I'm going to be looking at
something sized 19-23 inch to fit there.
One thing I saw in current threads referred to a newer tech called IPS
as opposed to TN monitors. Is IPS widely available now? Do they
require a new video card? Does it look like it will become widely
used? Is there a price differential between it and monitors using TN?
So what brands are considered as quality brands these days - meaning
they work out of the box, are problem free and will last well beyond a
piddling two or three years?
Thanks,
John
The panel type in the monitor, doesn't affect the video card choice.
There are five or more panel "flavors", like TN and IPS, and the same
video card drives all of them. Video cards have connector standards
such as VGA, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, and those are there to ensure
the pixel data is transferred properly. Then, it's up to the logic
on the monitor, to convert those ones and zeros, into a usable color image.
When a new video card may be required, is when you switch from a crappy
resolution (say 640x480), to extremely high resolution (30" monitor
with 2560x1600 resolution). In that case, a heavier requirement
is placed on the video card interface. On DVI for example, the breakpoint
is around 1920x1200 at 60Hz with reduced blanking (RB) format. Newer
video cards support "dual DVI", which is two sets of pins on
the connector for double the bandwidth. A newer video card is
needed to drive s 30" high res monitor at native resolution (2560x1600).
If your new purchase is 1920x1080 or 1600x1200, then that's going to
be less of a potential issue.
For extreme resolutions, DVI/HDMI/DP are preferred to VGA, as VGA
can ghost a bit. At 1280x1024, they would all perform about equally.
With regard to panel type, you can try the Wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPS_panel
Benefits of TN (if there are any)
1) Fast GTG. That is the ability to turn pixels on and off. With
overdrive, this can be as low as 2 milliseconds. Fast GTG is useful
for FPS computer games ("twitch" games).
2) Panel is cheap. Did I mention the panel is cheap ? It's cheap.
So cheap, the front surface might not even be flat.
Benefits of IPS
1) Wider viewing angle without color shift.
2) Slightly slower GTG (but improving with new variants of IPS).
At one time, original IPS was only useful for Photoshop, and the
panel would have been too slow for anything else. But they're no
longer that bad. the current generation of IPS are a compromise,
intended to make IPS more "mainstream" and useful.
One other kind of delay on panels, is input lag. That is the
delay from when the electrical signal enters the connector on the
monitor, until the image appears on the screen. Some monitors can have
a delay of three frame times or more. Others, are quite fast. The
delay can't be zero, because things like resampling or color
correction or other forms of monkey business are required. But
in some cases, the lag is unfathomable (too much delay to make sense).
Once the lag is large, you swing around too far in a game, to aim
your gun properly.
And input lag may not be in the spec sheet. In fact, the industry
takes pride, in only listing "junk specifications", that don't
tell you how the monitor really works. It's like in the bad old
days, when you could buy a 17" TV and it was only 15" actual size.
Useful specifications aren't actually listed. Or you'd buy a
400W "PEP" stereo, that actually only put out 10W RMS. They like
to list specs you cannot use.
To detect an input lag issue, read the customer feedback reviews for
the product. That's the best way to detect it. Have someone else
test it for you.
For an article on LCD monitors, Xbitlabs has had a couple good ones.
This is one of them.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/monitors/display/lcd-parameters.html
Paul
