Good 19" TFT for gamer?

Hi!

I'd like to buy a new tft monitor with DVI.

Which ones are good monitors atm? - Not too expensive! (200-350 €). Also I dislike build-in speakers.

I was thinking of the Syncmaster 930BF.

Any experience?

Thanks,
Grisu

Well, I currently own a 17" Samsung SyncMaster 730B, and thanks to it, I cant bloody stand CRTs and their damned refresh-rate flicker anymore, great for gaming, 8ms refresh-rate, 600:1 contrast ratio, both VGA & DVI output.......possibly look for something of similar or better spec for yer 19".



Still currently awaiting those SRT (or whatever it was) monitors that have still yet to come out, which are supposed to boast a good 100,000:1 contrast ratio along with very low refresh delay.

[EDIT] Just checked out the specifications of the 930BF you got yer eye on, seems like a very good gaming monitor, only thing I could see that I may have wanted on a 19" though was support for 1600x1200 rez, which said monitor seems to stick to the usual native 1280x1024.

There's lots of new ones out, are you aware that 19" is the same resolution as 17" ?.

To get above 1280x1024 you need to get a 20" tft, anything under 8ms should be great in games, just make sure it does true 24bit colour and not 16bit like some cheaper ones do.

I would look at a viewsonic, they are very good quality and have a few ranges at different prices.

The problem I have with 20" is that I don't want to play games at 1600 or so. 1280 is high enough. And if you have a higher res tft games look bad when you don't use the native resolution.

If you use the DVI output, (depending on your card drivers) you can adjust how the graphics information is sent out, can scale it with aspect ratio, display it 1:1 with the actual pixel resolution of the game, scale it full, etc.

Defaults to stretching it to fit on non 1280x1024 resolutions, which distorts the vision a bit because of the different aspect ratios.
(which is usually from 4:3 to 5:4)

The ViewSonic monitors are pretty good and cheap too.

I have a 19" SyncMaster 913n ( no DVI ) ... got it for £150 a few months back and I have had no issues at all .... didn't even need to set it up, just worked off the bat, no dead pixels, great refresh rate so great for gaming. A bargain.

Stevie

Ditto - I think the 913N is a great value TFT if like me you can't see the need for DVI (yes it's better, but it's so marginal in the setups I've seen).

All Samsung TFTs have a zero dead pixel policy, and I think they're the only company that does offer such a policy. Most others will claim that up to 3-5 dead pixels is "normal" and you may have a hard time getting a replacement - although I've no personal experience of trying. Zero dead pixels only applies to fully stuck pixels (black or white, not tinted pixels) on arrival, but I have no issues in 3 months, and the 50 or so at work had no issues on arrival and still don't (that I'm aware) 6 months on. It might not have DVI, but I spent the extra £100 it would have cost me to get an equivalent with DVI on games...

ive got a viewsonic and its great and they have quicker update now there down to 2ms. cheap too

Pete

Thanks guys for all the input.

Think I'll spend some time on viewsonic (never heard of this brand before).

I have a viewsonic VA1912w (that's wide @ 1440x900)

I also have an iiyama E483S (that's normal @ 1280x1024)

I've got to say that, for the average user, they won't know the difference when opting for the viewsonic.

Wide is very nice once you get used to it. Not ALL games can cope very well, but MANY do, and those that do, get quite a boost for having taken the trouble.

The iiyama was on special at £200 the viewsonic was at full retail gouging at just short of £250 - I love them both!

As a previous skeptic I can honestly say Viewsonic is worth a look over. Oh and both come with speakers which I would have preferred they did not, however the Viewsonic ones win hands down over the iiyama ones. Just ignore them and use real speakers. Both monitors feature VGA and DVI inputs, the Viewsonic included cables for BOTH. It's not very often that any maker makes iiyama look not quite so good, Viewsonic seem to be one of the few contenders. Having said that the image on the iiyama is just that little bit more special, but I'm into graphics in a big way and would notice some diferences that others mostly would not.

There's no way I'd entertain CRT again in practical terms. I'll have been using TFT/LCD for a year in about December. There was a short adjustment period of about 2 months overall. (images look odd as they are no longer "bent", unlearning years of that take s the old grey stuff a few weeks to be completely rid of that).

Good luck and happy hunting.

Something else to be aware of:

You'll basically find two types of screens: ones advertised to have 16.7 million colors, and ones that claim to have 16.2 million. you'll also see screens with response times anywhere between 16ms and 2 ms.

Most of the lowest response time monitors are actually the 16.2 million models. A significant difference is that those are based on 6-bit panels rather than 8 bit. They can only accurately represent 65K colors, and use some smart dithering algorithms to fake smooth transitions and such... but you are still much more likely to encounter 'color banding' and the likes than with the true 8-bit 16.7 million color screens.

so... if you're just into gaming, a 2ms 16.2 million color screen is great. If you also are into digital image editing and such where accurate colors are important, you'd probably want one of the 5-8ms 16.7 million color screens.

In the first category the Viewsonic VX922 is a pretty good contender, at a good price as well. I just ordered a 16.7 million color 8ms screen myself yesterday, the Acer AL1917ABDM...

Next, when buying an LCD, make sure you get one that has a DVI connector. Even if your current video card doesn't have DVI, more than likely your next one will. the image quality over DVI is much better than over standard VGA, resulting in a clearer/crisper image, and less blurring. There is little price difference in monitors with and without DVI now, so its well worth making sure whatever screen you buy has a DVI port.

Also, when buying an LCD make sure to read a lot of reviews, and stay far away from the no-name budget models. There are different 'grades' of panels made by the various manufacturers, and obviously the lowest grade panels are the cheapest. Very few monitor companies give you a guarantee that the screen you buy will be flawless, and pretty much all specify how many flaws are considered 'acceptable'. With most vendors, you will not qualify for a repair or replacement if you have <4 dead or stuck pixels. (Their reasoning is that if every screen had to be flawless, prices would be much to high for people to be interested). but with the a-brands, there's a high likelyhood that you'll get a flawless screen anyway. With the companies at the bottom end of the market, though, sometimes *dozens* of dead pixels is still no grounds for a return/repair, and the chances that you will have dead pixels is much higher thanks to the lower grade panels used. When you're thinking about a screen, look at sites that include user reviews, and see how many users mention that they got (or didn't) dead pixels. Ordering any LCD is pretty much a gamble, but some reasearch can definitely put the odds in your favor.

XLSIOR:

You made some darn good points there and I failed the OP by not covering them, you're quite right of course to raise them.

I think I am right in saying that Viewsonic have a better policy than most, at least I've often seen it said when I did my research, and yes they can be a little dearer as a result, but that's not an absolutely bad thing in my view.

Oh, and one last thought: Wide has another, not immediately obvious benefit; it's actually got less pixels for the same size (ie 19" Wide has fewer pixels [1296000] than 19" Regular [1310720]). It may be that it taxes the machine it's attached to by a marginal and notionally smaller amount. Might be an issue, but a very small one at most, I'd grant you! ;O) 16:10 is where desktop and a growing number of laptops meet, so it might be well worth getting into as "convergence" becomes a bigger issue, as it looks like it might well do. Just a little forward thought really.

Here's another interesting link:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/519-3/lcd-screens-dead-pixels.html

dead-pixel policies per manufacturer, i.e. how 'bad' your screen could possibly be before the manufacturer will consider it eligible to be exchanged/returned.

Some have absolutely *OUTRAGEOUS* policies: a BenQ T-series screen, for example, is 'allowed' to have up to 96 defective sub-pixels before the manufacturer will exchange it. That means you can have 90 pixels permanently stuck on bright red, and you're just out of luck. So better keep that in mind before trying to save a couple of bucks and going with the budget models.

Viewsonic is among the better ones... Another good one is Philips, with their 'perfect panel' policy. Unfortunately they mostly seem to have the 6-bit panels, though.

(My current no-name advueu has one bad subpixel, right in the center of the screen that's permanently stuck on red. Under windows you can't really see it, but if you're playing a dark-ish game or full-screen DVD, it is very obviously there... I can't even imagine getting stuck with a BenQ with 90 bad sub pixels, though.

That link above is definitely recommended reading.

Very interesting read that was.

I seem to have got kit from very much more resonable makers there. Oddly enough I got no problem pixels in either case, so it never arose.

One thing though, on the iiyama, a thunderfly found it's way into the gap between the outer and inner screens, giving a fine impression of dead pixels, but ones that rotate depending on which way up it feels like crawling!

I DO hold iiyama responsible for this though, as small insects are both a reality and a totally forseeable problem, and one which they have fully failed to address in preventative terms through design. If that thing dies in there in a place I can see it, they can expect a somewhat snotty e-mail from me about that. That bit is not rocket science, simply a fact of life. It could be solved with a bit of tape where the two join, or even with some sort of mastic/epoxy.

I would expect a company with iiyama's experience and reputation to have performed better in this respect. One should be able to reasonably expect that much in a Premium Brand.