LCD makes me dizzy?

[Nnyan]

Ok so whats the best why to determine which panel you have with your LCD?

 

[FireChicken]

In short there are no LCD bigger than 19" that can do 75hz at the native resolution. There are a few that can do 75 hz at scaled down resolutions. 2 viewsonic 22" VG2230wm and VX2235wm can do like 1400X1050 at 75 hz. There are supposed to be new lcds coming out soon that can do 100-150hz refresh. How soon??? Im hoping by the end of the year? any body else know when?

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Nnyan
Ok so whats the best why to determine which panel you have with your LCD?

Use a panel lookup site from the resources listed in The LCD Thread. Or just ask.

On second thought you probably meant with regards to the Dell and its panel lottery. Well, you can see from how the panel reacts. Look at it from an extreme angle and see if black turns purple. If it does, you have the high quality S-IPS panel. Also, if the screen looks more or less the same from all directions, it's an S-IPS. If you notice elements of a dark image changing, it's a VA.

The real test is just to see if you get dizzy or not. If not, then you have a "good" panel.

 

[Nnyan]

xtknight,

Again thank you! AT is very fortunate to have you as a resource.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Nnyan
xtknight,

Again thank you! AT is very fortunate to have you as a resource.

:thumbsup:

Many people wouldn't have bought a great lcd without his help!

 

[Nnyan]

@FireChicken: From what I've seen the 120Hz LCD's have only shown up in TV's so far 32"+. I would love to see 20-24" monitors with this tech but have yet to find anyone even thinking of releasing them.

Anyone have any information on the new LG L226WTY model that showed up on new egg? http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16824005097 With the 2ms I'm thinking it has OD, but does it have the same problems seen before?

 

[FireChicken]

NM

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: BassBomb
it takes a bit of time to get used to an LCD.... happened to me when i switched from CRT

I had the same problem going from a 17" CRT to 17" LCD.

Brightness killed me, made my eyes hurt and made me feel unwell.

Within a week, I was fine and I could never go back to a CRT style setup.

 

[Cutthroat]

It took me a bit to get used to it too, but I could never go back now.

LCD monitors do not 'flicker', they don't have an electron gun scanning the screen, so they do not refresh the screen the way a CRT did. The refresh rate really does not mean anything on a LCD monitor to the end user.

 

[CP5670]

The refresh rate is certainly still meaningful. The video card outputs frames at regular intervals regardless of what type of monitor it's connected to. It's just that practically all current LCDs can only do 60hz properly (without skipping frames).

@FireChicken: From what I've seen the 120Hz LCD's have only shown up in TV's so far 32"+. I would love to see 20-24" monitors with this tech but have yet to find anyone even thinking of releasing them.

I think there are a couple of computer monitors with it. I remember some talk of a BenQ model with it. However, these "120hz" LCDs are not actually 120hz at all. They're 60hz with extra black frames inserted between the normal frames to improve the response time, so they can still only display a maximum of 60fps.

In order to get true 120hz, there would need to be a new interface to replace DVI in addition to monitors that support it. Even dual link DVI would get maxed out quickly at 120hz.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Elcs

Originally posted by: BassBomb
it takes a bit of time to get used to an LCD.... happened to me when i switched from CRT

I had the same problem going from a 17" CRT to 17" LCD.

Brightness killed me, made my eyes hurt and made me feel unwell.

Within a week, I was fine and I could never go back to a CRT style setup.

Its been well over 2 weeks for me and sometimes I still have problems of feeling dizzy when reading text on a lcd monitor.

 

[Cutthroat]

pcslookout, try turning cleartype on or off, I can't read text very well with it off on mine, makes the lines in the letters really skinny.

 

[Nnyan]

@CP5670 thanks for the info even if it is a bit of a bummer. I'm going to buy myself an LCD next month or so for my bday so hopefully there are some better options in the 20-24" range for me to pick.

 

[Cutthroat]

It's been said multiple times in this thread that an LCD can only display 60 fps, am I missing what you are saying because I can clearly get more than 60fps if I don't have vsync on.

Here's a snippet copied from a site that copied it from an NEC page which no longer exists, but it's the best explanation of refresh rate in LCD monitors I can find.

" Flicker is a result of phosphor decay; that is, after the energy from the electron gun is transferred to the phosphor material, the energy and the resulting light begin to decay very slowly until the electron beam hits the phosphor again. ?

Since LCD monitors do not employ phosphors, refresh rate is not a concern. Basically, the transistors in the LCD remain open or closed as needed until the image changes. This can be a point of confusion for some consumers, however, since most graphics cards still ?ask for? a refresh rate setting. This is due to the analog nature of existing graphic cards (see ?Inputs? section) and their support for CRT displays. While refresh rates do not apply to LCD monitors, most LCDs are set up to accept any settings from 60Hz and above."

In very simple terms, the refresh rate on an LCD monitor means NOTHING, it is only there for compatibility reasons.

I read another interesting article while looking for that that explained a lot of users were having troubles with changing resolutions from 1024x768 or 800x600 CRT to a 1650x1080 LCD for instance and they can't read the text, or get used to the the huge desktop and small icons and text etc. You could change the font DPI to 120, but it makes everything look weird. Finally you could customize the size of the fonts and icons within the 'Windows colors and appearance' settings.

The two LCD's I have had also had some preset color settings that you could choose from, I found some actually hurt my eyes, so you could look into your monitor presets as well.

 

[CP5670]

@CP5670 thanks for the info even if it is a bit of a bummer. I'm going to buy myself an LCD next month or so for my bday so hopefully there are some better options in the 20-24" range for me to pick.

Unfortunately, I doubt there will be anything coming up so soon. The LCD market has become very stagnant these days. I've been hoping for something to come along and displace the NEC 20WMGX2 as the best all-round LCD, which is like 16 months old now, but we're instead getting increasingly more low end TN LCDs and fewer IPS ones.

It's been said multiple times in this thread that an LCD can only display 60 fps, am I missing what you are saying because I can clearly get more than 60fps if I don't have vsync on.

It doesn't matter if you're getting more than 60fps without vsync since the video card will not fully output every frame. Parts of some frames get dropped to make room for the extra ones, which results in the tearing effects you get. One way to look at it is that the rate at which the video card sends out actual pixels depends only the refresh rate, not the framerate.

Since LCD monitors do not employ phosphors, refresh rate is not a concern. Basically, the transistors in the LCD remain open or closed as needed until the image changes. This can be a point of confusion for some consumers, however, since most graphics cards still ?ask for? a refresh rate setting. This is due to the analog nature of existing graphic cards (see ?Inputs? section) and their support for CRT displays. While refresh rates do not apply to LCD monitors, most LCDs are set up to accept any settings from 60Hz and above."

This description is rather misleading. The monitor is still being fed input data at a specific rate irrespective of how it internally updates the pixels, so that will always be an upper limit to how fast the final image can be updated. Other restricting factors (like how fast the individual pixels can update, i.e. the response time) will sometimes come into play before you hit the limit imposed by a 60hz refresh rate, but that certainly doesn't mean that the refresh rate concept does not apply to LCDs.

 

[Cutthroat]

Originally posted by: CP5670

It's been said multiple times in this thread that an LCD can only display 60 fps, am I missing what you are saying because I can clearly get more than 60fps if I don't have vsync on.

It doesn't matter if you're getting more than 60fps without vsync since the video card will not fully output every frame. Parts of some frames get dropped to make room for the extra ones, which results in the tearing effects you get. One way to look at it is that the rate at which the video card sends out actual pixels depends only the refresh rate, not the framerate.

Since LCD monitors do not employ phosphors, refresh rate is not a concern. Basically, the transistors in the LCD remain open or closed as needed until the image changes. This can be a point of confusion for some consumers, however, since most graphics cards still ?ask for? a refresh rate setting. This is due to the analog nature of existing graphic cards (see ?Inputs? section) and their support for CRT displays. While refresh rates do not apply to LCD monitors, most LCDs are set up to accept any settings from 60Hz and above."

This description is rather misleading. The monitor is still being fed input data at a specific rate irrespective of how it internally updates the pixels, so that will always be an upper limit to how fast the final image can be updated. Other restricting factors (like how fast the individual pixels can update, i.e. the response time) will sometimes come into play before you hit the limit imposed by a 60hz refresh rate, but that certainly doesn't mean that the refresh rate concept does not apply to LCDs.

Refresh rate and response time are not exactly the same thing, when the fps is greater than a CRT refresh rate tearing can occur (parts of the image ar not aligned properly), when the fps is grater than the response time of a LCD, you should see ghosting (leftover frames giving a ghosting effect). I cannot get my monitor to show any symptoms of ghosting no matter the framerate. I have an Acer AL2216W, the response time is advertised as 5ms, so by this logic my maximum framerate should be 200fps, 1s/5ms=200. That is an optimal situation since the advertised respose time of LCD's is not measured using a standard so some manufacturers calculate the response time as the time it take for the pixel to change from white to black, which is optimal, but unlikely. Others measure it from grey pixel back to grey pixel, which is more real world.

Anyway, I made some screenshots to show there is no ghosting, tearing, artifacts or anything else when I have a fps>60.

http://i208.photobucket.com/al...at_012/stalkermain.jpg
http://i208.photobucket.com/al...oat_012/stalkersky.jpg
http://i208.photobucket.com/al..._012/stalkerforest.jpg
http://i208.photobucket.com/al...at_012/stalkerdoor.jpg
http://i208.photobucket.com/al...tthroat_012/3dmark.jpg

I tried to post them at 1680x1050, but photobucket automatically resized them.

I also had one showing more than 3000 fps on one of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R loading screens, but it was boring, mostly black screen. I think the screenshot of the main screen of S.T.A.L.K.E.R proves my point well enough. But explain how it is even possible to acheive 1000fps with this logic at all, let alone without artifacts.

The point I'm arguing as that it is possible to achieve more than 60fps on an LCD, depending on it's quality, without ghosting. Now although I can get 100 fps without glitches, it was hard to find any screenshots I could get those fps, normally running around the forest there in Stalker I averaged about 50fps. I don't have any old games around at all to test that would really get a lot of fps. I still normally run everything with triple buffering and vsync on because it is smoother when there are large fluctuations in the fps. Besides, do you normally need to see more tha 60 fps? That's extremely smooth for most people most of the time, even if you may see stuttering and lag in an intense scene from a fps, it is not 'flickering'. And 99% of people will never notice it anyway. There is also no way to get around some stuttering in a new game. I think I would need to be running a pretty old or crappy game to achieve greater than 60fps all the time anyway. I put up with a few seconds of stuttering sometimes in a game so I can have the best graphics 99% of the time. I'm rambling now so...

EDIT: Edited Img links, can you not post thumbnails with links here? Also it seems Photobucket is resizing my screenshots automatically, but I still think you can tell there are no artifacts.

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: Cutthroat
Refresh rate and response time are not exactly the same thing, when the fps is greater than a CRT refresh rate tearing can occur (parts of the image ar not aligned properly), when the fps is grater than the response time of a LCD, you should see ghosting (leftover frames giving a ghosting effect). I cannot get my monitor to show any symptoms of ghosting no matter the framerate. I have an Acer AL2216W, the response time is advertised as 5ms, so by this logic my maximum framerate should be 200fps, 1s/5ms=200. That is an optimal situation since the advertised respose time of LCD's is not measured using a standard so some manufacturers calculate the response time as the time it take for the pixel to change from white to black, which is optimal, but unlikely. Others measure it from grey pixel back to grey pixel, which is more real world.

I didn't say they were the same. Tearing is not limited to CRTs and in fact, many people find it to be worse on LCDs as the lower refresh rate means that the framerate exceeds it more often. Some people notice it more than others and it may only be apparent in certain games, but it's definitely there if vsync is off. Games with high contrast and slow, smooth motion are the best places to see it. You can also see it by just moving windows around in XP or Vista without Aero.

The ghosting is a somewhat different issue, but once again it's present on all LCDs to some degree. You might just not notice it. I can see substantial motion blur on my 90GX2 in most games, which is supposed to be tied with a few others for the fastest current LCD.

Anyway, I made some screenshots to show there is no ghosting, tearing, artifacts or anything else when I have a fps>60.

http://i208.photobucket.com/al...at_012/stalkermain.jpg
http://i208.photobucket.com/al...oat_012/stalkersky.jpg
http://i208.photobucket.com/al..._012/stalkerforest.jpg
http://i208.photobucket.com/al...at_012/stalkerdoor.jpg
http://i208.photobucket.com/al...tthroat_012/3dmark.jpg

I tried to post them at 1680x1050, but photobucket automatically resized them.

I also had one showing more than 3000 fps on one of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R loading screens, but it was boring, mostly black screen. I think the screenshot of the main screen of S.T.A.L.K.E.R proves my point well enough. But explain how it is even possible to acheive 1000fps with this logic at all, let alone without artifacts.

Nice screenshots, but they aren't showing anything other than what a particular frame in the video card's framebuffer looks like. Ghosting is caused by the LCD and obviously won't appear in them, and tearing occurs as a result of how it outputs the frames, so I don't think that would show up either.

As I described earlier, your video card is internally generating 3000fps. That does not mean it's actually outputting 3000x1680x1050 pixels per second through the DVI port. The refresh rate controls what the video card actually sends out to the monitor.

The point I'm arguing as that it is possible to achieve more than 60fps on an LCD, depending on it's quality, without ghosting. Now although I can get 100 fps without glitches, it was hard to find any screenshots I could get those fps, normally running around the forest there in Stalker I averaged about 50fps. I don't have any old games around at all to test that would really get a lot of fps. I still normally run everything with triple buffering and vsync on because it is smoother when there are large fluctuations in the fps. Besides, do you normally need to see more tha 60 fps? That's extremely smooth for most people most of the time, even if you may see stuttering and lag in an intense scene from a fps, it is not 'flickering'. And 99% of people will never notice it anyway. There is also no way to get around some stuttering in a new game. I think I would need to be running a pretty old or crappy game to achieve greater than 60fps all the time anyway. I put up with a few seconds of stuttering sometimes in a game so I can have the best graphics 99% of the time. I'm rambling now so...

You're only seeing the video card rendering at 3000 or whatever, not the LCD actually displaying anything over 60. There is probably no LCD that can actually display more than 60fps right now (the 75hz ones skip frames, as was mentioned earlier), even if you leave aside the ghosting.

I usually adjust the settings so that I can in fact maintain 60fps almost all the time. If it falls below that more than once or twice, I try turning down some stuff. 60fps at any given instant usually feels smooth to me, but there are some fast paced games where I don't think it's quite enough. People have different preferences with these things. I use a CRT on my gaming machine anyway, so there aren't any issues displaying more than 60.

 

[Cutthroat]

I give you the argument theat fraps is measuring my GPU output, that would explain why it show 3000fps at all. But according to the specs for my monitor it is 5ms response time, so that should mean the maximum amount of times each pixel can be changed (not refreshed because it never goes off, only changes) is 200, or effectively 200fps before I would even start to run into the issues you are talking about. As I said previously no game that I play while moving would ever get anywhere near 200fps so it's a non-issue. And since I play games with vsync on anyway, and still can't see any 'flickering'.

This thread started about LCD's flickering due to low refresh rate. That is just not the case, LCD's do not 'flicker' because the pixels never go off, they just change color. As previously stated, refresh rate and response times are not the same. A LCD monitor would work fine if there was no such setting as refresh rate, but since graphics drivers ask for the refresh rate it has to be there for compatibility. Try this test, override your LCD monitor to run at 30Hz, it doesn't flicker, now try that with your CRT.

The important factor with a LCD is the response time, if the response time is to slow you will definatly see the symptoms. Although the end result may be similar, the difference needs to be distinguished because when you buy a new LCD monitor you don't care about the refresh rate, you care about the response time.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: Cutthroat
I give you the argument theat fraps is measuring my GPU output, that would explain why it show 3000fps at all. But according to the specs for my monitor it is 5ms response time, so that should mean the maximum amount of times each pixel can be changed (not refreshed because it never goes off, only changes) is 200, or effectively 200fps before I would even start to run into the issues you are talking about. As I said previously no game that I play while moving would ever get anywhere near 200fps so it's a non-issue. And since I play games with vsync on anyway, and still can't see any 'flickering'.

Doesn't the fact you play with vsync on prevent you from ever getting a graphic card output of 200fps: vsync automatically limits the output to the driver's "refresh rate", or a fraction thereof.

Admitting that you're gaming withy vsync on seems to defeat your point that you've never experienced tearing or ghosting.

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: Cutthroat
I give you the argument theat fraps is measuring my GPU output, that would explain why it show 3000fps at all. But according to the specs for my monitor it is 5ms response time, so that should mean the maximum amount of times each pixel can be changed (not refreshed because it never goes off, only changes) is 200, or effectively 200fps before I would even start to run into the issues you are talking about. As I said previously no game that I play while moving would ever get anywhere near 200fps so it's a non-issue. And since I play games with vsync on anyway, and still can't see any 'flickering'.

This thread started about LCD's flickering due to low refresh rate. That is just not the case, LCD's do not 'flicker' because the pixels never go off, they just change color. As previously stated, refresh rate and response times are not the same. A LCD monitor would work fine if there was no such setting as refresh rate, but since graphics drivers ask for the refresh rate it has to be there for compatibility. Try this test, override your LCD monitor to run at 30Hz, it doesn't flicker, now try that with your CRT.

The important factor with a LCD is the response time, if the response time is to slow you will definatly see the symptoms. Although the end result may be similar, the difference needs to be distinguished because when you buy a new LCD monitor you don't care about the refresh rate, you care about the response time.

The 5ms thing is a best case measurement that doesn't apply to most color transitions. The ghosting will appear long before you get to 200fps. It usually starts to come up around 30fps on the fastest LCDs right now and gets worse as the framerate increases from there. But the ghosting is quite an unrelated issue here. Even if you had an LCD that didn't ghost at all, you still would not be able to make it display frames faster than its 60hz refresh rate.

The OP didn't really say anything about flickering causing his problems, but in some rare cases, people can find the lower framerates uncomfortable when coming from a CRT. You are right that flickering is not an issue on LCDs and that response time is the thing to look at, but that's just because refresh rates on LCDs today are essentially all 60hz.

I'm mainly just trying to clear up this myth that LCDs don't have a refresh rate, which is quite simply false but is often repeated around here. The refresh rate may not contribute to flickering like it does on a CRT, but it will still influence how fast the monitor can update its image and also becomes important if you use vsync.

 

[samduhman]

LCDs do the same to me. I thought about going back to crt but Im too hooked on the brighter contrast(?) of lcds now. My brother brought me a 20" sony crt and I couldn't believe how dark the picture was compared to a lcd. To think 2 years ago I was on my soap box saying I'd never switch to a lcd.

 

[CP5670]

You can get very high brightness levels on the final generation AG CRTs, which have enhanced brightness modes (the Mitsu Superbright tubes, for example). I like that arrangement the best since it let me use a lower brightness setting for Windows/text and quickly switch to bright, vibrant colors in games.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Cutthroat
I give you the argument theat fraps is measuring my GPU output, that would explain why it show 3000fps at all. But according to the specs for my monitor it is 5ms response time, so that should mean the maximum amount of times each pixel can be changed (not refreshed because it never goes off, only changes) is 200, or effectively 200fps before I would even start to run into the issues you are talking about. As I said previously no game that I play while moving would ever get anywhere near 200fps so it's a non-issue. And since I play games with vsync on anyway, and still can't see any 'flickering'.

Thing is, though, that once the LCD receives x amount of frames, a chip converts it to a flat rate of 60 Hz and that's what the crystals are sent. So no matter the response time (or "refresh rate" you choose in Windows), you always have a 60 Hz refresh rate. (There are a few exceptions such as the VP930b that can, apparently, truly run at 75 Hz (based on my tests I see no jittering, and movement is smoother). It could just be a good FRC (frame rate conversion) chip.) It isn't driven directly by the video card, so the video card has no say in how fast the crystals transition. That control would be nice I guess, but maybe damaging also.

It is not a 100% compatibility issue either. LCDs rated at 5 ms often reach 15 ms in quite a few transitions, so trying to internally drive them higher than 60 Hz may just cause more ghosting problems and a less clear picture in motion. They're going to try and do those transitions now at, e.g., 85 times per second, and they could barely do them at 60 Hz. So, the results of the each transition are going to be lackluster at best. Each transition is going to have to be interrupted if it didn't finish, so it's likely most of them won't finish at all.

Now, there are the 120 Hz LCDs although to my knowledge the LCDs are still not being driven more than 60 times per second. Instead, a black frame is inserted or the frame is predicted and inserted. The video card is not sending out more than 60 Hz in the case of the 120 Hz LCDs.

 

[Skott]

Originally posted by: pcslookout
I have the same problem here. I have a 20 inch NEC 20WMGX2 and sometimes its unbearable, Thinking about going back to my 19 inch NEC CRT if I can't fix this problem. Doesn't seem to happen when playing games though.

I think the problem may be my eyes though because I have to look pretty close to the lcd to read the text. I am far sided and the text is so small. I tried making it bigger but it messes up webpages, windows, and everything.

Yeah, sounds like its time to go see a eye doctor. Last year I had to start wearing reading glasses due to age. I was having a hard time reading things of small print and webpage reading on my 20" LCD. Getting glasses has fixed all that though. Make sure to also test different brightness levels on your LCD. At default they are generally set high and can dry out your eyes and cause them to be a little sore after a while of LCD use.

 

[MDesigner]

Late response here, but.. not sure if this is true of all LCDs, but some emit polarized light. My Dell 2407WFP does. I can tell, because certain plastics set in front of the monitor lose their gloss and become matte (similar to how polarized sunglasses reduce glare). Also, some clear plastics show traces of rainbow effects in them when set in front of my monitor.