Opinions on the VP2030B?

[Tasiin]

Hey everyone, first post. Anyways, I've been thinking of dumping my CRT after about four years of use now for an LCD, since it seems to be slowly dying. I have a couple of concerns about them though, and I've definitely been a bit spoiled by the quality of my CRT (a Sony CPD-G420).

First off, I'd really like to get one that has a high refresh rate. I know that LCDs don't flicker like CRTs do, but the refresh rate still does affect things in games such as tearing with vertical sync disabled, and I'd really rather not turn that on. The mouse lag that V-Sync causes makes a lot of the faster paced games I play pretty much unplayable for me. I'm currently playing games at either 1280x960 at 100Hz, or 1600x1200 at 85Hz on my CRT, and if there was an LCD that could match that at 1600x1200, that would be great. Most of the LCDs I've seen go from 70-75 at their native resolution tops, which introduces pretty bad tearing into some of the games I play on my CRT.

Secondly, I don't think I'd be too happy with anything below 1600x1200 (which is why I'm considering the VP2030B). The 19" panels would be great if they weren't 1280x1024, but that seems a little low to me for such a large screen. 1280x960 isn't that great on my 19" CRT, and it has less viewable area than an LCD of that size.

And of course, I'd prefer to get one that doesn't have a reputation for ghosting/backlight bleeding/screen dooring or any of that nasty stuff.

So, getting back to the subject of my post, does anyone here have any experience with the VP2030B, or any other monitors that might be suitable for a long-time CRT owner? The Samsung 214T doesn't look too bad either, but it's a bit large and only does 75 Hz at 1600x1200, I think.

Thanks!

 

[darXoul]

If you activate vsync, tearing shouldn't be an issue. The LCD doesn't really "refresh" like a CRT does so don't look at the specs too much - 60 Hz is heavy flickering on CRT and perfectly fine on LCD.

As for the VP2030b, there are a few user opinions on Newegg and one here, posted by the user Scorpion in the sticky thread on this board. Check them out. In general, the VP2030b should be like VP191 and VP930, its smaller brothers - a good allround display with good gaming performance, nice colors and black level, possibly some minor backlight bleeding, a very large footprint, wide viewing angles and solid video playback with very limited noise. These are the characteristics of a P-MVA 8 ms matrix in a nutshell, plus some specific points applying to this particular line of monitors.

If you are into gaming, I don't recommend the 214t. The 8 ms S-PVA panel is clearly worse than 8 ms P-MVA and 6 ms S-PVA in games. If you're sensitive to ghosting, you'll certainly notice it on this monitor.

 

[Tasiin]

Thanks!

I'll check Newegg and that thread. I have indeed heard about the smaller Viewsonic panels having some problems with backlight bleeding, so I'll keep that in mind. Does anyone happen to know what Newegg's policy is on returning LCDs with dead pixels or heavy backlight bleeding, by the way?

As far as the refresh rate goes, I know that LCDs don't flicker like CRTs, and I'm not worried about that at all. What I do want to avoid however, is enabling vertical sync. It causes a few milliseconds of input lag which, while it doesn't sound very noticeable on paper, is extremely frustrating to me when I play games that require quick and precise mouse movements. Having the cursor lag behind my movements feels very odd after having had V-Sync off for many years now.

 

[Tasiin]

Well, it looks like Newegg will only take it back if it has 8 or more dead pixels. Not sure if I want to chance that.

I did notice however that under the detailed specifications on Newegg for this monitor, it said that the vertical refresh rate is 50-85Hz. Does this mean it'll run at 85Hz in 1600x1200?

 

[xtknight]

Let's find out.

VP2030b specs: Fh: 24~92kHz, Fv: 50~85Hz

HrkHz = (HorizLines * (VrHz/0.95)) / 1000

For 1600x1200@85Hz vertical:
Horizontal rate = 107.37 kHz (rounded to hundredths place)

That's how much you'd need on the horizontal rate range. The VP2030b only reaches 92 kHz.

Thus: VrHz = ((HrkHz*1000)/HorizLines) * 0.95

Max vertical refresh rate for VP2030b at native 1600x1200: 72.83 Hz

 

[Tasiin]

Hmm, that's too bad. Thanks though, that was very helpful.

Are there any LCDs this size that have a refresh rate of at least 75, preferrably higher? If not, do you think there will be any at any point, or will I just have to hold out for SED displays and hope my CRT doesn't die?

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Tasiin
Hmm, that's too bad. Thanks though, that was very helpful.

Are there any LCDs this size that have a refresh rate of at least 75, preferrably higher? If not, do you think there will be any at any point, or will I just have to hold out for SED displays and hope my CRT doesn't die?

I'm guessing the latter. I think the high refresh rates would accentuate the motion blur too much.

 

[kmmatney]

Picky, Picky...I doubt you'll find anything with a refresh rate higher than 75 Hz. Here is one, but its way expesnive...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824002118

I tried my LCD at both 60 Hz and 75 Hz, and I'm not sure I even notice any difference. In general, it sounds like you may want to hold off on buying an LCD for now...

 

[xtknight]

^ That one'll do 72 Hz, maybe 75 since that 0.95 multiplier is for CRTs having to move the electron gun up (inapplicable to LCDs).

 

[Scorpion]

I can tell you that the max refresh rate on the VP2030b @ 1600x1200 is 60Hz. Limited by the drivers and possibly hardware. I'm not sure if you can hack it into doing more than that, but I'm not going to bother trying. 60Hz on my LCD is not like 60Hz on a CRT.

I'm going to assume it is because a CRT takes time to propagate a refresh across the screen meaning the whole screen doesn't get refreshed at the same time, whereas an LCD does.

I really like my VP2030b and I play UT2004 on it and don't have any problems.

 

[Matthias99]

I'm going to assume it is because a CRT takes time to propagate a refresh across the screen meaning the whole screen doesn't get refreshed at the same time, whereas an LCD does.

LCD monitors still generally refresh the pixels sequentially (so you still get things like texture tearing if your framerate is higher than the refresh rate) -- but since the backlight is on constantly, the screen doesn't flicker like on a CRT with a low refresh rate.

 

[Tasiin]

Originally posted by: kmmatney
Picky, Picky...

So I've been told.

Really though, if there were any way to avoid the mouse lag caused by v-sync, I'd have no problem with LCD refresh rates.

And yeah, that monitor's definitely a bit too expensive for me.

If my CRT does die, which is looking more and more likely every day, I'll probably be able to survive with a refresh rate around 70 or so. I'm not too thrilled with the idea of trading in my monitor (even in its current condition) for something that I know will irritate me, though -- especially something that will likely cost around $600.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Tasiin

Originally posted by: kmmatney
Picky, Picky...

So I've been told.

Really though, if there were any way to avoid the mouse lag caused by v-sync, I'd have no problem with LCD refresh rates.

And yeah, that monitor's definitely a bit too expensive for me.

If my CRT does die, which is looking more and more likely every day, I'll probably be able to survive with a refresh rate around 70 or so. I'm not too thrilled with the idea of trading in my monitor (even in its current condition) for something that I know will irritate me, though -- especially something that will likely cost around $600.

Mouse lag with V sync? What do you mean?

 

[Tasiin]

Enabling V-Sync causes a small delay in mouse movement. From what I've read, it's caused by the video card rendering several frames in advance, which doesn't seem to happen with V-Sync disabled. Reducing the "Max frames to render ahead" setting in the nVidia control panel (with Coolbits enabled, it's under Performance and Quality Settings) to 0 helps quite a bit, but it's still not gone.

Searching for "input lag" and "v-sync" on Google brings up a few topics about it, though not many people seem to notice or be bothered by it. Like I said above though, it's just very hard for me to get used to after not having this for many years now. If it didn't do this though, I'd be more than happy to enable it. Moving the camera in games with V-Sync on feels quite a bit smoother if the framerate regularly goes over my CRT's refresh rate.

There's a good discussion about V-Sync and its problems here, found from Google: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=928593&page=2&pp=20

kmeson's post near the bottom of that page describes what I most dislike about it, but the framerate halving in games that use double buffering is also irritating.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Tasiin
Reducing the "Max frames to render ahead" setting in the nVidia control panel (with Coolbits enabled, it's under Performance and Quality Settings) to 0 helps quite a bit, but it's still not gone.

Interesting. I guess I've never noticed it. If somehow the mouse could be synchronized (PS/2 rate maybe?) then it probably wouldn't happen.

 

[Tasiin]

It doesn't seem like it. To test that, I just put a PS/2 adapter onto my USB IntelliMouse and set the sampling rate to 100Hz through the Device Manager (PS2Rate doesn't seem to work under XP properly, but this should achieve the same thing), and started up a game with V-Sync on at 1280x960/100Hz. There was still a very noticeable difference between having V-Sync on and off, and the delay with it on was still quite unbearable.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Bump. What do people think of the VP2030b?

BTW stop asking about refresh rates because IT DOES NOT MATTER ON AN LCD. 60Hz is fine.

 

[Tasiin]

It's not fine for playing games in which your framerate regularly exceeds 60 with V-Sync off. I explained my reasoning for this in earlier posts, and it is not due to flickering, which I know LCDs do not do.