Ok. TFT displays are far better than CRTs for most people. They're getting very cheap, they've got crisper and clearer images, they are smooth in transition and very responsive (no more 60,000 images flickering in front of you every minute, hurting your eyes - even eBook reading becomes much easier). They also use a LOT less power.

I made a bit of a brochure for our clients to show how cheap and nicer TFTs are, and in doing so I also did a bit on the Power Usage of a TFT versus a CRT, showing that a TFT display could easily pay for itself within a few years, especially for a "Power User" and explaining how much money could be saved by switching to TFT monitors, ESPECIALLY if you have multiple CRTs.

1 Euro is about 1.2USD, so 250Euros is about 300USD and so on.

Since none of you will be stealing my customers, enjoy.

[18:57] Beryl: so http://www.maginetworks.com/notes/tft - What do you think (it's not supposed to be pretty, it's just quickly exported from teh PDF)
[18:58] Beryl: Yar, it's an old version, OpenOffice direct to html export
[18:58] Beryl: I then finished a properly formatted pdf for my own use
[18:58] Beryl: This is just for others, and it's free and my personal time so they can't expect me to work forever on it


I don't expect it to be *that* useful to anyone here, but even if it's useful in that one person uses the "It'll save so much money, that it's free in just a couple years" and convinces their parents to get a TFT for them to replace their CRT, then I suppose it's worth it for one person. Otherwise, you should never consider a CRT anymore unless you absolutely need one immediately and don't have the money and can't lease-to-own or use a line of credit, CRTs are a HUGE waste of money power-wise, and the power bill will EASILY cover the difference between a CRT and TFT in just months.

My problem with tft's is that most of the affordable ones that I've seen have pretty bad ghosting in first person shooters. A friend of mine just got a dell 2405fpw and it's gorgeous, cost around $900usd and it still has a noticable ghosting effect on counterstrike and americas army. Ideally I'd have a 19' Viewsonic for gaming, and a 19' tft for everything else.

My school just switched over to tft's and the computer labs have been noticeably cooler this year.

1000 ms in one second, divided by the 8ms this monitor takes grey-to-grey = 125 complete frames per second.

Your eyes certainly can't see that fast, so there is absolutely NO ghosting.

In theory, of course, the tests aren't perfect, but even halving it is 62.5fps full-motion (grey-grey), and your eyes aren't that good.

(I've played Unreal Tournament and DVD films on the last 8ms display absolutely fine, and you can get displays even *twice* as fast as that <which are more than 4 times faster than the "standard" - 25ms already> for only 100$ more)

As for a 900$ monitor being slow? Price doesn't mean much, as usual.

A 4ms BenQ is 299 Euros, whereas an LG with dvi, even 12ms, starts at 400Euros. Many of the good brands, such as LG, Belinea, and Eizo, all have 25ms monitors far more expensive than the fast BenQ I mentioned (glancing at my hardware distributor's website) - They are aimed to be more for business users that want higher contrast and similar features. Even the pseudo-expensive monitors from, for example, SONY all seem to be at least 12ms, which is not that fast.

Actually, Viewsonic has pretty good and realistic numbers in it's description of how they boosted their speeds to 3-8ms (8ms and lower are ultra-fast):
"ViewSonic have addressed this problem with our ClearMotiv Video Technology which offers frame rates exceeding 83 fps (12ms) and now up to an amazing 125 fps (8ms), which offers faster response times for both the black/white and greyscale transitions."
http://www.fastres...e.com/en/guide.htm

And this isn't me just spewing theory - I picked this BenQ monitor for my example because it's the same version (but different size) of one I just sold to a 15 year old hardcore-gamer who loves it.

On to the Dell:
1) Dell sucks. At everything. Always. Search for my posts on their dead LCDs being a problem and their lack of support a worse one.
2) The Dell doesn't even LIST the speed on their webpage under their tech specs...
http://accessories...21&c=us&l=en&cs=19
3) That is 12ms - 1000/12=80something - It should be able to perform a lot better than you say it does, and if it was really ghosting (<40fps) I'd be complaining ;) - Still, you can get a 3x faster monitor with comparible features for less...

I'm not saying it's a bad monitor, it looks very nice, esp. compared to what I have; I'm just saying that even in the low-budget market, there are good options that are a lot faster and without any ghosting for a lot less $$.

I've never bought the gamer complaint. First of all, your eyes can only see 30fps. Second, I've been playing FPS games on LCDs for almost 5 years now and I've never noticed a difference.

Posted by DriverDan I've never bought the gamer complaint. First of all, your eyes can only see 30fps. Second, I've been playing FPS games on LCDs for almost 5 years now and I've never noticed a difference.

On systems with 25ms or 50ms refresh times, you're looking for a theoretically optimal refresh of max 40fps, so the image "smears" or "ghosts" noticibly. - Thankfully 8ms is now the standard, with many cheap 3-4ms variants available so that is no longer an issue.