Buying a new monitor

[Forgottenesper]

Okay so short story time:

I currently use a 15" CRT monitor... It was made in like 2001 ^___^ And I've been using it since!

Yes, yes hold your laughter now << A couple years ago I went to upgrade to an LCD with some birthday money... I spent about 400$ CAN on a 19" LCD that had a good response time and contrast ratio (what I was told mattered?) and brought it home, set it up...

It was beautiful! Going from a off-white 15" 50 pound CRT to a nice thin slick black 19" LCD was night and day. Everything looked pretty nice on my desktop, nice and bright and vibrant... Was pretty happy.

Untill I loaded up RO. When I walked on RO, everything around my char blurred. If I walked by chats put up by players the text would blur so bad I couldn't even read it.

I thought something was wrong with it... So I took it back. And the salesman told me it was the response time and that CRTs might be better for gaming... But sadly he had to inform me that they no longer stocked CRTs...

I was also told a lower response time may make it unnoticeable so I then bought a 500$ 16" LCD with a lower response time... But I still noticed it.

After going through 2 LCDs and the trouble of returning them... I gave up.

But lately my CRT monitor has been giving out on me. The ON/OFF switch doesn't... Even work anymore. It's stuck on <_<; I have to unplug it or sleep mode it to turn it off.

I really want to try to buy one again, and some people have been giving me some advise on what to go for... But I really don't have any solid info written down... XD

Thus... This post!

I'm not really into ordering anything... :/ Because then if it doesn't work out much to much stress/difficulty returning it... If you even CAN return it.

There's a few stores near me that sell monitors... I just need to know what to look for.

Any help would be apprciated. Thanks ^^;

[The Jesus]

Maybe you weren't running RO at the native resolution of the monitor. I stopped reading halfway through but that's my theory on your previous monitor.

For your new one I suggest to break down and order it unless you want to feel ripped off. I shopped all over the Atlanta area for a decent LCD for a good price and finally gave up and went to Newegg and got an NEC 90GX2.

[Myzery]

Maybe you weren't running RO at the native resolution of the monitor. I stopped reading halfway through but that's my theory on your previous monitor.

For your new one I suggest to break down and order it unless you want to feel ripped off. I shopped all over the Atlanta area for a decent LCD for a good price and finally gave up and went to Newegg and got an NEC 90GX2.

I live in Atlanta too, so I feel your pain of little Chineese men wanting to overprice everything.

I would also suggest ordering off the internet, Esper.

[Foul Play]

http://store.benq.us/benq-us/searchresults.aspx?dept_id=12&culture=en-US
i remember buying my first LCD from benq, thinking it would be shitty cause i'd never heard of it before, but it was pretty leet. after about 5 years i started noticing dead pixels on it, and decided to buy a new monitor. after trying some well known brands, i found that they pretty much sucked. buy a benq. they are pretty awesome.

[Forgottenesper]

Maybe you weren't running RO at the native resolution of the monitor. I stopped reading halfway through but that's my theory on your previous monitor.

For your new one I suggest to break down and order it unless you want to feel ripped off. I shopped all over the Atlanta area for a decent LCD for a good price and finally gave up and went to Newegg and got an NEC 90GX2.


Okay, at the moment I'm using my moms 19" LCD monitor. It reccomends 1980 x 1024 as the resolution. Both RO resolution and my monitor are set at this. (I play fullscreen RO) the problem is more apparent than it was on the monitors I bought a couple years back.

Unless this isn't the native resolution... (how do I find this out?) I don't know :/

[The Jesus]

The max supported is usually the recommended in my experience. You could always Google the LCD model number. Do you use anti-aliasing? On my LCD it makes shop names text in Prontera look really shitty so I have to keep it disabled.

[Forgottenesper]

Anti-Aliasing? How do I diable/enable that?

[The Jesus]

Then it's probably not enabled. Right click on your desktop and open up your display properties. Depending on your drivers there should be an advanced tab to adjust it. What graphics card are you using?

[Forgottenesper]

NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT

And I couldn't find any option like that in display properties or the advanced button on the settings tab. :x

[Bluedreams]

I have always liked CRT's over LCD's for gaming.

I have a 19 Inch samsung something and love it...

[The Jesus]

^^ I agree -- I had a 21" Sony Trinitron that was sexy as hell but when it died I noticed that there just weren't very many CRTs on the market to replace it with. A decent low response time LCD with nice contrast is a great alternative though.

[Forgottenesper]

What do you guys think of this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824001095

And I do like CRTs better but just... ARGH. SO BIG. And so non... aesthetic ._.;

I like all my computer components to be black and match. :/ GIGANTOR white CRT makes me cry.

[The Jesus]

That looks sexy to me. But you have to run your games at 1680 x 1050 and you'll want to upgrade that video card if you play most newer games at this resolution. That's the main problem with the CRT -> LCD transition for gamers.

[Dishonru]

You won't notice it on new LCDs. I have a 19 inch samsung lcd I got a few years back that was supposed to be 8ms or 5ms and I can notice some blurring in RO/fps games, but it is playable. My new 22 inch widescreen from dell I notice nothing.

this monitor (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Displays/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=320-6252) for reference, and it only cost me $240 shipped because they had a rocking sale

You can set the aspect ratio to 1:1 and it will be not widescreen for fps and other games, or you can set it to 4:3 ratio if you use a lower res in the games.

Can't say I am enjoying the text on it that much. ClearType annoys me, and with out clear type the font is kind of thin. That's a personal thing though, as most people find cleartype acceptable. It's great overall and excellent for gaming, which is something I never thought I would say about an LCD.

Edit: My advice on buying is wait for a sale and pick up something nice. It takes some time waiting, but the longer you wait the better of product you get for cheap. Also put your 19 inch lcd to work if you still have it. All modern graphics cards (and by "modern" I mean made in the past decade) support two monitors. Two monitors is a must after you use them for a while.

Edit2: CRTs are still a viable option, especially when 21 inch crts are $100 or less used. Check your local papers. They just eat up space+power, and are not as easy on the eyes. From a purely monitor standpoint CRTs still have an advantage with darker colors and certain other things, but from a usability and practicality stand point LCDs are where it's at.

[The Jesus]

Yeah Dell makes some really sexy LCD monitors.

[Forgottenesper]

That looks sexy to me. But you have to run your games at 1680 x 1050 and you'll want to upgrade that video card if you play most newer games at this resolution. That's the main problem with the CRT -> LCD transition for gamers.

Update my video card as in get a new one? n_n

[The Jesus]

What games do you play now and at what resolution?

[Forgottenesper]

On my 15" CRT I usually use 1152 x 864

On (currently) 19" LCD I use... 1280 x 1024

And as for games... Ragnarok and rarely WoW are the only graphical intensive games I play. XD

[The Jesus]

Well then you should be fine with RO at that resolution. For WoW you could either force a lower resolution or just turn the graphics down a bit to run it at 1680x1050.