Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hey

First of all I don't know whether or not this is the correct forum to post this in, but I found this more suitable than request/discuss widescreen solutions.

So I decided to try a LCD screen instead of my old CRT's.
I bought a new samsung T220 since I didn't want the panel gamble with 226 or 2232.
My problem is that I have never tried a LCD monitor before so I don't have anything to compare with except my samsung syncmaster 957MB (CRT).

I play a lot of day of defeat source / TF2, unreal 3, warcraft III and a lot of other stuff. So far I have not noticed any input lag/delay compared to my old CRT, so no worries here.

First problem: Tearing

One thing which irritates me greatly though is that I notice a lot of tearing and blurryness when playing FPS games (dodS and UT3). In DoDs e.g. when staring at the corner or a wall of a building (anything really, but most noticable here) and moving from side to side there's tearing in the image. V-sync helps with the tearing but it's impossible to play with vsync on due to the extreme input lag it generates, you simply can't aim at all. UT3 also suffers from the tearing problem and vsync is not acceptable.

I tested DoDS in clonemode with the T220 and the CRT to see if I could come to a conclusion concerning the tearing problem. Since I used clone mode the CRT had to run in 1680x1050 which made the picture seem a little weird and it can only do that res in 60Hz (I normally run 1600x1200 in 75Hz). But on to the point - both monitors showed a lot of tearing (but a little more noticable on the LCD), and I found that a little weird since I had never previously noticed any tearing on the CRT.
So I stopped using clonemode and put the CRT back to 1600x1200 and 75Hz and played the game again.
At first I didn't notice any tearing, but since I was looking for the problem I actually found that the same tearing problem occurs in that res on the CRT, but to a MUCH smaller degree than the LCD and/or the CRT in 1680x1050.

So now I'm a little lost... is the conclusion simply that the widescreen resolution makes the tearing more visible or that because the LCD is a 22'' (compared to the 19'' CRT) it is easier to notice?

What troubles me most about the tearing problem is that enabling Vsync removes the problem completely, which is great, but that it makes the game unplayable due to inputlag/delay.

Second problem: Blurriness?

Actually I doubt that it has anything to do with my particular monitor and that it's sadly just how LCDs work since I don't notice it on my CRT.

If you look at a wall (maybe with a poster on it or something) and start moving from side to side the wall and everything on it seems to be kind of blurred out. You won't really notice the blur if you are just moving forward through the level and pointing the cursor where you want to go (pressing W and using the cursor to guide you), but if you instead look at a wall or building and still moving in the same direction (using a combination of W and A/D movement) you will notice that the object you are looking at will blur out.

I'm afraid this is just how LCDs work due to some tests I went through earlier at http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/. Under the Responstime Ghosting test with the little picture of 10 white lines that moves across the screen, it seems like the lines are just blurred together, unlike on a CRT where you can clearly see each white and black line when the picture is moving. So I guess this means that my monitor exhibits what people normally call ghosting?
This surprises me a bit since the reviews I read prior to buying the monitor mentioned that there was no ghosting to be seen in any kind of games.
Also it is my understanding that the panel used in the syncmaster T220 is on par with or superior to that of the 226BW / 2232BW and I never found any mentions on ghosting when reading reviews of those monitors.

In the OSD I can switch between 2 RTA modes (response time acceleration), 1 and 2 (and off). I am currently using mode 2 because it is supposed to be the most reactive, and switching to mode 1 doesn't help the problem.

Is there anything at all I can do about these problems or is it just the way it has to be?


On a sidenote:

All pictures / movies seem to be more grainy on the LCD than they are on the CRT, but this is common right? If the picture/video source is not high quality it is easier to see impurities.. don't know how to explain it?

I tried watching a movie (Iron man DVD) in clone mode and the picture quality (not thinking colours) is not better on the LCD than it is on the CRT. In the scenes ( no spoilers) where there's a lot of smoke/clouds or fire you can easily see that there's something wrong. I don't know how to describe it, but if you look at a rocket etc. you will see a lot of rings going from the source of illumination and through the smoke.. don't know if it makes sense.
All in all it sometimes reminds me of watching a really low quality youtube video or something.


Well I hope that I can get some information from some of you longtime LCD users, maybe even T220 owners.

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Forgot to mention something.

I used to run 2x samsung 957MB (CRT) in dualview mode, and now when I run the T220 and one CRT in dualview I encounter a problem.

Right now my LCD is the one having the problem. It concerns the colours - they seem to be out of balance or something since everything red or green seems way more bright and perhaps a bit yellow. It looks very unnatural and it's pretty hard to describe and since I don't have a good camera I unfortunately can't take a picture of both the monitors showing the same picture.

The weird thing is that sometimes the CRT experiences the same problem and the LCD is normal. Notice that this only happens when I use both displays at the same time.
If I only use a single display I never encounter this problem. My guess is that it has something to do with the DVI/VGA connectors but I really don't know what. My CRT is connected with a DVI>VGA converter on the graphics card (8800GT sorry I forgot to mention that in the previous post) and then with a VGA cable.
The LCD is connected with the DVI cable that came with it, but I've also tried with the VGA cable, unfortunately I have not really been troubleshooting enough to know if the problem occurs only when there's both a DVI and a VGA connected or also if there's 2x VGA connected. I can easily do that although, but if anyone has an idea of what could cause the problem I would be happy to know.


Edit: Added system specs in my profile.

First you need to realize an LCD will have tradeoffs in some ways compared to a CRT. Second you need to dilligently adjust your LCD as best as possible before making comparisons. Often times the presets not only induce more video processing lag, they greatly degrade the color accuracy. Generally Custom (eg: manually) adjusting an LCD is best, even better if you have an actual calibrating tool.

Then there's Overdrive, which many LCDs have now. With it turned on your response time is faster, (eg: less ghosting, blurring). With it off you won't get the advertised response time.

Aside from that there are some input lag issues that are partly due to the input device you use as well as things like ATI's "Flip Queue" and Nvidia's "Max Frames to Render Ahead" settings. Adjusting either of these can take some time, and sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't.

I have a 26" Widescreen CRT HDTV hooked up to my PC via an HDMI cable with DVI to HDMI adapter. The PC has a 21" 4:3 CRT monitor. I generally use Extended Desktop mode for watching DVD movies on the TV with Omega vs ATI Catalyst drivers, but that's largely due to ATI's terrible dual display support, which doesn't support Theater Mode (widescreen) well on a secondary display when your primary is 4:3. Nor do I find ATI's Primary Display or Clone Modes to work very well.

One of my frustrations lately since the ATI drivers don't have proper AGP support anymore is I have to use ATI's Catalyst Control Center GUI just to be able to adjust the overscan on the HDTV, but often times CCC won't launch after installing, it's very finicky. The use of CCC has to do with the way the Omega drivers have had to be written ever since ATI botched AGP support.

Always use DVI vs VGA, it's much better, esp for hi res digital sources and try not to go too long with cable length.