Crt vs. Flat Panel

So which one, is better a 20 inch crt or a 17 inch flat panel... the 20 inch is from sony and the 17 is from Benq, need opinions.
also will the larger moniter kill frame rates on my video card. which is a FX 5700 from nvidia?

I need help??

It all depends.

For gaming, I still feel nothing beats a CRT for many reasons.

I have a very good LCD on my other machine - Samsung 204b - but it really only looks great at its native resolution of 1600x1200 (20.1" LCD), unless you do a maintain aspect ratio 1:1 scale deal, where the other resolutions, like 1024x768, is centered directly in the middle of the screen with black bars on all 4 sides.

A CRT is just more flexible, no ghosting, and you can run it at varying resolutions and still have it look good.

My main machine has a 21" Viewsonic CRT and it is DA BOMB for gaming.

Just one dudes opinion though.

I've seen many LCDs and there is always something annoying about them.
short list:
-limited viewing angles
-dead pixels (not covered by most warranties)
-ghosting
-black colour and its shades reproduction

The only big downside of CRT is the size. Also they are not available nowdays as big and wide screens.

short ver.: go for the sony (if new)

I gave away my old 20" Sony F520, which was an excellent monitor when it was first released. With new LCDs being as good as they are [big, bright, sharp, high-contrast, 178-degree viewing angle], the 70-pound monster had absolutely no value to me.

Go with the LCD.

Frame rates depend on resolution, so sure, if you run that 20" CRT at 2048x1536 or even 1600x1200, your frame rates will crawl.

An FX5700 should be a good match for the 17" LCD at 1280x1024. Things won't be flying, but it will work for most games.

I have switched from CRT to LCD a few month ago, and I can tell you I am very happy!!!
I all depends on the quality of LCD monitor you are buying. Get yourself a 19" (or more), 8 ms (or less), good angle, with DVI connector and you won't miss your CRT.

Yes..make sure you buy the unit with the best specs you can afford if you decide to go with LCD. CRT is still the best image quality, no contest...ask any tv technician and they will say the same thing. Look here:
http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/hardwar...72006-1,00.htm

I think the FX5700 will struggle at 1280x1024 on most games newer than 2004-2005. the best bang for your buck in agp cards right now is the 7600gs for ~$125, and it would make a huge difference over the 5700

just my $.02

I'm interested in this, as I'm also looking for a new monitor to replace a 17" CRT where the picture is becoming blurry.

In all honesty I would like to stay with CRT for the reasons given by this latter article and you guys, although I do reckon that some LCDs are becoming pretty good. But it is for an old, non-top-notch computer, and I also understand that I shouldn't go for a bigger/better LCD like a 19" because it will look bad when I do not use its native >1280x1024 resolution (which I really can't afford).

I called a store today and they told me that they're carrying only LCDs because all CRTs are going out of production. Is this true? It seems a bit early for me for all brands just to scrap CRT altogether :-/

Any recommendations? Look hard and find a CRT soon before they all go away? Aim for a 17" LCD (and no more because higher resolutions aren't good for my case) but make sure it's a really good one?

Is that faster than the X800XT All In Wonder card?

No it is not!!!

How frustrating. I have seen the X800XT AIW card for $150 or so at a few sites, and it is STILL almost the very fastest AGP solution there is, just behind the X850XT PE it would seem.

The X800XT and X850XT series are almost the same in terms of core chips, and I have been able to overclock my X800XT to X850XT PE speeds, so essentially I have a card that is able to run head to head with its higher clocked big brother.

In terms of real gaming performance, I only notice 1-3 frames per second increase when I do overclock, so I just leave it stock at 500/500 most of the time and all 16 pipes are kickin' tail and takin' names.

I guess there isn't now and won't ever be again a faster AGP based card than what I already have, essentially, so I should just be resigned to the fact that I'm in a good position and keep on gaming!

Thanks for the info.

sorry I'm kinda a newegg whore (they don't have any agp x800xt's right now) but $150 for the AIW is killer! its retarded that agp is being phased out so quickly when it is still a viable bus with plenty of bandwidth

I got mine for $152.64 (plus $11.53 for shipping) from Mwave.com in late August, to replace my X800 Pro (only has 12 pipes) and am glad I got it when I did. It seems they are out of stock:

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec....7&RSKU=3592857

I could not find an X850XT or X850XT PE anywhere except Ebay for like $400-$500, so I'm going to be content. My trusty old Matrox G400-TV was my video capture card for years, but there are no drivers from Matrox for Windows XP, so when I was finally forced to go from Win 98 SE to Windows XP on my other machine, I had to find some sort of replacement that made sense, and the X800XT AIW fit the bill. I may never use it as a vid cap card though, now that I have gotten a Panasonic DVD Recorder for the living room. But it is still a no compromise gaming card, and that's good enough for me too.

When they first came out I paid $399 for my X800 Pro and was lucky to even find one of those. But there is a noticeable diff in at least one game - Rallisport Challenge. It used to stutter with the X800 Pro and no longer does at all with the X800XT, so maybe those extra 4 pipes are paying dividends.

LOTR BFME II is still a video hog, and maybe I would benefit if I had 512meg of video memory for it, but I'm not sure what other games might be impacted. Heck, going from 1 gig of ram to 2 gig sped the load and close times of that game by a HUGE margin, so maybe it's not the vid card that matters with that game. I can still only run it at 1280x960. Any higher and it just gets all sluggish.

ANYWAY, I do have a Samsung 204b LCD and am running it from my ATI 9800 Pro 128 meg via DVI and while it looks great and performs great, my card isn't powerful enough to push it at the full 1600x1200 in many games, and since ATI doesn't handle Aspect Ratio scaling properly in their drives, any other resolution looks "blech". My Nvidia Geforce 3 TI 500 handles the scaling properly in their driver, but is not powerful enough either.

LCD's have their place - I truly think they do - and they are a great option for some folks. But for me, the personal preference is for CRT. Gaming has never been as good for me on any LCD I've tried when compared to CRT's.

Some may love their LCD's for gaming, and that's cool. I'm just not one of 'em. Thankfully, we have choices.

If your a hardcore gamer, like what was stated before nothing beats a CRT, although the LCD's are improving.

Yep...the motion characteristics are smooth...no "heat-shimmer" effects flowing from running figures as the refresh rate is virtually instantaneous.
LCD and Plasma are getting there...but they aren't quite there yet. There are new display technologies coming out, though, one involves lasers and LCD...who knows what they'll think of next???

For me, one of the key things is VSYNC and Triple Buffering. If I don't have Vsync on in games like Dungeon Siege or Titan Quest, for example, I see tons of tearing on my LCD. So, I enable Vsync, which fixes the problem.

HOWEVER, unless your video card is powerful enough to keep your system running at 60 frames per second in its Native Resolution (in my case, 1600x1200), you can get some serious stuttering - unless you are able to turn on Triple Buffering for that game.

I really like that with LCD's you just run at 60hz and don't have to worry about refresh rates anymore. I just wish that all LCD's had built-in auto scaling so that you can choose to have it scale images to full-screen or display at 1:1 in the center of the screen.

But, there are a lot of people who don't like to run a game at say 1024x768 and have it centered in the middle of a 1600x1200 screen with black bars around it. But there are others who get annoyed at the blurry pixelization when you stretch a 1024x768 resolution to be scaled edge to edge on a 1600x1200 LCD.

Plus there is the annoyance of a 5:4 mode being native on most 17" and 19" LCD's but all the other modes are 4:3.

With CRT's, you just don't have to worry about those kind of compromises.

Non-Gamers may never see ANY of those issues, but for gamers, those issues make the choice a lot harder, I feel.

in the nvida control pannel there is a setting called "fixed aspect ratio scaling" that I really like for (mostly older) games that dont support the native res, it uses bars to keep the aspect ratio 1:1, but it also scales up the resolution to the native res for close to full screen picture (ie: bars are either on the sides or on the top/bottom but not both). and when the video card handles the upscaling it is much much clearer than when the monitor handles it

Yep - it works with Nvidia, but the ATI driver, even though it is supposed to have that feature, just flat out doesn't work. There are tons of threads all over the place, and even on Rage3D, with angry folks.

I'm not sure if it is better to have the monitor or driver handle it, but it is nice to have options.

I'm not sure if there is a performance hit, but when using the calibrated eyeball the driver wins hands down when I let the monitor handle it I get a headache almost instantly, but when the driver handles it the picture is nearly as sharp as true native res

err - okay - I am totally in the dark on this one. Doh!

But hey, if folks dig CRT's or LCD's, more power to 'em. Who am I to choose for someone else? I might give advice if asked, but it is ultimately up to the buyer whether they dig it or not.

I've got both, and know what I like, and that's good enough for me.

LCD's for productivity and business - pretty cool.

LCD's for gaming? Not so much.

well ive just bought this http://www.gladiatorcomputers.com/Pr...=SearchResults and after my eyes had adjusted (took a few hours) and a few brightness/contrast tweaks it looks a hell of alot better than any CRT ive used and alot better than the 17" and 19" crt's i own when i look at the crt's which are only a few years old i can definitely tell the LCD is sharper, yeah if you look at the LCD from an angle it goes weird but thats cool as i never do, games are cool CS Source looks awesome in widescreen and far better quality than my old 19" crt and CoD2 looks bloody amazing, just one annoying stuck bright green pixel a few mm's from the top left but im getting used to it now), i can understand good quality crt's probably do have better pic quality than lcd's however your standard crt's like mine dont look better than this lcd

my dvi cable arrived this morning i can see little difference but nothing mind blowing.

ps. you can get that screen about £20 cheaper but i prefer that store and didnt have to pay shipping as just picked it up myself

I think there are some "stuck pixel" fixer apps out there. You may be able to find one and get it unstuck.

yeah ive tried the old press it turn screen back on and the old flashing colours prog but it just wont unstick

Sorry, man. That can be one of the bummers about LCD's.

Thanks guys for your help, right now, my uncle gave me a free 21 inch crt, so, im gonna save up money for a better video card, like the 7800gs for AGP, im still using my 17 fp do to the fact that i can run CS:S decently like 25 -70 fps, and on my 21, omg i dont even want to say it... LOL. thanks agian!