Best Monitors for gaming

[evil_ash_xero]

Interested in people's opinions here on this.

I'm looking for something with almost zilch lag, and i've read that some types of Iiyama monitors have 0ms lag.

Any other information on this?

[DC906270]

I have a Sony KDL-32W5500, dunno if they're the "best", but theyre good enough for my shmupping needs. no noticeable lag at all, or motion blur, plenty of HDMI inputs, 1080p capable.

[Ed Oscuro]

I think this topic came up recently, but in any case...
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1007212

Iiyama is mentioned.

[evil_ash_xero]

Ed, do you know at what point the ms of lag would be noticeable in time precision game, like a shmup?

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm not the best person to ask about that, but I'll try to repeat what I've heard to give some basic idea what you're looking at. I've heard that the lag of any given unit (especially with TVs) is more than the reported lag of the panel, due to the extra laggy image processing inside (many LCD TVs have a "gaming mode" to reduce this processing time at the expense of color range). The lag mentioned for many panel types can be in a range from 8ms to 0ms, and as high as 25ms, but that seems far less than the lag of frames (out of 60 per second) being reported in many places. From what I've seen online the only way to really tell what's a good model is to look at actual test results (by aiming a 60 frame camcorder or similar at the device and seeing how long it takes a given model to display a response to user input). There was a link in here recently to an article that set up such a test.

[Fudoh]

It seems reasonable to stick to a maximum delay of 20-25ms. If you know your games VERY WELL from years of playing them on a CRT, you'll notice the difference, but 1.5 frames is a delay you can quite easily adjust to. Just remember that this should be the added delay of your whole chain. Emulation has a general lag of 1-2 frames, the PS1 games running on a PS3 have a 16ms delay as well, so do all the Wii VC games. Mushihimesama Futari on the 360 has an mimimum internal lag of 1 frame unless you allow massive tearing. Non-Fighting and non-Shooting games, e.g. an Action game like Metroid or Castlevania is easily playable with a delay of up to 3 frames. Most people won't notice the difference.

[evil_ash_xero]

It seems reasonable to stick to a maximum delay of 20-25ms. If you know your games VERY WELL from years of playing them on a CRT, you'll notice the difference, but 1.5 frames is a delay you can quite easily adjust to. Just remember that this should be the added delay of your whole chain. Emulation has a general lag of 1-2 frames, the PS1 games running on a PS3 have a 16ms delay as well, so do all the Wii VC games. Mushihimesama Futari on the 360 has an mimimum internal lag of 1 frame unless you allow massive tearing. Non-Fighting and non-Shooting games, e.g. an Action game like Metroid or Castlevania is easily playable with a delay of up to 3 frames. Most people won't notice the difference.

I didn't know this. Interesting.

I'm not fully investing into a panel TV right now, because i'm hoping for better(oled perhaps?). So, I ordered a LG L227WTG-PF. Supposed to have 0ms of input lag. It seems like there are much better PC Monitors for gaming, rather than TVs.

Unfortunately, I had to get it refurbished. Fortunately, if it doesn't work out, it wasn't that expensive.

[Fudoh]

So, I ordered a LG L227WTG-PF

It's lag-free indeed. If you can live with a TN display, it's a good choice.

[evil_ash_xero]

I was wondering, I plan on hooking up my 360 via a HDMI to DVI cable. Will this make the lag greater than if I was using VGA cables? I really don't like the blurry look my 360 VGA cables give my games.

[Fudoh]

Not on this display, you can use DVI or VGA, just as you like. But probably only the VGA cable will allow you to choose the display's native resolution. Via HDMI you only choose 720p and it's likely that the scaling of the display will make the picture worse.

[thchardcore]

Toshiba TIMM

[spadgy]

The Sony PVM (monitor) range makes 2D look just beautiful. It's got a lovely warmth of colour, and being a TV industry monitor for hire, transporting, and building TV walls, It has a massive tate-friendly cuboid frame in which it sits, and it's incredibly durable. Meaty built in amp, and a tonne of industry/professional settings consumers TVs don't have

Nice RGB-in too. Tasty for PCBs and Retro consoles, and fine for modern games machines too.

It's used in post-production for colour grading... enough said!

[neorichieb1971]

PVM's are old and hagged by now. You'll be lucky to find a model that isn't burned in, dusty all over and has geometry issues. Not to mention you'll be needing specialist cables which if my memory serves me correctly were a bit hard to find.

I spent $200 on my model (2950 I think), plus shipping which was almost as much again.. in the end I gave up.. oh and the cables were about another $30.

If I were going to buy an industrial monitor it would be one that is new old stock.

[spadgy]

You have to be lucky for a PVM. I got an 26 inch for £50 in great condition that I could pick-up.

I got mine through Arcade Otaku, but the best bet is someone in the TV industry.

I guess I was lucky that my wife works in TV so I got all the BNC-to-RCA connectors from down the back of my sofa, but they are about £1 each on e(vil)Bay.

[Ed Oscuro]

Some small PVMs can be had here in the States for not much. Mainly it's the shipping cost.

Thanks to the XRGB2 I have made good use recently of some $2.99 VGA thrift monitors.

I picked up a couple monitors (both max at 1280 x 1024, i.e. 5:4, but they seem to work very good, albeit with some almost-not-noticable shimmering or something between lines of pixels):

NEC MultiSync FE700+
Dell M782p

The MultiSync is like a sheet of glass in a sleek case (easy to remove the cabinet back too). Not perfectly black when turned off but enough for arcade games. The black level seems very nice at factory default. No really notable geometry problems.

The M782p tube's curved edge can be seen if the monitor is on the floor and you look from above. The front is perhaps very (very) slightly lighter than the MultiSync tube when turned off. When turned on, it got very gray quite suddenly, so I have it tuned to zero brightness - a big improvement, though still not as nice as the NEC on default (seems about 1/3 slider) brightness. Internally, it's an LG Philips tube.

I'll mess with the Sony P992 some more when I have time (and the patience) to manually hook up the various pins to the ECS cable (different order and number, thankfully they're labeled both in the cabinet and on the cable).