Input Lag, Or Why Faster Isn't Always Better 225
mr_sifter writes "LCD monitor manufacturers have constantly pushed panel response times down with a technique called 'overdrive,' which increases the voltage to force the liquid crystals to change color states faster. Sadly, there are some side effects such as input lag and inverse ghosting associated with this — although the manufacturers themselves are very quiet about the subject. This feature (with video) looks at the problem in detail. The upshot is, you may want to test drive very carefully any display boasting low integer millisecond pixel response times."
Another thing to look out for (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Another thing to look out for (Score:4, Interesting)
As for the article topic, any screen with an input lag of >1 ms will never be 'good' at displaying rapidly changing images, and will be nearly worthless for rapidly-paced games. Plasma, CRT, SED, FED, OLED... all technologies with sub-1 ms latency. Getting that 15" OLED screen LG will be releasing this year as a monitor may not be such a bad idea. Sure, it's not as big as your 24" LCD, but it will have perfect colours and blacks, extremely low-latency, low power-usage, weigh even less than an LCD, and so on.
Let's admit it, LCDs were just an intermediate technology for displays as margins in the CRT market got lower and lower, while new display technologies which could match or beat CRTs in IQ and other factors were still a while off.
Re:Another thing to look out for (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't know about that, when playing Rock Band adjusting the Video or Audio lag as little as 2 ms can have a dramatic effect on my scores or note streaks, or on the harder songs whether I pass in the first place.
For example, on this [youtube.com] song on expert, adjusting from a 6 ms video lag to a 4 ms video lag ment the difference between passing only by cheesing my way through the song and passing badly with strained arms (i'm not a real life drummer, and the song is faster paced that it seems on video so it dominate
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Re:Another thing to look out for (Score:4, Interesting)
No, I'm not claiming that I'm perfect, I never even claimed I could do what your saying.
What the article is about is various forms of lag inherent to certain types of monitors. Someone claimed that any lag at around 10 ms or less will have no effect on gameplay. That is false. When playing a game like Rock Band the timing window in which a note is open to be hit is probably around 40 ms, maybe a little less, maybe a little more. If your Video Lag as calibrated by Rock Band to offset the inherent lag of the TV is off my 2 ms, then you effectively handicap yourself out of 2 ms. Now 2 ms is not much in the grand scheme of things, but relative to the 40 ms window that I can hit the note in the first place, it is a loss of 5% of the perceived available time to hit the note.
BECAUSE I'M NOT PERFECT AND ALL MY STRIKES VARY IN ACCURACY, that 5% loss could mean the difference between an 100% full combo or a -1 note 99%. The difference will become especially striking when I'm playing a 2k+ note song or if I'm playing a song that is extremely fast paced like the one I used in the example.
The reality is not that I'm actually consciously noticing the video lag, but that through the interaction with the game I can tell if there is a lag of >10 ms. I threw out the 2 ms example because I recently changed the video lag and it made a big difference on a song that I have been struggling with.
And I'm not claiming I'm the only one who will notice an improvement from this. I have a friend who used to play only on hard and had a notable improvement in how well he played after I helped calibrate his TV for him. It took a couple tries to get the right delay, but once it was configured he began to ace songs relative to how he was playing them before, and his video lag was only changed from 0 to 6 ms IIRC.
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Ye fiddle with your LCDs.
Ha! My 24" BenQ TN panel has ghosting and low color fidelity. It can even display interlaced and 50Hz! Beat that!
:-(
So keep that high quality CRT. It probably takes all the desk anyway
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Yes you won't notice a lag improvement at less than 5MS, nor should you. However, the other component that is often overlooked in this (and I used to as well, until a friend demonstrated the difference to me at a store after I tried to tell him he was wrong...) is the refresh rate. Any more, with most LCDs at a 5MS or less response time, it's the refresh rate that is now causing movement lag on the screen. It's much less noticeable on a small monitor though (and by "small" I'm including basically an screen
Re:Another thing to look out for (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the issue here is probably more due to the fact that movies are shot at 24 frames per second. 24 doesn't fit into 60 properly, so there will be times where the scene repeats more in one set of refreshes than another. See wiki entry on Telecine, notably telecine judder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine [wikipedia.org]
With a 120hz refresh, 24 can go into 120 evenly, so you won't see any choppiness.
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No, shot at 24 FPS but processed to and played back at some screwed up ratio.
Every third frame is displayed twice, I believe.
This assumes you watch an NTSC signal. The numbers are different for PAL.
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In addition to the other reply to this parent.
I have not read of a flat panel monitor that will accept a 120hz source. With motion interpolation turned off a 120hz lcd should look exactly like a 60hz one but be easier on the eyes.
With a CRT you could play Quake, CS, or whatever at 120fps while with a 120hz lcd the video card will only get polled at 60hz.
Sadly, it wouldn't do much (Score:4, Informative)
1. You seem to assume that there actually is some kind of pro gamer gear. All the pro LCDs are actually as in graphics artist pro, and usually actually have the slowest response times of them all. It's "pro" as in "it'll look like that when printed too" (and maybe we'll throw calibration hardware and software in too, 10bit per colour component instead of 8 if it's a several thousand dollar model, led backlight, etc), not as in "it'll display the image in 1ms". It's mostly static images that'll get displayed on those.
The very panel that goes into one already works against you. The fastest ones are TN+Film, but those tend to be in 6 bit per component and dithering instead of 8, have shitty viewing angles (often to the extent that you can see a slight difference between the centre and the corners just because the line from the pixel to your eye falls differently), and at least according to behardware.com the "+Film" part creates more non-homogenity too. The most accurate ones are VA ones (as in, MVA or PVA), but those are also the slowest by far. Guess which goes into a "pro" level display for graphics professionals? Right.
2. If you have that fast reflexes and actually live or die by shooting 1ms earlier, most TFT's have an extra problem: most first buffer the whole image, then scale/display it, because it's the easiest way to deal with scaling an image of a different resolution. Unfortunately they do it even when you use their native resolution.
I.e., what you see on the screen is actually what they received 1 to 3 frames in the past. At, say, 60 fps, on some models you can actualy see the image as it was received 50ms ago. I.e., the difference between 1ms and 5ms latency of the panel is entirely the wrong bottleneck to optimize there.
(Since you mentioned Fatal1ty, last I've heard he used a CRT, btw.)
Better models in this aspect are starting to appear, but it took a while and they're still few and far in between. Mostly because it's not one of the numbers dangled in front of the fashion victims, so there was very little incentive to do anything at all about it.
3. The numbers you get told are by and large... well, not lies, but the standard was written by the vendors for their benefit not yours. E.g., a 5ms display if it's measured black-to-white-to-black can be actually faster than a 1ms grey-to-grey with massive overdrive, and produce less ghosting.
The short and skinny was that the black-to-white-to-black standard was already a lie by itself, and only used because it was the smallest number you can measure without overdrive. The standard as defined by the vendors lets them ignore the first and last 10% of the moving from colour A to colour B. Even that ought to give you cause for thought: that number didn't say "it will reach colour B in time X" but merely "it will get within 10% of colour B within time X". A 10% error is piss-poor on the logarithmic scale of the eye. And it lets them ignore the long asymptotic rest of the curve. But in a transition from black to white or back they can ignore more of the long tail than in a grey to grey transition, according to their own bogus standard, so that's why everyone quoted that.
This all changed when someone invented overdrive. The idea here basically is that you can accelerate faster and overshoot the finishing line if you want to. The measured time still is "in how much time you can get within 10% of the finishing line." It doesn't matter that then you overshoot by 50% and spend even more time coming back asymptotically from the _other_ side. But you can't do much overdrive o
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There are two types of graphics cards commercially available: workstation and consumer. Workstation graphics cards are much higher priced than consumer cards,
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Another thing to look out for (Score:5, Informative)
And for that, here is the obligatory link to 100fps.com [100fps.com]
In short, the shortest flash a human eye can see depends on a lot of things. These factors are explained thoroughly on that web site. The tl;dr version is this: The human eye can discern A LOT MORE than 25 fps.
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The tl;dr version is this: The human eye can discern A LOT MORE than 25 fps.
It can discern that, yes. That's easy. You see a 30fps movie, you see a 60fps movie, the latter is noticeably smoother. The question is if it matters. That is, if the human eye needs to discern 100fps, or if going that much higher in terms of a monitor or video game is just bragging and/or l33t graphic card wankery.
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Frame rates higher than 60fps are valuable even for web browsing and general desktop use. Compare how easily your eyes can track mouse motion on an LCD compared to a high refresh rate CRT (be sure mouse sampling rate is high enough that the cursor is updated every screen refresh). Scrolling and window movement are also much smoother and easier to control. With excellent motion quality and low latency the computer feels like it is part of your own body rather than a separate object, reducing mental effort
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It depends on what you are doing. 5 frames per second is plenty for text editing, but less than 30 sucks for playing a first person shooter. (That might change if motion blur is added)
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So vi is ok at 5fps, but vim needs 60fps?
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If only movies all had motion blur. I found Saving Private Ryan virtually unwatchable, there was no motion blur at all in the action scenes so it looked like they were fighting under a strobe light.
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Then drop back and put your CRT @ a refresh rate below 72 Hz and try to type code for more than 10 minutes. Going from 60 - 72 Hz produces an amazing reduction in eyestrain. I would venture that anything about 75-100 Hz is somewhat unnoticeable, but the damned overhead florescent lamps' flicker in this office gives me a headache every day.
Re:Another thing to look out for (Score:5, Informative)
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Its related in the sense that if you say you can't see something @ 60 Hz its an easy way to call BS. If you can see 60 Hz you can see it whether its flicker or motion fidelity.
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Strobe lights let you see things you couldn't see normally, much like microscopes or telescopes. If you're sitting in a room with a 60 Hz strobe light (e.g, a traditional florescent bulb), *of course* the specific refresh rate of 60 Hz on a CRT will look like crap.
Would you say "if you can see it though a microscope, you can see it, so it's an easy way to call BS"?
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When i used CRT's anything less than 85 Hz was painful to use.
and yes i agree with you about the florescent lights.. i at one point got the idea to convert my house from normal to CFL's .. then i realized my headachs didn't stop when i got home.. i have now moved back to incdecents in the house and have also replaced the florescent lights in my office with can lights with reveals in them.. makes all the diffrence in the world for my head.
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This is an old myth, the human eye can see a difference far higher that 25fps.
http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm [100fps.com]
"So what is "Enough fps"? I don't know, because nobody went there so far."
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/TempRate.mspx [microsoft.com]
"Whatever temporal sampling rate you choose, it's unlikely to be fast enough"
Standard 24fps film is nowhere near high enough to reproduce real motion, as anybody who's watched 60fps Showscan film will know. The difference between 60fps gaming and 100fp
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This is an old myth, the human eye can see a difference far higher that 25fps.
I got a 30 FPS vs 60 FPS program (FPS Compare v0.5 BETA (C) Andreas Gustafsson) and can easily see the difference, even on blind test.
Movies use motion compensation to smooth out frames but even then I see choppiness in movies during some scenes.
That you can't see above 25 FPS is the myth.
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that is actually a lie. Professor Michi Okaku has done some rather interesting experiments into the human perception of time. Results suggest that at moments of extreme risk to life (or more simply, VERY EXCITING times), ones brain activity speeds up, and conversely their perception of time actually slows down.
The results of a very similar sounding experiment had the opposite result to the one you suggest: Time does not "slow down" in moments of peril. There was a Slashot story [slashdot.org] about it.
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Consider a mutual surprise situation where both players react with identical 180ms reaction times. One has hardware with total latency of 30ms, while the other's hardware chain has total latency of 40ms. The latter player probably thought that extra 10ms latency wasn't worth worrying about, but here it is responsible for his loss.
As for motion quality, 60fps is clearly inadequate, but in my experience there are greatly diminishing returns beyond about 100fps. Note that this is on a CRT with an impulse re
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Consider a mutual surprise situation where both players react with identical 180ms reaction times. One has hardware with total latency of 30ms, while the other's hardware chain has total latency of 40ms. The latter player probably thought that extra 10ms latency wasn't worth worrying about, but here it is responsible for his loss.
Not likely. Most games have to cope with 100+ ms communications times, yet have to provide players sub 10ms response times to input. So in the case you describe, in most games, the
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In a LAN game the communication latency is insignificant,
The games themselves however are still all tuned for internet play, so the timing window is still there. And most games are played over the internet.
Unless you are playing that competitively, it simply doesn't matter. And if you ARE playing that competitively in a lan tournament, you are usually provided standardized hardware anyway.
and if that quad SLI guy is using the default Alternate Frame Rendering mode then he's at a latency disadvantage. Increa
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Then go with a large brand name, and get a common model. One of the advantages of buying in meatspace is that there is _less_ selection, so you only have the common (and supposedly mainstream tech) models to look at.
Are these differences that anyone but hardcore gamers could notice? I do notice when LCD monitors look green / yellow or when they have low viewing angles, but the whole 6/7/8 bit and response time thing: is it noticeable?
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That's terrible advice, common LCD models are junk, as they're all 6-bit TN panels.
Most people buy the cheapest LCD they can find in the size they want when they go shopping for one. If you actually want a good LCD, it's becoming extremely hard to find them because junk TN panels have totally flooded the market, and nobody advertises what type of panel their monitor uses.
Oh, and you wanted a good LCD on your laptop? Forget it, they don't make them anym
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"but the whole 6/7/8 bit and response time thing: is it noticeable?"
yes - it is.. I remember when gateway first started putting out LCD's my boss got me one.. i tried using it for about 3 days before i put my old CRT right back.. the ghosting was so bad - now modern panels don't have that much of an issue BUT the color depth is an issue..
right now i run dual screens at work.. a nice Samsung via DVI and the laptop screen as the primary.
the Samsung is wonderful - even true colors.. where as the laptop (than
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always dither gradients? (Score:2)
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This will continue to be a problem as long as we have a "marketing metric". We only have to look out for this stuff because manufacturers sought to optimize the metric, rather than the overall quality (even though the goal of having the metric in the first place was as a representation of the quality).
Re:Another thing to look out for (Score:5, Funny)
Buying an LCD is becoming a real pain in the arse.
Perhaps, but buying a CRT was a real pain in the back.
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Re: pain in the arse (Score:2)
Buying anything with an LCD display has been a pain in the arse for about twenty years now... haven't you developed a callus back there yet?
You might think, after more than twenty years on the market and continual development and tweaking, that shortcomings like dead/stuck pixels would have been eliminated outright, but here we are still griping about them. How can this BE, when technology is supposed to solve all?
Response time, contrast ratio, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
These terms 'response time' and 'contrast ratio' are checklist items. What matters is how the display looks and feels. As long as we continue to insist on checklists as a means of determining what to buy, manufacturers are going to keep using tricks like overdrive to make their checklists look better and better.
At the end of the day, sadly, this means that you can't just look at a checklist when buying an LCD display. You must test drive a model live before considering its purchase.
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3rd option: rely on reviews from credible sources. The "credible" qualifier is harder to find these days, though.
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I'm in NYC and have tons of local selection, but I still buy online. Since I wanted to do some photography, I went around to photo sites and looked for other photo folks who were happy with their monitors. I then went to NewEgg and bought one.
I imagine you could do the same on a gaming site.
Most of the time you end up getting what you pay for, IMHO. My monitor was significantly more expensive than the the cheap (but fast!) TN models, but waaay less than what the pros use. Gamers and video watchers probably
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You could browse around here [thephotoforum.com], but honestly I didn't have a hard time... but it was like 2 years ago now. The important thing is to search for an IPS or (P)VA panel and stay away from the TN stuff... those are the ones that change the most when you change angle. This site lets you know what kind of panel a monitor has. [flatpanelshd.com] I ended up settling on an Acer AL2051W with an P-MVA panel. It is significantly better than a TN screen for viewing angle, but isn't as good as an IPS in that regard. Also it has a glossy scre
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How many times could you fire up Counter-strike on a monitor your don't own, and give it a 30-minute whirl?
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I do agree that we can't just look at a checklist, but I don't think that such things are simply put out there/useless - it just establishes a baseline of performance in certain aspects, aka a standard.
Lets face it, nobody wants a 40ms monitor at this point (unless its for spreadsheets only or something). However, I'm glad this article has seen some light. I've heard people tell me that big monitors seem to have problems such as these but now I understand what they're talking about, as I have not seen the p
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As long as we continue to insist on checklists as a means of determining what to buy, manufacturers are going to keep using tricks like overdrive to make their checklists look better and better.
What choice is there? "Get the NuWave LCD 20000! It just feels better!"
I don't know about you, but that's not going to convince me to buy - especially when I can't actually test drive something. Give me numbers, raw data - all I ask is that it be REAL, and measured in a standard fashion across manufacturers.
Re:Response time, contrast ratio, etc. (Score:4, Funny)
What matters is how the display looks and feel
Yes, how a display feels is critically important because I'm touching it all the time. Except that I never touch it, as I have a strict "don't put your greasy fingers anywhere near my display, you mouth breathing moron" policy.
Always testdrive displays (and TVs) (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting. (Score:2)
I actually read the entire article. Pretty interesting. I didn't know about the three major LCD technologies, etc.
It's slightly frustrating when companies "decline to comment."
huh? (Score:5, Funny)
First of all, I'm not really sure why that's considered a "upshot." But more importantly, I baffled by the submitters implication that I would have to carefully test an 8ms lag screen but not a 7.5 or 8.2ms screen. Huh?
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Re:huh? (Score:5, Funny)
What you really have to watch out for is those -4 ms screens.
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*whoooooooosh*
and all this time I thought input lag (Score:2, Funny)
was when I fire up Outlook and start typing a new email, and nothing shows up on the screen for 10 seconds
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was when I fire up Outlook and start typing a new email, and nothing shows up on the screen for 10 seconds
No, that's just your keystrokes battling all the viruses on your computer for CPU time.
How about plasma displays? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How about plasma displays? (Score:5, Informative)
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CRT is still the best display technology we have. It's really a shame that it's being abandoned, just because panel displays are smaller.
Common knowledge (Score:3, Informative)
I really thought this was common knowledge.
When I bought my Eizo LCD last summer, the first thing I did was read around. These issues came up immediately.
Long story short: Prad [www.prad.de] was my friend.
Rotaluclac
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English site:
http://www.prad.de/en/index.html [www.prad.de]
same old... (Score:5, Insightful)
reminds of my time making CDROM drives when we ere chasing 4x, then 8x, then 16x, then...
never mind the fact that the interface at the time could not handle the high speeds were were getting too so they were totally pointless, the effort was still to physically read some data off the outer edge of the disc at the quoted speed so we could sell the unit and keep up with the arms race.
I now purposely buy technology a few years old, just so they can work the bugs out and I can ensure it is fully supported under all operating systems, it is rare indeed that I adopt early.
any technology arms race will promote one specific feature above all others and rarely end up with a device that is fit for market and a well rounded balance of features - though I grant that there are some exceptions.
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Re:same old... (Score:5, Informative)
CD-ROMs don't. They use "Zone CAV". It's much cheaper and easier to make a drive spin at a constant angular velocity. Unfortunately that results in higher data rates at the outer edges of the disc, so what drives do is they split the disc up into zones. The disc is spun faster for a zone closer to the center of the disc.
Older CD-ROM drives used straight constant-angular-velocity, and would advertise the fastest data rate (which was at the outer edge of the disc).
The only time a modern CD drive will spin with constant linear velocity is when it's playing back audio in real-time. And even then, many players buffer now, so they use the Zone CAV method anyway.
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http://www.buzzhumor.com/videos/2936/Mythbusters_CDROM_Shattering [buzzhumor.com]
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Occasionally?
1 shattered disc would destroy your drive.
Also, shitbusters covered (and busted) this.
You'd have to be using a CD you used as a puck in street hockey for there to be any chance of it shattering.
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Mythbusters did a lousy job, because their samples were too pristine, and too few.
Over here in reality, people do play street hockey with their CDs, and then put them into the computer. The scratches and cracks which occur on disks that people actually use are stress relief points for the polycarbonate to shatter on.
Ever try to punch through a plexiglass window? I have. It's frustrating as all hell, until you score a big X into it with a knife or a rock or something, and then it becomes very easy.
My fath
Review display's MODES (Score:2, Interesting)
Not like they're ever that fast (Score:2)
Take the Syncmaster 2493HM, with a stated response time of 5ms. You might think it can update the screen 200 times completely each second with a figure like that, but no: Here's an image of its ghosting. [anandtech.com]
The monitor takes input at 60hz, so it has 16.66ms to update the panel completely each cycle. Obviously it can't do
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One other thing to consider: was the shutter speed on the camera used less than 5ms?
Yes, that was taken into account but I forgot to mention it. The exposure time for the shots is 1/400th of a second, or 2.5ms.
Reason for input lag (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason for input lag is that manufacturers want the on-screen image to quickly change without ghosting. Here, quickly means "in as few ms as possible", not "without delay". So if you see a change only two seconds later, but the change is instantaneous, that's considered good.
To achieve this, the display electronics must know what the next frames look like. So they buffer two or three frames, then adapt the overdrive on a per-pixel basis to the contents of the next few frames.
Pro: smoother video playing
Con: a delay of two or three frames
Rotaluclac
Confused (Score:2)
So, the individual pixels of the panel have a transition from b->w or w->b of x milliseconds, but the sum of those pixels (e.g. the entire screen image) has a transition time of x*5?
Err?
It seems to me that the screen processing takes a fixed amount of time (~50ms), then that processing tells the pixels to change, which takes (~5ms)... Thus the total response is 55. Does the fact that they're overdriving the pixels to get their response time down affect the screen processing? This seems to be the as
Online reviews sites and LCD reviews (Score:3, Interesting)
None of the online review sites ever mention input lag and on some monitors, it's a huge problem. Three years ago I bought a Dell 2405FPW based on excellent reviews from a number of sites. The monitor lagged [hardforum.com] badly and as I was using it, more issues became apparent (incendiary backlight, bad viewing angles), none of which were mentioned by any of the review sites.
So beware online reviews of monitors. Better look for user reviews.
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So beware online reviews of monitors. Better look for user reviews.
Speaking of which, and at the risk of going on a tangent, I'm in the middle of redoing my setup at home for which I need one large or possibly two medium sized monitors. Anyone have any "user reviews" they'd care to share?
Don't play games, mostly terminal windows, but I'd prefer any multimedia entertainment featuring large bosomed women to be delivered in all its glory.
Display (Score:2)
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www.prad.de always mentions Input Lag along with colour accuracy and everything else in every single review they make.
Perhaps you shouldn't pay attention to crappy review sites, eh?
Overdrive only slightly related to input lag (Score:5, Insightful)
Overdrive is commonly used on all types of panels - TN, *VA, *IPS.
It isn't related to input lag as much as the summary would like you to believe. Somewhat, yes, but not that much; also, PVA panels are generally the ones with biggest input lag.
Some *VA panels have an input lag of 3-4 frames, some have only 1; some TN panels have a lag of 1 frame, some have 3. Some panels have overdrive that you cannot even notice, some - like the Dell 2407WHP-HC - will make you want to poke your eyes out.
What's much worse than input lag and ghosting are the eternal marketing races for MOAR BRIGHTNESS!!!11 and MOAR GAMUT!!1ONE, eventually leaving you with a monitor with a *minimum* brightness of 250 cd/m2, happily roasting your eyes out in anything but daylight, and with a gamut so large that skin tones heavily shift towards red, wildly inaccurate colours, and easily-visible fringing when you turn ClearType on (surprisingly, Windows Se7en will have proper low-level wide gamut management and will tone it down to sRGB on request, eliminating all issues; probably one of the few things that are actually good enough in that OS).
When it comes to monitors, HardForum is generally the place you want to thoroughly check out: http://www.hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=78 [hardforum.com]
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Er isn't more brightness and gamut a good thing for pictures that INTEND those qualities? There's always the brightness and saturation knobs for you to turn down if need be.
A display which has a higher gamut will always be able to adjust to a lower gamut, while the reverse is not true. Same thing with brightness.
You probably know all this, but it's important to make the point anyway.
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Er isn't more brightness and gamut a good thing for pictures that INTEND those qualities? There's always the brightness and saturation knobs for you to turn down if need be.
A display which has a higher gamut will always be able to adjust to a lower gamut, while the reverse is not true. Same thing with brightness.
Sadly, it doesn't quite work that way.
The DTP standard is calibration to 120 or 140 cd/m2, depending on the lighting. On some monitors, that's impossible to achieve; even that value is too high for dim environments. Right now I'm using a CRT which is - subjectively speaking, as I don't have a colorimeter - around 70 cd/m2, and I find it very comfortable as the only light in my room is an incandescent 60W bulb.
With some backlights, getting a low level of brightness is extremely hard, so monitor manufacturers
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Do you remember if there was a big difference between the 2407WHP-HC and the non-HC model when it comes to the input lag?
Having trouble finding numbers to pin on models.
I don't remember, but I can check ;) http://www.digitalversus.com/duels.php?ty=6&ma1=88&mo1=116&p1=1217&ma2=88&mo2=249&p2=2366&ph=12 [digitalversus.com]
The average difference is half a frame.
Here's a comparison with the 2408: http://www.digitalversus.com/duels.php?ty=6&ma1=88&mo1=116&p1=1217&ma2=88&mo2=342&p2=3161&ph=12 [digitalversus.com]
The 2408 (rev A00 on that site; A01 is vastly better) is one of the most notorious monitors ever made in terms of input lag. Inverse ghosting isn't an issu
I'm a CRT holdout (rant) (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the reasons why I refuse to buy LCDs for gaming, both on my desktop and for consoles. Other factors include refresh rates, variable resolution, and numerous quality problems (dead or stuck pixels, color reproduction, viewing angle, brightness uniformity, etc).
Given a choice, nobody would prefer to play on a laggy ISP, so it's really awful that manufacturers don't inform about multiple-frame image processing delays on 60hz monitors.
CRT technology is so mature and LCD so comparatively half baked that I'm totally revolted by the general consensus to throw out completely superior performance in favor of smaller form factor (it's not like they're moved often).
I spent months last year looking for a flat panel to buy that I would want to game on, and came up empty handed, so I simply abstain.
I'm currently using a ViewSonic P220f from a friend after my 8 year old Sony GDM f500r was recently retired, both 21". My consoles are on a 34" Sony WEGA KV-34HS510.
When my tubes finally give out in a few years, I'll be looking for something far better than LCDs to replace them with.
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Me too. Never quite trusted LCD, etc after early trials.
However the color accuracy on old CRT leaves something to be desired. My 3 monitors all show a slightly different color :( Best one is the oldest and smallest IBM. Not enough to bother tweaking them further however.
The TV on the other hand may get replaced soon. Since going to digital with the convertor box the sub channels pixelate from compression and you get the worst of both worlds :(
Invariably it seems, the best 'whatever' is the one that was just
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[quote]throw out completely superior performance in favor of smaller form factor (it's not like they're moved often).[/quote]
True, CRTs aren't moved often, their size and weight tend to discourage that. But if it weren't so heavy, you might be surprised by how often you might want to move it. Even adjusting the positioning is easier, some even have height adjustment, which wasn't so easy for CRT.
The thing that I like about LCDs is that they take less desk space. Late last year, I wanted more screen space
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Well ranted, sir. You've saved me some typing.
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I'm like you. I don't like LCD monitors either. I was unable to find any NEW CRTs from local retail stores. :( I wanted to see them in person too so I can see the colors, features, etc.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is one of the reasons why I refuse to buy LCDs for gaming, both on my desktop and for consoles. Other factors include refresh rates, variable resolution, and numerous quality problems (dead or stuck pixels, color reproduction, viewing angle, brightness uniformity, etc).
Given a choice, nobody would prefer to play on a laggy ISP, so it's really awful that manufacturers don't inform about multiple-frame image processing delays on 60hz monitors.
CRT technology is so mature and LCD so comparatively half baked that I'm totally revolted by the general consensus to throw out completely superior performance in favor of smaller form factor (it's not like they're moved often).
I spent months last year looking for a flat panel to buy that I would want to game on, and came up empty handed, so I simply abstain.
I'm currently using a ViewSonic P220f from a friend after my 8 year old Sony GDM f500r was recently retired, both 21". My consoles are on a 34" Sony WEGA KV-34HS510.
When my tubes finally give out in a few years, I'll be looking for something far better than LCDs to replace them with.
This tired old refrain almost wears me out. With 5 minutes of Googling, you can find an awesome LCD> I'm a hard core gamer - I spent some time researching monitors and ended up with several different ones and they all work great. I've never had a dead pixel issue with any quality monitor I've purchased. I've never had a DOA. Lag on a quality LCD is immaterial to gaming, as is ghosting. If you are experiencing these issues, you have a shitty LCD. My current monitors are a pair of 30" Dells. Someho
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Actually, I don't know if I would say LCD technology is mature yet. LCD technology really hasn't done much in the past few years except get cheaper. In some ways it's moving backwards, with new problems like input lag cropping up in the pursuit of meaningless marketing numbers. You could argue days of the best LCD panels are behind us - you can't even get a decent quality LCD anymore in any new laptop (they are all TN-based), and the most amazing LCD ever made (the IBM T221) was discontinued several year
It you aren't a serious gamer or video editor (Score:3, Insightful)
Low Integer? (Score:2)
you may want to test drive very carefully any display boasting low integer millisecond pixel response times
So what you're saying is, stick with the low non-integer millisecond response times...?
Display latency benchmark site (Score:2)
In case I'm not the only one who immediately wondered what the latency on their display was.
DigitalVersus Monitor Duels [digitalversus.com]
OLED to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
Ugh, input lagging. To me, this would be an even worse issue than blurring or flicker. Lagging (at least above 30ms) means a 'soupy' cursor, and an end to games which require quick reactions.
I hope this becomes another stat to put on advertising. It's very hard to see unless you hook up a computer and do some testing, so joe public won't care... :(
It's exactly this kind of thing which will make OLED technology win in the end. All the problems associated with LCD (response time, blurring, lagging, contrast levels) will be gone in an instant.
But... (Score:3, Funny)
Low double millsecond displays are ok?