19'' High-End Gaming LCD Roundup June 2005 June 20, 2005

Introduction

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I screwed up in planning this article. To understand why, you have to look back to the LCD monitor round-up I wrote a few months ago. While we had 8 monitors in the competition back then, our monitor selection was disappointing. I did my best to produce a "definitive" discussion of color and LCD image quality, but it was really only a battle between a handful of monitors because many of the competitors were such poor performers. The problem was that with that article I had no role in selecting the monitors for review. So, when FiringSquad asked me to do another LCD roundup a month ago, I agreed only after ensuring that I could select the list of monitors to review. So, I went through various manufacturers websites, looking at the specs, and picked out monitors that I might want to buy on my own. The problem? I've ended up with a group of 5 stellar monitors, and figuring out how to distinguish the leader among the pack ended up being far tougher than expected.

The best LCD roundup is the one with the most monitors. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of our testing and the time demands of the "top-secret" articles I'm working on to be published June 27 (the most ambitious project I've done to date, add it to your calendar) I've had to limit the number of monitors in this Summer Roundup. Since we went with budget 17" monitors and threw in one non-DVI 19" last time, I decided to take a look at 19" monitors this time. We are also continuing to include a mix both gaming and office monitors into the roundup.

I'm not going to assume that you've read the 17" monitor roundup before, and so I'll actually go through the reason of why DVI is critical, and how contrast ratio and advertised pixel refreshes can be misleading. It'll be almost verbatim from the previous article though, so I'll understand if you want to breeze right through it. But in case you are planning to skip ahead, I do want to make a comment that currently, more so than ever before, advertised pixel refresh is virtually useless. In our last roundup, we threw in a Samsung 915N lent to us by Newegg.com and it had a respectable 3rd place finish (impressive considering it is analog-VGA only). We in particular were impressed by the 8 ms panel. Well, in this current roundup, Samsung wanted to send us a 4ms 19" panel... the 915N. Was this a different and upgraded panel? No. They just changed the method of measurement. The 8 ms reflected the complete full on-off-on cycle, whereas the 4 ms rating was only on-off. Now, before you cry foul and decide that Samsung is involved in shady marketing, the important thing to realize is that the entire industry is being shady. Samsung's 8ms panel was already stellar, but with other manufacturers advertising their 8 ms panels as 4 ms panels, Samsung felt they had to accept the new "industry standard." So it's not their fault although they are conveniently not taking a stand. In a way, it's our collective fault too because measurement of pixel refresh isn't as easy as you might think it is. After all, even a CRT will smear so distinguishing the difference between monitors requires more than just a simple number from a photoelectric sensor. How do you translate x ms improvement into tangible measurements? What about overdriving technology that produces fast measured results but results in some artifacts that can be more distracting than the smearing effect? I’m not sure. For now, we'll continue to rely on describing the smearing as a) not interfering with competitive FPS gaming, b) acceptable for FPS gaming, but smearing can be distracting and c) acceptable only for desktop and RTS games.

So let's take a look at the monitor's I've hand-selected for this round-up and see why finding the best monitor is going to be challenge.

The Competitors

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The Competitors
	Contrast Ratio	Peak Brightness (cd/m2)	Panel Type	Pixel Refresh (ms)	Claimed viewing angle (h/v)	DVI input	Portrait Mode	Street Price (Newegg.com)
Hyundai ImageQuest L90D+	700:1	300	6-bit TN+film	8	150/135	Yes, 1	Yes	$350
LG Electronics Flatron L1981Q	500:1	250	6-bit TN+film	8	160/160	Yes, 1	Yes	$600
NEC MultiSync LCD1970GX	700:1	400	6-bit TN+film	8	170/155	Yes, 1	No	$550 - $50 rebate
NEC MultiSync LCD1980FXi	600:1	270	8-bit S-IPS with 10-bit LUT	18	178/178	Yes, 2	Yes	$650
Samsung SyncMaster 920T	1000:1	250	8-bit PVA	25	178/178	Yes, 1	Yes	$420
Advertised viewing angles do not account for color shift.

Like that new TV show on Fox, The Inside, every monitor was selected to participate for a specific reason. So, in alphabetical order:

Hyundai ImageQuest L90D+

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LG Electronics Flatron L1981Q

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Competitors (cont’d)

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NEC MultiSync LCD1970GX

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NEC MultiSync LCD1980FXi

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Samsung Syncmaster 920T

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Why pixel refresh times can be deceiving

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The next five pages are taken verbatim from the last monitor review. If you haven’t read this before, please take the time to do so because it’ll explain how we evaluate monitors. If you read the last article, feel free to skip ahead.

The Myth of the 8 ms Panel

The techie in all of us wants a monitor with the fastest possible pixel refresh rate. After all, the faster the better, right? Well, it turns out it is not quite that simple. It’s obvious that if your pixel refresh is too slow, there’s too much blurring. It’ll interfere with your gaming. However, when the motion blur reaches a threshold point, it’s no longer a hindrance to your gaming performance and actually helps to smooth out the framerates. On the other hand, monitors that are too aggressive with the pixel refresh times don’t have anywhere near the same color or contrast.

The real problem is that rated pixel refresh times are rarely quoted as “averages.” They’re often quoting the best-case scenario. This is further complicated by the fact that there are different types of LCD panels on the market: S-IPS, TN-film, and PVA/MVA. Think of them as being differences CPU types (like a Pentium 4 vs. Athlon64). Depending on the type of LCD panel, there can be large differences in the pixels refresh depending on whether it’s going from black to white, or if the pixel is changing from gray to gray. It can actually be slower to transition from black to gray than it is to go from black to white for some panels. That can be a bit counter-intuitive.

What this means for you is that an 25 ms S-IPS LCD panel works as fast as a 16 ms “TN-film” based technology for the wide range of black to light gray. Only when a pixel is going from pure black to pure white is the TN-film is actually faster. So in nearly every real-world application including first person shooters, the difference in smearing will be minimal. On the other hand, a PVA or MVA monitor that may be advertised as doing 25 ms when going from black to white may very well need 80 ms to transition from black to dark gray!

Speed isn’t everything. IPS panels typically offer better viewing angles with more accurate color, however contrast is poorer. TN-Film technology (the 8, 12 and 16 ms) panels only display 18-bit color. PVA/MVA panels on the other hand are famed for deep black levels and superb contrast ratios that typically come the expense of speed.

So, while pixel refresh is important, the way it’s advertised, it’s about as useful as megahertz ratings for CPUs or watts for amplifiers. It’ll help you decide within a panel type only. That is, an 8 ms TN-film screen is better than a 12 ms TN-film screen, but a 20 ms MVA screen will have significantly worse ghosting than a 25 ms IPS panel. In addition, all things equal and the same advertised pixel refresh, 17-inch LCD panels tend to exhibit less smearing than 19-inch panels.

How fast?

With CRT monitors, it was important to have a high refresh rate to avoid flicker. This isn’t a problem with LCD panels anymore because instead of using an electron gun to energize phosphors, the LCD itself is a transparent film (like a 35mm slide) with a static light source behind the panel. The cold cathodes fluorescent tubes that light LCD panels operate at tens of thousands of hertz. Many LCD panels have a native display refresh of 60Hz, and if so, it’s actually better to run your LCD display at 60Hz rather than 75Hz. Both will be flicker free.

Does this mean that you only need a video card that does 60 fps? No, FiringSquad was one of the original proponents of the 100+ fps benchmarks when evaluating 3D graphics cards. The most common explanation for wanting this speed is that benchmarks reflect an average framerate, whereas it’s the minimum framerate under heavy load that matters for gaming. However, a more subtle distinction is the idea that games synchronize their display to user input as well. Having a higher framerate acts in the same way a higher mouse refresh rate works.

Even an 8 ms TN film panel is not immune to smearing. Fortunately at 12 ms or faster, we found the smearing associated with TN-film panels to be non-intrusive. You’ll be able to see the smearing when you’re looking for it, but it’s not at a point where it interferes with gaming, even at the professional competitive level. 16 ms TN-film is a good starting point as a minimum spec and most gamers will be happy with this level of blurring. We found the 12 ms PVA panels to perform similarly to the 16 ms TN-film panels. You will see smearing if you look for it, and for a skilled gamer, it’ll occasionally get in the way. By skilled gamer, that’s someone who consistently is in the top 2 spots for any given match. 25ms PVA panels were too slow for high-speed gaming and even casual gamers will notice the difference. That said, DVD movies will look fine. 25 ms IPS panels were on par, if not slightly better than 16 ms TN-film panels.

Digital Video Interface

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Most people think that DVI is vastly superior to an analog VGA connection for a LCD flat panel. Those people are right.

It makes sense for DVI to be better. With DVI, images are inherently sharp because each pixel on the monitor reflects one pixel from the computer. In fact, there is no reason why non-DVI LCD panels should still exist since all LCD panels are inherently digital. An analog-only LCD panel actually requires additional circuitry to convert the information back to the digital format – with DVI, there’s a direct connection. More importantly for you, there’s no meaningful price difference. The cheapest 17” non-DVI monitor is $205 and the cheapest 17” DVI monitor is $220. If your budget is so tight that you cannot afford the $15 difference, you shouldn’t be spending your money on computer equipment in the first place. If there’s one absolute of buying an LCD monitor, it is to get a monitor with DVI support. As long as you stick with a DVI panel, your monitor will be sharp.

There are two myths when it comes to DVI. The first is that the analog VGA output allows better color. This is false and we’re not sure where the misconception comes from. With exception of $2000 exotic LCD panels, monitors can only work with 24-bit color. This means that the monitor can only consider integer values from 0 to 255 for red, blue, and green information. The DVI interface is perfect for transmitting these numbers. With the VGA, an “analog to digital converter” has to measure the voltage of the signal to figure out what integer is closest to the measured input.

The second myth is that analog VGA is just as sharp as DVI on today’s monitors thanks to today’s improved analog- to digital converters. This is a false statement perpetuated by well-intentioned but inexperienced reviewers. They’re well-intentioned because they’re trying to help you save money by saying that there’s no big difference – they’re hoping that there’s no difference. We want to help you save money too – but instead of telling you to go with a lower-quality but lower-priced monitor that’ll need upgrading in a one or two years, we want to help you find the right monitor so that you only need to buy it once and not have to upgrade for another 5+ years.

There definitely has been an improvement in LCD panels running analog VGA, but it’s not due to the analog to digital converter. It’s due to improvements in sharpening algorithms. Let’s explore this using a once top-of-the-line Samsung 915N 19” LCD panel with an 8 ms pixel refresh.

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The Importance of Color Accuracy

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Contrast Ratio: It’s Not Everything

When it comes to picture quality, brightness and contrast ratio are often talked about. However, we want you to realize that the most important element is neither contrast ratio nor brightness, but color accuracy. It’s true that we want contrasty images that aren’t washed out, but when we use the term “contrasty,” we’re actually talking more about micro-contrast and color accuracy than actual contrast. To prove this to you, let’s see why contrast ratio alone isn’t a useful measurement.

“Contrast ratio” is measured by comparing the intensity of the brightest white and the darkest black. Let’s take a look at two images

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Colorimetry

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Colorimetry, or the measurement of color, is an important part of measuring a monitor’s performance. A lot of people assume that color accuracy is only important for photography or graphic design and art. That’s true, but the more accurate the color and wider range of colors that can be reproduced, the better the micro-contrast too. Now the color experts out there will tell me that local contrast and color accuracy are NOT the same thing, but ponder this: if an intense yellow color ends up being reproduced as a pale yellow, the overall image will also lose contrast.

Color accuracy is actually extremely important for gaming too. What if a game with washed-out and drab textures only looked like that because it was your monitor? When artists and level designers create textures and lighting, they’re making their artistic choices based upon what they see on their monitor. We surveyed a number of successful software developers ranging from junior start-ups with only one or two hits under their belt, to the studio powerhouses creating games that push the limits of NVIDIA and ATI’s flagship products and define the direction of the industry. Nearly all of them reported using color calibrated LCDs and CRTs as part of their design environment. They’re taking the time to make sure their games look their best… so should you.

Measuring color is easy – you can use a color meter... or a colorimeter. But which colorimeter? We used the X-Rite DTP94 colorimeter. The DTP94 is almost twice as accurate as the ColorVision Spyder used by some other review websites and is also better than the first generation Lacie Blue Eye colorimeters used by other reviews. In fact, the DTP94 is the colorimeter of choice for Kodak’s Matchprint Virtual Proofing System and FujiFilm’s Level One Monitor Profiling Package.

Still, the DTP94 is just a piece of hardware. It is nothing more than a glorified ultra-low resolution digital camera that can accurately quantify the color being displayed. For example, you could measure how red the red looks. The catch is that since monitors are non-linear, we need to look at more than the reds, greens, and blues. We need to look at more than 3 colors, but which colors? Fortunately, that’s an easy question. The colors we’ll be testing are those made famous by the GretagMacbeth ColorChecker. This is a patch of 24 scientifically selected colored squares in a wide range of colors that represent natural objects such as human skin, foliage, and blue skies and have stood up to the test of time. Doing well with these 24 colors is predictive for doing well with all 16.7M colors.

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Color Temperature

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There’s no single color that defines white. We all know that white light contains a mixture of all other colors, but there is actually a wide range of colors that our brain interprets as being white. That’s why the white from an old fluorescent bulb and a halogen desk lap still look white. Color temperature is one way we can describe the different types of white. A better way to describe white is to describe the color using a CIE illuminant. D65 is such an illuminant and is the formal standard for the Internet and gaming, as well as HDTV, video, and film. This is what all TVs and monitors should be calibrated to out of the box, but that’s rarely the case. (More on this later.)

Many manufacturers adopt a cooler temperature for white. They do this because they think you are stupid. By choosing a cooler temperature, all the colors will be off from what’s the game and filmmakers intended. The catch is that cooler monitors and TVs will appear brighter and manufacturers think that if you see a bright TV, you’re more likely to buy it and assume it is better… Other manufacturers do a better job and may ship at the higher color temperature, but then have a setting called “Pro” mode or sRGB mode.

You might be wondering why we’re evaluating D65, an illuminant, instead of a color temperature of 6500K. The way to think about it is that on a chart of all possible colors, the 6500K color temperature is actually a line of white whereas D65 is a specific point of white. D65 reflects the true standard that studios calibrate to, and is actually 6504K. (D50 is an alternative illuminant used for calibration and is typically used in the print industry. This represents 5002 kelvin and helps artists better mimic what the printed output, when viewed under incandescent lamps.) Are these subtle distinctions between CIE illuminants and color temperature important? Yes, because review websites that try to quantify color accuracy using DeltaE measurements need to take this into account. DeltaE is the difference between what’s measured and what you’d expect from a blackbody radiator (the color temperature). A well-calibrated D50 monitor might have a DeltaE as high as 4.21 if you’re comparing it to a blackbody 5000K color temperature – it’s not supposed to be equal.

Alright, time to see which of our monitors came in last place

5th place

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LG Electronics