Samsung 206BW Issues..Maybe...

[sawacs]

I just picked up a 206BW today for "possible" use as a new gaming monitor.

Hooked everything up to the new rig and booted up. Well, the first thing I noticed was the amount of eye strain I was getting from this thing. Second was the slight backlight bleeding.

Now, on to the gaming. I booted up Falcon 4 and went at it. To my amazement, there were floating buildings all over the place. I tried every resolution I could think of and never could get rid of this problem. Secondly, there was a slight chop or hesitation when performing quick rolling maneuvers etc which I did not have with my CRT.

Now this thing is advertised as a 2ms response time monitor (GTG). Would this cause the noticable hesitation/chop in a game?

I have since hooked the monitor up to my secondary computer and everything looks amazing along with the eyestrain no longer present. However, I do not play games on this one so...

Could there be some video card/display setting (X1950XTX) I am missing?

I tried both the analog and dvi cable connections and saw no improvement with the hesitation/chop..

Advice would be appreciated, Sawacs

[Big Mike]

Did you turn the brightness down? My 225BW about blinded me when I first fired it up. The monitors reaction time will only cause ghosting, its not going to cause choppy performance, it sounds like maybe your video card isn't switching to 3d mode right away or something causing it not to have enough processing power for the game, its a non issue in lower resolutions, but it'll be a problem at high resolutions. Your card should certainly be able to push a good frame rate at high resolutions though.

[sawacs]

Mike, when using the Samsung at 1680x1050 the frame rates stay at 60 which is based on the refresh rate(I always run with vsync on). On the CRT, they stay at 85.

To clarify things, regardless of the resolution on either monitor and with vsync either on or off, the LCD has chop and the CRT does not which would leave me to believe the 2ms Samsung is not keeping up with the old CRT.

I run Falcon at 6xaa and 8xas with frames averaging 120 or so on the CRT with vsync off. The tray tools counter also shows right around the same frames using the LCD if vsync is turned off.

I think I am going to a chalk this one up to a crappy LCD monitor and return it:)

Cheers, Sawacs

[Big Mike]

You have to REALLY watch it with Vsync, if your graphics card falls just short of 60 FPS for a moment with vsync on you can suddenly find your game dropping from 60 to 30 fps due to the way that the video card buffers the frames. You may want to look into software tweaks to do double and triple buffering as they significantly decrease the problem. Basically what happens is if the card isn't quite done drawing the next frame when its called up the card has to eat that frame for a split second until the next "refresh" occurs and consequently can't draw the frame in line after it. It causes a HUGE performance hit for that instant when it drops out of sync. If you don't ever see the frame rate dropping this may not be your issue, but its also rather hard to detect because it happens so quickly.

Edit: Another option is to force the refresh rate to say 75, while its not optimal for image quality it tends to lessen the impact greatly and LCDs don't actually have a "refresh rate" per se, its just an artifical number to support the legacy way in which graphics drivers and graphics output is created. The hesitation you're seeing is highly unlikely to be due to the monitor, typically response problems show up as tearing and ghosting.

[sawacs]

Mike, I appreciate the detailed explanation.. This is my first LCD monitor and I was a little upset about the graphic hesitations.

You have talked me into plugging it back in and trying the tweaks you suggested.


Thanks!

[nobluo]

update sawacs? any update?

[pak]

You have to REALLY watch it with Vsync, if your graphics card falls just short of 60 FPS for a moment with vsync on you can suddenly find your game dropping from 60 to 30 fps due to the way that the video card buffers the frames. You may want to look into software tweaks to do double and triple buffering as they significantly decrease the problem. Basically what happens is if the card isn't quite done drawing the next frame when its called up the card has to eat that frame for a split second until the next "refresh" occurs and consequently can't draw the frame in line after it. It causes a HUGE performance hit for that instant when it drops out of sync. If you don't ever see the frame rate dropping this may not be your issue, but its also rather hard to detect because it happens so quickly.

Edit: Another option is to force the refresh rate to say 75, while its not optimal for image quality it tends to lessen the impact greatly and LCDs don't actually have a "refresh rate" per se, its just an artifical number to support the legacy way in which graphics drivers and graphics output is created. The hesitation you're seeing is highly unlikely to be due to the monitor, typically response problems show up as tearing and ghosting.

Thanx. That was the best explanation of vsync ever.

GL on the LCD sawacs. I might get that one also.

--pak

[SoA]

Hey would REALLY REALLY like to know how it all turned out.
I'm right now sort of trying to decide between then 206 and 226...

[shard]

I have this LCD, and the brightness is perfect for me :P But I agree Vsync is annoying as sin on this screen.... Does some very weird throttling BS. Pretty much what you had summed up mike.

As for response, this screen is rather steller, same goes for color, but the back light bleeding is a tad annoying, but nothing big.

[Big Mike]

The 206 has that problem too eh? I LOVE the display quality of my 225, but it has some minor backlight bleed as well. Only noticible in a dimly lit room though. Vsync is a big problem on pretty much any LCD unfortunately unless you have a big time heavy hitter card that can out run the game your playing easily, or you spend a lot of time tweaking the buffering etc and keep the settings right to keep the frame rate above the limit at all times.