Best Monitor

[Sgt.Bud Wieser]

I am going to buy a new monitor, and need to know if this game will play well on a wide screen , or will it be squewed. Pardon the spelling, hope you know what I meen.I am looking for an LCD with a dvi input.

[OneShotWonder]

Hey m8 i have a HP 19 inch widescreen monitor it is great and great picture on the game. The screen resolution goes to 1480x900 i couldnt be happier with it m8 cost me 150 pounds.

[Ol'digger]

I recently bought a Viewsonic 22inch widescreen LCD and run it at 1280 x 960 and the graphics are great. (Thanks to some tech help from 'Yourself' and the guys at ToB)

(Cost me ............about 2yrs supply of Kangaroo bikkies.)

Brett

[Yourself]

Thanks for the kudos, Brett! Much appreciated!

On topic:

Flat-screen (lcd) displays give the best picture at their native resolution...

Make sure your video card can support the resolution you're going to run at.

If your video card can't support your monitor's resolution (or resolutions), you will not have a good experience.

Some flat-screen displays (namely Dell's, and some others... ViewSonic... anyone else have experience?) are very good at taking a non-monitor-native resolution and up-scaling or down-scaling it to fit. Others may just grossly stretch the image, leave black bars around the screen, or give a very bad (grainy) image.

Also, keep in mind that widescreen monitors have more real estate side to side, but less up and down - for regular use, you may find yourself scrolling up and down more than you used to.

Taking OneShotWonder's (Mark's) example, his 19" monitors' widescreen resolution is 1480 x 900 pixels....my 19" non-wide-screens' resolution is 1280 x 1024.....not as wide, but deeper.

Most older games don't support wide-screen resolutions, but newer games do (many drivers can scale older games, or you can find resolution 'hacks' to potentially enable wide-screen).

It depends upon your normal (or highest-priority) usage as to what's best for you.

That said, having a good video card matched to a decent flat-panel monitor makes for a STUNNING gaming experience.

One other thing (before I start rambling)....

Find out the return policy of the place you purchase, and the "bad pixel" policy of the manufacturer. LCD monitors can develop "bad pixels" (pixels stuck on or off) - that means you may have some pixels on your screen that are always a certain color...white, red, black, blue, green, etc.. You shouldn't have any when you first get it, but each manufacturer defines "bad pixels" and their return policy different. Some say you must have a total of 8 before they replace, some say they must be in a group of at least 4 before they will replace it.

Oh yes....and my preference is for a non-glossy (non-reflective) screen - I know the highly-reflective screens give better color and contrast, but that's only in a perfect environment. They can look washed-out, or can be hard to see in a brightly lit room (or a room where the light source is behind you).

I won't get into the differences between types of lcd panels used on the different monitors.......get what looks best to you.

Yourself (Dave)

[barkingmaduk]

Another Excellent Tech explanation Dave (i also read the settings for cod grafics also excellent) .
Malc

[AladdinSane]

Thank you for sharing your expertise, oh wise one. I get a kick out of reading them; my wife walks by and says, "who posted that?" every time... I learn something every time you post on the forum, Dave... Thank you!

[raydoger]

I Am With Dave.get The Right One That Will Fit Your Needs.

[JETDOC]

i've been looking at the LGs they've got a 19" wide screen with a 2ms refresh rate i do know that you want the quickest refresh you can get. so you might look at that on the ones your thinking about.

[Yourself]

Thanks, Chad.....notice that I changed my location ;-)

And tell your wife that I'm not usually such a long-winded guy.

I personally think I'm not a bad guy....but my wife and kids may differ :-)

Offhand, I don't remember all that much regarding response rates, but as Brooks (JetDoc) mentioned, generally the quicker the better.

Response rates are usually stated one of two ways - black to black, or grey to grey.

I may be backwards on this - someone please correct me if I'm wrong - but a grey-to-grey response rate is quicker than a black-to-black response rate. That's why some manufacturers report the grey-to-grey response rate.

A black-to-black response rate measures the on-off response of a pixel, a grey-to-grey measures the light or color intensity changes.

Brooks, I think you meant response rate rather than refresh rate in your post.

Refresh rate is the frequency that the monitor (crt) completely refreshes the on-screen image. In the US, the default is 60-hz (60 cycles, or times, per second), but I generally use 72-hz or 75-hz refresh rates.

Lcd's interface at a nominal 60-hz refresh rate (for video compatibility - they really don't "refresh" per se), so they don't have the same flickering issues that crt's have.

The flickering is an optical illusion - that's when the screen is refreshing the same rate as the ambient light sources. You can sometimes see the flicker - kind of the same effect as spinning a top under a flourescent light - it appears to slow down, stop, and spin in reverse (visually) while it is actually slowing down. Strobe dancing (don't ask) gives the same effect, however at a much slower cycle rate.

This is most pronounced looking at a white screen...for example, bring up a blank Microsoft Excel sheet, make it full-screen, and focus on the front left side of your monitor. Sometimes people can see the actual refresh happening (flicker) out of the corner of their eyes.

You can also see this by taking a picture of a tv screen - those grey bars you see are the screen being refreshed (actually, the previously refreshed pixels lowering in intensity just before they get refreshed).

In my experience, I don't have ghosting or any problems working with a 16ms or faster lcd that I've ever noticed, and I do notice when I'm gaming on a crt at only a 60-hz refresh rate.

Keep in mind that a 16ms response rate means that the pixels can change about 62 times a second - couple that with your frames per second (fps) and ping rates (see some of my posts under Graphics Settings (http://www.theoldbreed.com/showthread.php?t=499)) to get an idea on your on-line gaming experience.

The 60-hz refresh rate comes into play in the US - that's because our electrical system is AC with a 60hz cycle.

On faster lcd's, take a look at the listed contrast ratio - generally the faster the lcd, the lower the contrast ratio is (at least, on the lcd's I can afford). 400:1 and 500:1 are fine for gaming for me, but I prefer 700:1 or 800:1 for everyday use.

Most people probably won't be able to tell a difference looking at a single monitor, but looking at several side-by-side can show the differences.

I wonder what my post-to-word ratio is?

Probaby something to be embarassed by!

And Chad, I guess I didn't help my case with your wife!

LOL

Yourself (Dave)

[AladdinSane]

I read this to Chad... he said you're brilliant! You should have a tech blog.
Thanks again!
Charity

[Yourself]

*blush*

Thanks, Charity!

Nice to meet you (via long-winded posts!)

Yourself (Dave)

[mike]

i have an Optroni which i got from mark at a bargain £50 :) :5lol:

[JETDOC]

man does this guy know his stuff or what. and yes i ment responce rate. but i always thought that a crt was better for gaming than a lcd because of such issues but the way i understand what you said was that its the other way around?

[Yourself]

Yes, Brooks.

Generally, a crt is better for gaming.

The main reason is due to the ability of the crt to change the size of the pixels, and many people game at different resolutions than their desktop (usually due to the limitations of the video card not being able to keep up with higher resolutions while gaming).

a 19-inch crt can display just about any resolution - it changes the size of the pixels to fit the resolution of the screen. That's why you can get such a good picture on a crt from 640x480 to over 1900x1600.

However, unless you've really got a high-end crt, the colors and contrast on the newest $150-$500 lcd monitors are (in my opinion) better.

The drawback to lcd's is the fixed pixel size - that's what I refered to as the "native resolution".

a 19-inch lcd is generally 1280 x 1024 pixels, meaning that it can only display 1280 x 1024 pixels. If you run in any other resolution, either the video card or the monitor itself must upscale or downscale the resolution to a display of 1280 x 1024.

That's why using 800x600 or 1024x768 on a 19-inch lcd looks "blocky", while 1600+ looks "fuzzy" (one lcd pixel is representing multiple image pixels, which has to blend surrounding image pixels to map them to lcd pixels).

But if you're running the lcd in native resolution, you can get a great picture.

So, assuming you can game in the native resolution, I think a $200-$300 19-inch lcd is much better than a 17- or 19- inch crt (high-end crt's excluded, of course).

Plus, they use less energy, and put out much less heat (and, are easier on the eyes during normal usage).

Oh yes....and much lighter also.

The number of times I strained my back moving my monstrous 19-inch crts is mind-boggling.

I just replaced one of my Dell 19-inch crt's (Sony Triniton manufacture) with a $170 19-inch Westinghouse lcd, and the difference is amazing......the lcd is brighter and has much more color.

Also, my Dell 19-inch crt's are now 6+ years old. Replacing them with an equivilent crt means a refurbished crt (Sony is not making them anymore), which will cost me well over $500 each (and a huge shipping charge). These things weigh around 70-80 pounds each.

I had to reinforce one of my computer desks for it.

Of course, I run COD2 in 1280x1024 (actually, 1280x960, which is close enough) so the switch was easy for me.

Several other players have switched to lcd's, and some of those widescreen. All of the comments I have read from them have been extremely positive.

So right now I'm running one gaming machine with a 19-inch lcd, and the other with a 19-inch crt. I will continue to run like that, as my family runs several types of games, and all of them at different resolutions.

As usual, the above is only my opinion.

Yourself (Dave)

[Ol'digger]

Dave,
I personally think you should have a weekly tech tip or similar.
Given a lot of our members are shall we say of a similar vintage to me, computer technology is somehwat daunting when it comes to info. We are often bombarded by information that we don't really undertsand and it can not only prove confusing but very costly in the event that we purchase components that aren't as compatable as the salesman indicated.

(Take my purchase of Corel Paint Shop x, great program.....but won't run on my duo core processor.)

Anyway, thanks again for a very informative post.

Keep up the great work.

Cheers
Brett

[AladdinSane]

I agree.. maybe we could give Dave his own subheading in the tech area... Ask Yourself... hint, hint administrators. Of course if Dave wanted to tackle educating us barbarians. Each week or so he could take a hardware component and explain it in the way that he does... so we can understand it, and doesn't have any marketing hype in it.
Just my opinion and wish!

[boss]

good idea guys ,dave i need to install a new hard drive i bought ,but i dont know how, and i dont want to lose everything on the other one ,both internal ???

[Yourself]

Joy, do you want the new hard drive to

1) replace your existing hard drive;

2) become a secondary hard drive; or

3) become the primary hard drive with the existing becoming the secondary?

I would lean heavily to 1) above, as hard drives are prone to failure, and recovering a system can be difficult and extremely time consuming.

My general approach is to replace the hard drive, and keep the old one around in case the new one fails.

I've had that happen to me and so has my brother (at different times). I've put new hard drives into machines, and the new ones died within the first month. In both cases, I just hooked up the old hard drive and was back up and running (I was able to talk my brother through the process via phone - I left the original in his machine, just unplugged).

It doesn't really matter who the manufacturer is or how long the warranty is - all hard drives can have a problem, and the manufacturers only cover the replacement of the drive, not the contents of the drive.

Most hard drives come with some type of utility software that you can (usually) use to copy your existing drive to the new drive. These utilities (I prefer Norton's GHOST myself) all do a sector-by-sector drive copy rather than a file-based copy.

I find the ones supplied by the manufacturer seem to take longer, though. Using GHOST, it generally takes between 20-40 minutes to duplicate a drive. I've had the utility by Maxtor (can't remember the name of the utility now) take over 6 hours.

Hard drives are (relatively) cheap, so re-using existing ones is of little value (in my opinion).

For a hard drive purchase, my suggestions are to get the largest cache you can (generally 8 meg or 16 meg, if possible), and the highest rpm drive you can (generally, 7200 rpm for SATA and PATA). Also, generally the bigger the better. I wouldn't put in less than an 80 or 100 gigabyte drive anymore - I'm in the 250-500 gig range myself.

SATA and PATA refer to the type of connection from the hard drive to the computer (yes, I know, that's not technically correct, but correct enough for our discussion).

PATA is/was also known as IDE, and is in all older machines, and most new machines (most CD and DVD drives are IDE, or PATA).

In a typical gaming machine, you can "feel" the difference between a slower hard drive (5400 rpm) and a faster hard drive (7200 rpm).

There are 10,000 and 15,000 rpm drives out now, but I don't think they're worth the price for general use - they're great for special situations or tasks, but not for general computing and gaming.

Anyway, in older machines, using PATA (or IDE) drives sometimes required you to set jumpers on the drive to specify if it is a master or a slave drive (or sometimes a single drive).

For the most part, those jumpers allowed you to select Master, Slave, or Cable Select (CS). Cable Select determines if the drive is a master or slave by where it is plugged into the IDE cable (last connector or middle connector).

Most drives are now jumpered to the cable select position from the factory, usually allowing it to just be plugged in and it is ready to go.

SATA drives don't have a jumper - they can figure out for themselves where they are in the system.

For PATA (IDE) drives, there are two types of cables - 40 wire and 80 wire. The 80 wire cables allow faster communication to the drive (I think they are required for 100-ATA and faster communication). The visual difference is the 80-wire cables have smaller (or finer) wires - you can see that in the ribbon pattern.

Most hard drives are now 80 wire, but I still see newer machines with 40 wire cables going to the CD and/or DVD drives.

Anyway, my general steps for replacing a drive are:

1) Determine the stats of the existing drive (can be valuable when making a choice of which drive to copy from/to later). I generally do this by bringing up Window Explorer, clicking on My Computer in the left pane, select View->Details from the menu (that changes the right pane to a details view), and note how big the existing drive is, and how much disk space is available.


2) Install the new drive following the manufacturers directions for jumper selection and cable hookup. This can be a little tricky if you've never done it before. Sometimes, existing systems have an IDE cable that only has one drive connector - in those cases you will have to use the one supplied with the new drive - that should have two drive connectors.

NOTE: take a look at the existing IDE cable - if the existing is a 40 wire cable, replace it with the one supplied with the new drive.

NOTE: for the copy process and initial boot, I don't mount the new drive - I leave it hanging by the cables, or resting on a book. Makes it easier to get in and make changes if necessary.

3) Put the manufactures utility CD in and boot up the machine (you should be able to put it in just after you power on the machine, but before it is finally booting) - it should automatically recognize the drive in the BIOS - if not, you may have to enter the BIOS and tell it the new drive is there. That can be a huge discussion. The machine should boot into the manufctures utilities, and walk you though the setup of your new drive, including copying the contents of the existing drive.

4) Shut down the machine after the copy is done, unplug the existing drive (both the PATA or SATA cable and the power cable), and boot into Windows. Once Windows finds and installs the new hardware, shut down again.

5) Securely mount the new drive and put the machine back together.

You should be ready to go. It is your option if you want to remove the old drive or not, but I find it is easier to leave it in place JUST IN CASE.

Also, I would suggest leaving your machine on for a few days whenever you replace a piece of hardware - that allows it to "burn in".

If you want, Joy, I would be happy to talk you through the process, however hooking up time-wise may be pretty difficult.

The only tools you should need are a medium-sized phillips-head screwdriver.

Yourself (Dave)

[AladdinSane]

:icon_wink: Thanks as always, Dave... just don't start showing off!

[boss]

dave ,sorry it took so long to get back with you ,been crazy here :5lol: ,anyway ,not real sure what step to take ,i am replacing the hard drive on my moms pc ,she has a 40 g ,way to small ,already bought a 120 g ,but she dont want to lose anything on the 40 ,thats my problem ,i can replace it, but i dont know how to ghost one to the other ??

[Ol'digger]

Boss,
I recently went from one machine to a new one.
In order to transfer everything I wanted over and rather than get technically confused....(which is easy for me)
I bought a 80gb external hard drive.
I then just copied everything to it............then copied it into the new one.
Wasn't all that expensive an option and I now have the benefit of being able to back up everything I am worried about loosing in the event of a major crash on a weekly basis..........like the current ToB maps....and all my photos.

Just a suggestion from a non-technical type.

Cheers

Brett

[boss]

been thinking on that one brett ,and i may try it ,want have enough time off work till next weekend and i am sick this week ,maybe later ,but thanks it sounds like a plan i may try :icon_biggrin:

[Yourself]

Joy, do you have the ability to burn a cd image?

I'm trying to create a bootable cd with a utility that I can transfer if you can burn it.

Brett, how did you copy everything over to the new (transfer) drive?

Using the Windows XP Explorer copy (or drag and drop) will grab user files (provided you know where they are), but will not make an image of the drive. It also will not copy files in use, or files that are hidden.

By that, I mean you will still have to reinstall software to the new drive (after installing Windows, but you went to a new machine in this case).

Brett, that's a great way to create occasional backups - like you clearly pointed out, it gives you a 2nd copy of your files.

The (possible) downside to that is if you have multiple users (logons) to a machine - you may have to do the copy from each user id.

A general backup solution that I use (not as often as I should) is to run backup software (I will have to look for it - I'm not on that machine now) and backup the whole "document and settings" folder - that grabs everything that is in everyone's My Documents, My Pictures, My songs, etc. folders.

Unfortunately, it also grabs their temp files.

I write all that to DVD's, and test the integrity everytime I back up.

Also, it seems like I'm replacing hard drives about every year or so (run out of space), so I follow what I've outlined earlier.

Another possible solution (if you have a home network) is to make some shared folders available "offline", which caches a local copy on a machine. That's a little more complicated, but only needs a 2nd machine to be powered on (and host the files).

Still another (one that I use for my wife) is the old "Briefcase" - that's a holdover from the old Win 98 days. For her work machine and our main home machine, I set up a common "briefcase", and she stores all her files in there. She can work on them from either machine at any time, and all she has to do is to right-click on the briefcase (on her desktop) and select "Update". That synchronises both briefcases, effectively having two up-to-date copies of every file. It is pretty painless to use, and only takes a minute or two.

Not necessairily painless to set up, though.

I'm hoping to set up a RAID 5 network file server as a backup solution this spring/summer.

Yourself (Dave)

[boss]

dave i do have a c.d burner ,and windows xp ,but no other users are set up ,that makes it hard for virus scanners to get to all users ,that it is downfall for xp in my opion ,....joy

[Ol'digger]

Dave,

I just plugged the external (already formatted to Windows XP)into a USB port, opened my 'programs' folder and my other folders from my hard drive like my pics etc and selected whatever folders I wanted for the new one and copied them.

Worked fine for all my pics, my ToB maps etc and all the files I had stored.

I then used the transfer wizard from XP and selected the external drive instead of making a disk and used it to copy my settings for e-mail and desktop etc.

I had problems with a couple of programs but I had the disks for those so I just re-loaded them.

In my case it was just transfering files and folders not total operating programs or systems.

And in my case, I gave my old PC to my 11yr old son (after deleting anything that may have caught his eye lol ) and his is not connected to the net he only plays games in single player mode......so my new machine is only ever used by me.

I gave my fiance' my old lap-top so she can e-mail her friends in Thailand and that is all she uses it for.

Ol'diggers machine is his pride and joy no-one gets to play with it except me....lol. Hence no other users to worry about.


Brett