Blur Busters Forums

I currently have and love my Nokia 445Xi (picked it up from a guy who had like 6 of them for $50). It runs 1024x768 at 120hz (for some reason my favorite resolution, I guess I like low resolution because I read lots of text??). I am considering buying a 240hz monitor since I built a new computer (i7 7700K and 1080) that can run newer games at higher FPS. Either the Asus PG258Q or the Acer XB252Q seem to be the two best options, currently leaning towards the Acer. That said from reading around this forum and other places it seems like there are still advantages to CRTs that LCD technology simply can't match (motion blur and input lag I think??) and both those monitors are $500 plus (I'm hoping for a black friday/cyber monday deal or will maybe just wait for the next gen of monitors to come out). Also the color quality and possible backlight bleed/dead pixels have me wary.

The other issue afaik is that with g-sync you need to get 240fps+ which even with a 1080 is really only possible in CS:GO and some other older games. Besides CS:GO I mostly play Rainbow 6 Siege (160-180 fps avg) and PUBG (80-120 fps avg) which is terribly optimized. On the other hand 240hz seems relatively future proof and I am one of those people who can really tell the difference between 60-120hz and even 80/90/100 fps feel slightly different to me.

Please let me know if I have the facts right and help me decide what to do...

nofreewill wrote:The other issue afaik is that with g-sync you need to get 240fps+

No, no. It's exactly the opposite. G-Sync exists so that you don't have to get high FPS to get a smooth animation. In fact, G-Sync stops working when your FPS reaches the refresh rate of the monitor. If you get more than ~238FPS on a 240FPS, g-sync is disabled.

This is why you need to cap your FPS to stay below the refresh rate to make sure g-sync is always active.

With that being said, going from a CRT to a 240Hz TN panel monitor will probably drive you nuts. Colors are worse, contrast is worse (MUCH worse), black levels are worse, motion blur is worse, and it seems that especially with 240Hz monitors, you can get some bad image artifacts like horizontal or vertical lines or weird looking faint checkerboard patterns on the screen.

On the flip side, image geometry is much better (in fact, it's perfect), sharpness is better, DPI is higher (meaning text is much sharper and aliasing is lower,) power consumption is better.

Input lag... eh, I wouldn't say it's high enough to matter. With a gaming monitor, the differences are really minimal. I wouldn't expect any gaming monitor (240Hz or not) to have more than 1-4ms higher input lag than a CRT, which is virtually nothing.

Then you might think that instead of going for a 240Hz TN monitor, you instead opt for a 144Hz or 165Hz IPS or VA panel monitor. These will have less artifacts, better colors, better contrast, and better black levels. But there's drawbacks with them too.

Gaming IPS panels would have been almost perfect if it wasn't for "IPS glow". The lower left/right corners of the screen have a weird glow in dark scenes or when using them in a dark room.

Gaming VA panels have a weird contrast shift when looking at them from an angle, and also have more motion blur because their pixels are slower compared to TN and IPS.

Unfortunately, motion blur is always going to be higher compared to CRT, even using a motion blur reduction mode (which disables g-sync, btw; it's one or the other.) Flicker is also going to be worse when using blur reduction. A 120Hz CRT has virtually zero flicker (it's there, but due to the way a CRT scans out the frames, the flicker is very "soft".) An LCD will "blink" the whole image on and off to achieve a similar effect, but that means that it flickers far worse. 120Hz flicker on an LCD looks about the same as 75-80Hz flicker on a CRT.

The only panel technology that doesn't have any of these issues is OLED, but a) they didn't take off yet, b) even the ones that are available cost ~$5000 and c) they're only 60Hz.

What I would recommend overall? For now, my recommendation is to stay away from 240Hz monitors for the time being. I would recommend an IPS, but the IPS glow is probably going to annoy you to no end, especially since you're used to a CRT which has zero issues. So I would suggest trying a VA panel. Yes, you're going to get more motion blur, but I think the overall experience is going to be better for someone coming from a CRT. A G-Sync, 2560x1440 27" VA monitor would probably be a good fit for your 1080. Note though that these monitors are approaching the $1000 price point.

The one most important thing (IMO) to look forward to when going from your current CRT to an LCD, is g-sync. That thing really transformed games for me. Anything above 90FPS has "good enough" motion blur, but the smooth motion, zero tearing and low input lag of g-sync is really the most important thing for me now.

nofreewill wrote:I currently have and love my Nokia 445Xi (picked it up from a guy who had like 6 of them for $50). It runs 1024x768 at 120hz (for some reason my favorite resolution, I guess I like low resolution because I read lots of text??).

You can change DPI settings on Windows to make text really big. In modern applications, it scales to Retina-sharp (like a modern Android or iPad) instead of pixellated-zoom. So don't worry about 1920x1080 -- you can make text look as big as 1024x768 when using Windows.

nofreewill wrote:I am considering buying a 240hz monitor since I built a new computer (i7 7700K and 1080) that can run newer games at higher FPS. Either the Asus PG258Q or the Acer XB252Q seem to be the two best options, currently leaning towards the Acer. That said from reading around this forum and other places it seems like there are still advantages to CRTs that LCD technology simply can't match (motion blur and input lag I think??)

Actually, there are two input-lag measurement metrics to to be aware of when selecting a display for competitive gaming.
Absolute input lag (average) --versus-- input lag varance (difference between min and max).

Input-lag variance (MIN-MAX range) of a 240Hz monitor is less than a 120Hz monitor, no matter what technology it is.

Absolute input lag of CRT is slightly less because of faster-activating phosphor versus 1ms GtG of TN. However.... Input lag variance of a higher refresh rate (240Hz) is a tighter 1/240sec range than a 1/120sec range -- that change from 8.3ms to 4.2ms lag-randomization will improve your competitive aiming more than the slight 1ms increase in lag going to a modern TN panel (LCD GtG) as long as you stick to real-time-scanout panels which most VRR-capable displays are. That 4ms of random-lag savings is bigger than 1ms of absolute-lag savings.

With strobe backlights (see Motion Blur Reduction) modern TN gaming monitors can approach CRT motion clarity -- albiet with GSYNC turned off (unless using a hack).

A blur-eliminating strobe backlight mode (ULMB, ELMB, DyAc, LightBoost, etc) is a mode that is turned on/off. The backlight stays dark during refresh cycles and is flashed briefly between refresh cycles. It flickers sort of like a 120Hz CRT, and kills all the motion blur. Persistence is often adjustable (like an adjustable-phosphor-decay) via pulse-width settings, in a brightness-versus-clarity tradeoff. You will typically nowadays be able to get less motion blur than a medium-persistence CRT such as a Sony FW900 CRT, especially with the brighter (300 nit) strobe backlights found in certain 240Hz monitors, then adjusted downwards to shorter sub-millisecond pulse widths (~100 nits)

nofreewill wrote:Also the color quality and possible backlight bleed/dead pixels have me wary.

For eyes used to CRT, color quality will be an issue with TN panels.

Dead pixels seems to be something not very common in these price ranges (at least for the monitors I have -- of the 5 "Better Than 60Hz" monitors I have here, only 1 has a dead pixel). That said, no guarantees.

nofreewill wrote:The other issue afaik is that with g-sync you need to get 240fps+

Actually, that's not quite correct. To understand variable refresh rates better, see our old and new articles:
G-SYNC Preview #1
G-SYNC Preview #2
240Hz GSYNC Lag Tests

G-SYNC makes lower framerates look much better. GSYNC 40-50fps looks almost as good as non-GSYNC 70-80fps -- because of lack of tearing and greatly reduced stutter.

Take a look at this TestUFO G-SYNC Simulation Animation which shows stutter-free framerate changes that G-GSYNC achieves.

A 240Hz GSYNC monitor eliminates stutters for fluctuating framerates all the way from 30fps through 240fps, so anytime a game runs more than 30fps but less than 240fps, the use of G-SYNC makes motion look nicer. There is more motion blur, but there is less stutter since you can't use ULMB (strobe backlight).

Remember you can select between G-SYNC versus VSYNC OFF versus ULMB -- you have multiple choices of modes in a GSYNC monitor, you don't have to always use G-SYNC.

nofreewill wrote:which even with a 1080 is really only possible in CS:GO and some other older games. Besides CS:GO I mostly play Rainbow 6 Siege (160-180 fps avg) and PUBG (80-120 fps avg) which is terribly optimized. On the other hand 240hz seems relatively future proof and I am one of those people who can really tell the difference between 60-120hz and even 80/90/100 fps feel slightly different to me.

If you mainly play competitive games, then 240Hz GSYNC will help PUBG far more than CS:GO. There are players here who use G-SYNC for PUBG, but use VSYNC OFF for CS:GO.

G-SYNC really helps those unoptimized fluctuatey-framerate games quite a bit, varying the refresh rate perfectly in sync with frame rate (literally like 100+ mode changes per second), while permanently keeping scanout velocity at 1/240sec to keep input-lag-jitter small (tight MIN-MAX).

To use G-SYNC competitively, it helps to keep its max-Hz very high (e.g. 240Hz) in order to keep latency very close to VSYNC OFF -- even if your game is only outputting 50fps and 100fps, G-SYNC still greatly reduces the lag of those by scanning-out refresh cycles at their maximum scan velocity (1/240sec) no matter what the current variable refresh rate is.

nofreewill wrote:Please let me know if I have the facts right and help me decide what to do...

Summary:

Font Sizes: For Windows apps, not a problem with modern OS DPI settings with modern/newer apps.
Font now simply zoom to nearly "retina-clarity" like on phones, use 1920x1080 + big DPI = huge windows with huge text (text stays sharp without pixellating). Not all games behave this way though, many games will have smaller text unless you switch modes -- but by having a bigger screen (24" or 27") that will compensate hugely and you should be very comfortable with 1920x1080 since it is similar DPI to your 1024x768 CRT
Geometry: Much better than CRT. No distortions, no focus issue, no misconvergence, no degauss
Colors: You're not going to match your CRT unless your CRT is already very old (degraded colors)
Lag: Complex answer: Slightly higher absolute/average lag, but smaller lag variability (min-max) due to higher Hz. You can get better aiming on a 240Hz TN than a 120Hz CRT, thanks too fine-granularity refresh cycles
Motion Blur: You can fix motion blur by using ULMB, ELMB, DyAc (all sequels to LightBoost) for CRT clarity motion. There is a very, very tiny lag penalty (half a refresh cycle) for enabling a strobe mode, and you can't easily enable G-SYNC during strobed mode.
Applicable Tricks: You do want sustained framerates (framerate = refreshrate = stroberate) just like a CRT for the smoothest motion if you like supersmooth stutterfree panning.
G-SYNC: Very handy stutter-eliminating tearing-eliminating mode that makes fluctuating-framerates and odd-framerates look much better. It may have a smidgen more lag than 1000fps VSYNC OFF, which is why some people will use VSYNC OFF during CS:GO but switch to GSYNC for lower/stuttery framerate games. You will have to turn off the strobe mode (e.g. ULMB) in order to enable G-SYNC.
Applicable Tricks: Cap your framerate just below GSYNC max to guarantee low lag [/u]and/or[/u] use games that never run framerates beyond GSYNC max.
VSYNC OFF: Still an available option. You can turn off G-SYNC and use VSYNC OFF just like with a CRT.

For a CRT guy who is used to 120Hz, I do highly recommend the 240Hz LCDs (if okay with TN) or alternatively the 165Hz IPS LCD (if okay with 2560x1440p). The IPS LCDs have slightly more motion blur and lag than TN, but has better color quality if this specific attribute is super-duper important to you.

I do recommend G-SYNC for you because (a) you have a 1080 and you play certain games such as PUBG which is known to benefit well from GSYNC; and (b) it provides bonus non-G-SYNC features (better overdrive, has ULMB to fix motion blur, more reliably low-lag VSYNC OFF, etc)

If you're motion-blur priority, go 240Hz TN.
If you're color-quality priority, go 165Hz IPS.
If you can't give up either (motion-blur and color-quality) you may stick onto your CRT, or keep CRT as a second display.

Check my signature for monitor lists: