TFT Gaming question / NEC 20WGX2 owners question.

[acrobat]

Hi everyone, I ordered a whole new PC today including a new monitor. I went with the 20.1" NEC 20WGX2 Widescreen monitor, and now I am a bit worried.

I am coming from a CRT monitor so I have never used flat panels before. I was convinced this NEC monitor would be the greatest thing ever, but I just saw someone on another forum complaining about "tearing" when looking left and right in a first person shooter game. They said its really quite bad, and they tried lots of things to fix it, and the only thing that worked was turning on "Vysnc". I did some research and heard that is a common problem and a common solution, as is using "Triple Buffering".

Unfortunately... using Vsync (and triple buffering) requires extra graphics card and PC power. So it seems that unless your graphics card and PC is fast enough, you have to sacrifice some frame rate speed and possibly some graphics settings to avoid this tearing

Is that true for all TFT/LCD monitors? Obviously if its a game that isn't too power hungry, and if my PC is fast enough anyway.. it won't be a problem because I can just turn Vsync on. But if I want to play something power hungry like Oblivion, and turning Vsync on lowers my frames per second and makes it chug.... it seems I am going to have to lower my graphics quality settings to compensate.... just because of my monitor. Is that true? If so, is there any way around it? Should I have bought a different monitor? I researched monitors for a whole year before choosing one, so I will feel like such a fool if I spent all this money and end up with something which causes issues.

Thanks in advance if anyone can help!

[JPreston]

So far as I know tearing is nothing to do with your monitor; but fully to do with your graphics card. Your monitor shows whatever your grpahics card renders, if it can't render the full screen fast enough tearing results. Enabling vsync just forces the graphics card to render the whole screen before sending it to your monitor...so it won't directly impact your FPS as such, it will just show up the weakness of your card if you see what I mean.

[acrobat]

Thanks for that! Thats a load off really. Im getting a really good graphics card so hopefully I wont have any trouble, and I'll be able to enjoy this new widescreen gaming phenomenon

Thanks again

[nichomach]

So far as I know tearing is nothing to do with your monitor; but fully to do with your graphics card. Your monitor shows whatever your grpahics card renders, if it can't render the full screen fast enough tearing results. Enabling vsync just forces the graphics card to render the whole screen before sending it to your monitor...so it won't directly impact your FPS as such, it will just show up the weakness of your card if you see what I mean.

Not exactly; vsync imposes an upper limit on the FPS consistent with the refresh rate of your monitor by synchronising swaps from frame buffer to screen. If your monitor only has an 85Hz maximum refresh rate, your FPS will never exceed 85fps with vsync enabled. If you disable vsync, your graphics card may actually "outpace" your monitor, rendering frames more quickly than the monitor can display them. It's this that results in tearing.

Although tearing can be annoying, in some games the actual physics of the game can change with higher FPS - you can jump a little further or higher, etc.

Vsync won't force your machine to try to render more frames than it can, however, it'll just cap your frames at whatever the refresh rate of your screen is.

HOWEVER...if your monitor is, say, running at 85Hz and your card can only render, say, 50fps consistently, you may find that your frame rates fall significantly in some games - essentially, the card ends up missing a refresh and having to wait for the next one to dump the contents of the buffer to screen, so you can end up with your FPS drastically reduced, since your card's effectively idle, say, every second "write".

Bottom line, if your PC can render frames at least as fast as your monitor's refresh rate, vsync shouldn't really hurt. If it can't, then turning on vsync may end up hurting your framerate.

If you're getting a really good graphics card, though, I can't see it being a problem.

[acrobat]

Thanks for that! I actually just read more about the guy with that monitor, and he is saying that when he plugs his old monitor in, the tearing goes So its definitely the monitor causing him problems.

I'm thinking it may be avoided with a better graphics card, but I'm not sure. If graphics processing power helps eliminate it, then surely in the future when games start pushing my card further and it is struggling to keep up, it may become a problem?

His other monitor by the way, is a NEC 1970GX, so its also a flat panel monitor. So I'm not sure why the older monitor would be fine but the new monitor is giving him tearing. Its a real concern because I ordered it already and I was hoping it would be pretty much perfect.

p.s. As for the refresh rate, as far as I know, the refresh rate on this new monitor is 75hz, which seems to be the standard for modern flatscreen monitors. I was assured it works differently than CRT's because I was worried at first seeing as anything lower than 80hz on my CRT gives me noticeable flickering.

[starbuck_]

Thanks for that! I actually just read more about the guy with that monitor, and he is saying that when he plugs his old monitor in, the tearing goes So its definitely the monitor causing him problems.

I'm thinking it may be avoided with a better graphics card, but I'm not sure. If graphics processing power helps eliminate it, then surely in the future when games start pushing my card further and it is struggling to keep up, it may become a problem?

His other monitor by the way, is a NEC 1970GX, so its also a flat panel monitor. So I'm not sure why the older monitor would be fine but the new monitor is giving him tearing. Its a real concern because I ordered it already and I was hoping it would be pretty much perfect.

p.s. As for the refresh rate, as far as I know, the refresh rate on this new monitor is 75hz, which seems to be the standard for modern flatscreen monitors. I was assured it works differently than CRT's because I was worried at first seeing as anything lower than 80hz on my CRT gives me noticeable flickering.

The NEC 1970GX is only a 19" so it could still be the graphics card as the NEC 20WGX2 is a 20.1" monitor and maybe sucking more juice.

I wouldnt worry until you try it out yourself on your own system ( you dont know what he's doing ).

If it starts tearing on your system, thats when you should worry

[acrobat]

Thanks mate! That was far more logical than I was capable of thinking of at the moment haha. Definitely the best advice. I reckon you are probably right too. Its a bigger screen so could just be that his PC is struggling. But life is too short to stress about things that might not even be an issue! So I'll wait and try it for myself

Thanks again bud. And thanks everyone else who helped me. I'm excited now!

Merry Christmas to you all.

[starbuck_]

Let us know the outcome when the monitor arrives and you've tried it out.

Merry Chrimbo.

[JPreston]

Not exactly; vsync imposes an upper limit on the FPS consistent with the refresh rate of your monitor by synchronising swaps from frame buffer to screen. If your monitor only has an 85Hz maximum refresh rate, your FPS will never exceed 85fps with vsync enabled.....

I stand corrected, said the man in the orthodpaedic shoe.

I think it's because I'm not used to being able to run games at such FPS

[nichomach]

Well, you could stick your PC on a treadmill - then it'd have to run twice as fast to keep up...

[CrazyMonkey]

The monitor is great, i doubt you will have any problems as Nichomach explains it very well its just a cap really, but he goes into much further detail. As said the monitor you purchased is very good and by a good Monitor make