For gaming I love my Flat screen CRT,anyone using a LCD(at least 17in) for gaming?Or should I ask"who can afford one yet"?Sorry for the dumb question but Ive never played on LCD or laptop.

I think gamers prefer CRT monitors (at least for now) because the LCD monitors don't look as good graphically. Not really sure.

LCD is easier on the eyes and has great color saturation making it visually appealing...

Unfortunately, the technology hasn't developed enough that it is without its problems. I think the major problem with LCD is "ghosting".. The screen respsone time, even the fastest ones I've seen, is still so slow that it leaves behind faded images of the past couple of frames. This creates a blurred effect, similar to what you might see on laptops (although usually not as bad).

It's great for cruising the net and doing office work, but games can suffer from this.

The price is also a factor.

Hey thanks for the reply guys.Well that saved me alot of money.It kinda sounds like this GREAT deal I got on a 21 inch vga,great for multimedia but had a fraction of a second lag.Rick thats a cool location,what a bust.Thanks again guys.

I have a 19" Samsung 957DF CRT which has a Dynaflat, which is a shadow mask flat tube, really quite nice for the money, £250 when I bought it new... now you can get it for about £220. I recently purchased a 17" samsung 172T TFT screen... it has the same viewable area as the 19" CRT... via DVI its really sharp and the colours are amazing, but with a response time of <24ms you still get what is called ghosting... this is where you can just see the place where the image was previously.

I play Counterstrike a lot on a laptop with a 15" screen and whilst its not anywhere as nice as the CRT your eyes get used to it and you don't notice the ghosting much. AOC are making some very low response time screens which might be less ghosty for gaming, but after spending ~£400 on the tft I'd have to say that the CRT is still king for gaming... but I think I'll try and adapt to the TFT as it is wall mountable and with my PC being a HTPC with cordless mouse and keyboard it would be great to have a monitor for gaming in my living room but the PC linked to widescreen tv also. I've played a fair bit of BF1942 on it and its not too bad, but the best screens for gaming I have read about with 14ms response time have been made by AOC.

CRT > * for gaming

great post, it really helps and makes a very good point in the discussion. thumbs up !

LOL

LCD > officework?

Thanks Aris,DigitAlex. Alot of good advice.Excuse the ding-dong question,but what about flatscreen, say 21 inch,TV.,Has anyone tried this?Ive seen people using.Dont know if they are using like S-Video or its a tv slash monitor. Oh well I guess Ill stick with the 17"CRT till can afford larger CRT.Thanks again guys!!

never really had the opportunity to use a big LCD b/c of $$$$

but from what i seem to know or heard somewhere LCD is better for the eyes if u stay a long time in front of it, but I prefer CRT over it for any usage because of the sharp colors, high refresh rate and low prices. oh and flat screens are soooo nice since they removed the double black line problem though hehehe

another thing is i would never go back to a small LCD after using a big CRT. I say this because I could get a 15" LCD instead of 19" CRT for about the same range of prices ...

Thx, what I meant to say that LCDs are overpriced and have poor visual quality. They're not bad for the average user with money to burn, but for the power user (or one not trying to waste his money) the CRT is definitely the sharper, cheaper way to go.

Yup its true that somehow, LCDs are easy on the eyes, they relieve eye strains, plus when your suing LCDs you are exposed to less radiation compared to CRTs.

I think a lot of that has to do with the refresh rate people use and the short persistance of the phospher in modern CRTs. LCDs have very little if any flicker due to the technology. I run my CRT at 100hz refresh at 1600x1200 and have no eyestrain problems even after all day at the screen. Some people never bother to set their monitor out of the 60-75Hz zone and at that rate the flicker will make you go blind.

I run my monitor at 1600x1200 @ 100hz and my eyes kill me after 14 hours on the computer! I have the brightness turned down as well, so it is easier on the eyes.

I have 2 monitors with my pc. A 18' Gateway LCD monitor and a Samsung 17'' CRT.

The ghosting effect bothered me at first, but now i play games in the LCD instead that the CRT. My eyes are a lot more comfortable with it.

Also, i had the oportunity to check out the same Gateway monitor but the 15' model and I can tell I'm surprised because I just couldn't feel any ghosting.

Contrary as decepcion said, LCD monitors have astounding graphic quality, but sometimes if you compare the color with a normal CRT you can get some "diferent" tonalities. Also, I had the bad luck that my LCD came with 1 broke pixel and 1 always- lit pixel, that is a black 1x1 pixel dot permanently in the screen bothering me!!!!

BTW my Gateway monitor is a "not so new" FPD1800

Well my 17" Samsung 172T over DVI connection is much nicer to look at than my 19" Samsung 957DF CRT. It only fails a little as with a response time of <24ms it still suffers from a little ghosting during games with lost of fast movement. Aside from that I'd take it over a CRT anyday as the colour reproduction is pretty close to flawless. The next generation of TFTs with even lower response times should be the ones that gamers start to buy.

Speaking of brightness, is the darker the screen, the better your eyes won't get tired as fast, or not?! I am always curious. And I think my monitor sux... LG E700B 17" Flat CRT and the highest is 1280x1024 @ 60Hz ... omg it sux i think... I'm using 1280x960 @ 70Hz.... it's... ok.. but I like small screens, so I don't know! Argh, now I hate my monitor after reading your 100Hz @ 1600x1200... *really pissed*

Just based on personal expierence if you can't run it above 75hz then I'd definately try and make my screen at least a little bit darker to have it easier on your eyes.
In my expierence (without any real technical background on this), the lighter the screen the more noticable the flicker is. Which is why when I play starcraft at 60hz things look fine, but if I drop my predominately white windows screens down to 60 it drives me crazy and messes with my eyes.