After almost 5 years of continuous service, my trusty old LG Flatron CRT monitor finally bid farewell yesterday. I have been having problems with it for the past 3 months or so and only recently I got the thing fixed. But I had this wired feeling that it was on it’s final lap. The display had gone visibly blurry and I was using the monitor on my test PC for the past 9 months. Too bad, I had played some really cool games on it and most of the development of the current engine and game was done using the same monitor. (A little bit emotional, I know :'( ).
So now I am running the PC with an old 15 inch monitor which is a decade older. I know I have to get a new one soon, but which one is the question? Should I go for a CRT or for an LCD? After seeing the new LCD 19 inch monitors you can’t help but drool. They do leave a hole in the pocket but they do give bang for the buck.
That sucks. I’d go for an LCD. You should see how Consolas looks on LCDs with clear type on. I hope I never have to code on an CRT again. But you should be aware of the problem with using LCDs for gaming. Since the output looks like crap on an LCD if its not running at the native resolution (basically max resolution), you need a beefy GPU to play at the full resolution. I haven’t read this but it looks like it describes the problem in detail: http://www.d-silence.com/feature.php?id=249
Yes I know there were issues with LCDs and I had heard something like what you are saying (about running games at max resolution of LCDs). Oh God, is it true? If I do go for a 19 inch then I would have to run games at a resolution of 1920×1200, meaning I need something like the 7800 or 8800 to play latest games. Even Doofus, I must add, will not run at that resolution with the current 6200 card. :'( Some people were also mentioning about ghost artifacts appearing on some LCDs.
Ah yes the ClearType engine with LCDs, yes I know I have seen that and it really looks good.