Lord Orwell : Nvidia Card Recommendation {Resolved}

[Lord Orwell]

i use a 21" trinitron

[learning c]

the crts based on the television technology or an actual television?

[Lord Orwell]

IT is a Sony Trinitron Multiscan 500PS 21" monitor (with dual inputs) and it weighs over 100 pounds.

[learning c]

Max Resolution 1600-1200

Dot Pich 0.25 mm

Color Depth 24-bit(16.7 M Colors)

weight:68.36 lb

Depth:18.68 in

widith.19.6 in

height 19.86 in

that's taking heavyweight monitors to extreme isn't it?
from memory its the same tube they were using in the ibm crts too. what's the response (ms) like and is it suitable for games or can it be a bottleneck?

[Lord Orwell]

i can set the refresh rate as high as 200. At max resolution it still can refresh at 120mhz. Very nice monitor. Also has two inputs, although the 2nd one is non-standard.

[learning c]

interesting...

so there is the response time and the refresh rate...

if the response time is too slow it doesn't matter how fast the refresh the images would still be blurred but i wonder what the max response and refresh rates are for a human eye?

[Lord Orwell]

not as high as you think. A movie shows 24 frames a second in the theater.

[learning c]

so really a monitor just has to display a certain number of pixels each with its own colour x times every second. you would expect that the higher the resolution the greater the number of pixels and so the slower the time taken to colour and display every pixel... so a monitor really should just tell you the fps in different resolutions rather than response and refresh rates.

with movies only at 24fps it makes me wonder what the max resolution and speed for the human eye really are and if the monitor manufacturers have to create the illusion of progress rather than just focusing on differences in brand, quality and durability of components, and of course styling and display ratios.

[Lord Orwell]

refresh rate = fps
The problem is that the monitor is ALWAYS going at the refresh rate you set, while a program doesn't have to be synchronized to it.

[learning c]

sure, so the cpu can sometimes not produce the images @ 24 fps + causing problems, hence the gpus to take the pressure off the cpu, but how does the refresh rate affect anything?

[Lord Orwell]

no. I am saying that it is possible for the program to not be able to keep up with the refresh rate. Your program might only be putting out 5 fps because it is bogging the system down, or you might be putting out 300. Framerates faster than the monitor refresh rate are wasted because they are still shown at the refresh rate. But programs can also be locked to the refresh rate and put out the frame rate of the monitor (this stops the ugly tearing you see caused by quick motion). However if the cpu can't keep up this can still drop BELOW the refresh rate. It will wait until the monitor is at the top of the screen before drawing again. This can make the framerate even worse, which is why most programs don't sync to it.

[learning c]

but what is the refresh for?
if you think of the monitor with every pixel coloured why does it need to be refreshed? aren't the pixels just recoloured when the application sends new information to the monitor? Of course a smart monitor would just recolour those pixels different from the previous frame.

about the other issue that you mentioned... if the application sends information too fast for the monitor there are frames lost meaning that the picture gets all choppy... although you would imagine that the code to manage those problems would be really easy to implement... eg if app is *2 the speed of the monitor then take every second frame.... although slowing graphic output to an agreed upon standard of say 30fps would be best as anything faster would be a waste of resources and would allow for scaling up in size and resolution instead... although managing the fps is a software not a monitor issue as long as the monitor is capable of 30fps in its stated resolutions.

[Lord Orwell]

you are confusing technology. A crt monitor contains phosphorous and it has to be refreshed. If not, it goes black. 3 emitters shine an electron beam on the back of the phosphorous coating and it glows through the glass. This is why a crt is much better at switching resolutions than a lcd is. It doesn't actually have a set amount of pixels. The capability is dependent on the hardware. It takes an extremely strong magnetic field to create a refresh rate of 200. The emitter doesn't move. The beam is moved with magnetic fields.

[learning c]

youre correct... 200 times per second seems a bit of an overkill don't you think?

btw i have moved on from my am2 fetish ... beard's still a growing...