bit-tech.net | The Dark Side of Overdrive

aron311 6th February 2009, 14:54

Test a 24" BenQ FP241W please Bit-tech! :-)

S-PVA panel in that one.

Cupboard 6th February 2009, 15:19

Great article, well worth the read.
I thought that the video did really help explain things, but it was a bit annoying that it started playing instantly and you contradict yourselves in it, 25% slower != 25% of the speed. It was also interesting how different the whites were in the window your were moving, though that may have been the angle.

In the pictures of the Viewsonic VX2260WM the first thing I noticed when I look was a black shadow of the image on the left hand side of the left picture, it seems to go (from the right) window-shadow of window-inverse shadow of window.

chrisb2e9 6th February 2009, 15:43

I have the VX2260WM and what I dont understand is why anyone would even want or need to use the overdrive setting. I dont turn it on and the display looks great while playing games or watching movies. why is it even there?

Tim S 6th February 2009, 15:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisb2e9
I have the VX2260WM and what I dont understand is why anyone would even want or need to use the overdrive setting. I dont turn it on and the display looks great while playing games or watching movies. why is it even there?

We really don't know why it's there, but it served its purpose for this article... maybe that was why it was introduced? :p

Tim S 6th February 2009, 15:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cupboard
I thought that the video did really help explain things, but it was a bit annoying that it started playing instantly

I hear ya... it's something I want to be able to control as well - it's on my list of things to tackle once we get to the other side of the move into Dennis this weekend. In some instances, auto play is fine (when it's not embedded in the middle of an article), but when it is, you want the user to be able to control it. :)

DougEdey 6th February 2009, 16:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim S
We really don't know why it's there, but it served its purpose for this article... maybe that was why it was introduced? :p

Overdrive used to be known as the "Bit-tech Mode" in previous models...

Sir Digby 6th February 2009, 16:12

:) this article turns up days after I order an M-PVA screen

Ah well - guess I'll just have to wait and see what it's like

karsh 6th February 2009, 17:19

anyone interested in a IPS panel monitor should check out the HP LP2475w, besides the pretty weird factory presets, once calibrated its pure awesome :-)

and the price of around 500 is quite good to imho

Benihana 6th February 2009, 17:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by bubsterboo
I run a Benq FP241W right beside some LG cheapo 22inch TN panel. I never noticed that my benq had input lag before. If you run a window down the middle, between both screens I can't tell at all. But as soon as i looked through it with a camera it became clearly visible.

You sure its not the LG? I have the same BenQ with a cheap Acer 19" and didnt see any input lag. Will try with my SLR to see how bad it is. But if you need a camera to catch it, cant be that bad right?

Smilodon 6th February 2009, 17:27

I tried the lag test between a Eizo S2431W (S-PVA) and an old Samsung 910T (TN) and i think i could possibly notice some lag if i look hard. It's hard to see because of the difference in pixel density, though.

I do play some games, but have never had any issues with lag. I don't really see the problem. Seems to me that it's something poor gamers use as an excuse for their own suckiness. ;)

Ohwell. As long as pictures look good on my monitor I'm happy. :)

On a related note:

Can someone honestly say that they notice the difference between a 16ms display and a 2ms one? It seems like the picture quality gets worse on newer displays, just because they want the specs to look good. Why can't they make displays with good contrast instead. A fast screen is useless if it's going to stay gray all the time.... "The pixels ARE changing color. You are just to slow to see it"... Yeah right.

ldcroberts 6th February 2009, 19:25

I just want to explain the "lag" as it affects gamers since there are doubters here.

Imagine you are playing a first person shooter like counterstrike against other players via some sort of network connection where you both have equal server connection response times. You and another player suddenly encounter each other (e.g. walk round a corner and can now see each other).

You have to identify the other person, and if they are on another team - aim, and shoot them - before they do the same to you.

You both have absolutely equal reaction times of about 250msec give or take.

You both instantly aim and shoot as fast as you can - both players doing so equally well.

You have a monitor display lag of 25msec, the other player has a monitor display lag of 10msec

All things being equal he/she sees you 15msec sooner than you see them - as evidenced by the stopwatch application in the example - one person sees the past the other the present.

If the game allows them to shoot and for their bullet to impact your characters return fire within 15msec, they have a clear advantage.

Human fingertip reaction time is generally anywhere from 200msec to 250msec and generally gets slower with age. Having a monitor with a lag of 25msec vs one with no lag at all is equivalent to aging about 10 years. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/reactiontime.shtml

Any game that has reaction time as a factor will be affected.

So if you want to continue enjoying twitch games as you get older, you should use slow monitors while you are young, and upgrade them as you get older, so the difference won't be as noticeable that you yourself are getting slower ;)

Atomm 6th February 2009, 20:06

Tim,

I can't thank you enough for this article. Let me explain why.

I am an avid gamer. I also happen to have problems with motion sickness. Even on CRT's, certain games would make me so sick, I couldn't play them more than a few minutes.

When I moved to an LCD, I made sure to get the fastest response time I could, 2MS. Since then, not only do I have more problems, games that never bothered me are now causing me problems. I believe I am overly sensitive to issues like lagging or delay and my LCD may be the exact cause of my new problems. I would have never figured this out without your article.

Since Lag doesn't appear to be something you've looked for in all of your reviews, would you mind taking a minute to list the monitors you know have no lag? I'm going to buy one immediately and would be happy to do so from here.

Thanks!

Atomm
Gamers Radio

Moriquendi 6th February 2009, 21:41

This article intrigued me so I had a bit of a play with my 3007WFP-HC and 2007FPs. Moving a window up and down on the border between two monitors as shown in the video showed me that there is definitely more lag in the 2007FPs with their image processing than the 3007. There is also significantly more lag on the border between the monitors on different graphics cards (the 3007 and one of the 2007s). What I found particularly interesting is that it makes a big difference which monitor the pointer is on when I grab the window to move it, for example with the 3007 and 2007 on the same card if I grab the window on the 3007 and wiggle it I get horrendous lag on the 2007 but if I grab it on the 2007 and wiggle it there's no noticeable lag at all. Obviously this doesn't apply when the screens are in clone mode but it's still pretty interesting.

Moriquendi

wbdog206 6th February 2009, 21:55

I got a Syncmaster 2233sw, it was not expensive but it
seems to be pretty good has nice colors, pics look good and
watching a movie on it once in a while looks good,
but the viewing angle is a bit shifty But other than that I
like it.

Smilodon 6th February 2009, 21:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by ldcroberts
I just want to explain the "lag" as it affects gamers since there are doubters here.

Imagine you are playing a first person shooter like counterstrike against other players via some sort of network connection where you both have equal server connection response times. You and another player suddenly encounter each other (e.g. walk round a corner and can now see each other).

You have to identify the other person, and if they are on another team - aim, and shoot them - before they do the same to you.

You both have absolutely equal reaction times of about 250msec give or take.

You both instantly aim and shoot as fast as you can - both players doing so equally well.

You have a monitor display lag of 25msec, the other player has a monitor display lag of 10msec

All things being equal he/she sees you 15msec sooner than you see them - as evidenced by the stopwatch application in the example - one person sees the past the other the present.

If the game allows them to shoot and for their bullet to impact your characters return fire within 15msec, they have a clear advantage.

Human fingertip reaction time is generally anywhere from 200msec to 250msec and generally gets slower with age. Having a monitor with a lag of 25msec vs one with no lag at all is equivalent to aging about 10 years. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/reactiontime.shtml

Any game that has reaction time as a factor will be affected.

So if you want to continue enjoying twitch games as you get older, you should use slow monitors while you are young, and upgrade them as you get older, so the difference won't be as noticeable that you yourself are getting slower ;)

And how much does reaction time vary from person to person? And even from day to day? or hour to hour?

I guess a good night sleep would have more impact on the results than monitor lag.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moriquendi
What I found particularly interesting is that it makes a big difference which monitor the pointer is on when I grab the window to move it, for example with the 3007 and 2007 on the same card if I grab the window on the 3007 and wiggle it I get horrendous lag on the 2007 but if I grab it on the 2007 and wiggle it there's no noticeable lag at all. Obviously this doesn't apply when the screens are in clone mode but it's still pretty interesting.

Moriquendi

Oh. I though my eyes were playing tricks on me. I thought I saw this as well, but couldn't find any reason why this should happen. (At first it seemed like the Samsung 910T on my left was faster than the one to the right of my main monitor...)

clumsy_culhane 6th February 2009, 22:26

I still use a 21" CRT with a Trinitron tube, and it's still going strong. When calibrated, it has great colour accuracy, instant response time, and none of the other problems associated with LCD panels. The on;y real disadvantage i can think of is the weight and the amount of room on my desk it takes up.

wuyanxu 6th February 2009, 22:39

what application should i use to get similar photo of Bit-tech's screen stopwatch comparison??

just hooked up my housemate's 17inch Dell Ultrasharp with my Samsung T240. the 17inch is quoted to have a much slower response time.

woodshop 7th February 2009, 00:02

Bring on the 120hz ultra thin DLP monitors.
(yes i just made that up, but i can wish )

Tim S 7th February 2009, 00:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuyanxu
what application should i use to get similar photo of Bit-tech's screen stopwatch comparison??

just hooked up my housemate's 17inch Dell Ultrasharp with my Samsung T240. the 17inch is quoted to have a much slower response time.

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test has a built in stopwatch under the response time tests :)

wuyanxu 7th February 2009, 00:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim S
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test has a built in stopwatch under the response time tests :)

so how do i have it running at same time on 2 monitors like in your shots?

i can only get 1 running.

clumsy_culhane 7th February 2009, 01:22

Set your display mode to clone, so its displaying the same thing on both screens.

ZERO <ibis> 7th February 2009, 02:08

Makes me happy that I still am sticking to good old crts for so long just be sure to let me know when something that is actually better performance wise and quality wise than a crt so I can get something that is newer. lol

snorbert 7th February 2009, 03:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pookeyhead
As an owner of a 2405FPW... I can say I don't actually notice any lag at all. I'm sure it's there if people say so, but I'll be damned if I can notice any lag between me moving the mouse, and it actually moving. Any lag there is is way smaller than any human response time anyway, so let's be honest, does it really matter?

I've already decided my next screen will be IPS... but not because of any issue with input lag, which if we're honest, only really effects gamers.... or so they say! No one's reaction times are so fast as to be nerfed by the lag on my monitor, and if they say they are, they're just BSing to make themselves sound "leet"

Speak for yourself, but I know that way back in the day when I had SLI'd Voodoo2s with the Wicked3D-customized miniGL for Quake 3 Arena, through a CRT of course, I had to turn off triple buffering and vsync buffer switching because the extra lag made me not just a crappier player but made me feel motion sick too. Triple buffering added about 16-32mS of extra lag. I'm not saying that I was "leet", but my scores went down and my face went green once I enabled triple buffering, so I'm prepared to believe that another 16mS of lag on an LCD would have the same effect.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pookeyhead
I can't comment on the Samsung as I've never seen it, and can't do the split monitor tests here, but I've tried my damnedest to notice anything in everyday and gaming use... and failed.

Aren't we in danger of pushing the industry into spending money on this problem, which IMO would be better spent investing it into producing panels with the fidelity of IPS at the price of PVA? For me, the benefits of that would outweigh 10ms of lag.

It depends what you want... if I'm playing a really "twitchy" game, I don't care that much about fantastic image fidelity. I used to play Quakeworld and Q3A with wider field of view and other settings that made things not pretty, but I enjoyed the game more because I was more competitive that way.

Do you get bothered about the fact that car companies spend money sponsoring motorsport which they ought to be using on improving their family cars? Some people like to go fast, others like to take a bit more time and enjoy the view. :D

Cupboard 7th February 2009, 13:38

Quake 3 Arena always used to make me feel ill as well. It is to date the only game that has made me feel physically sick.

brett_cgb 7th February 2009, 15:38

I didn't see anything in the article that mentioned testing two different displays using the same video signal. Its conceivable that the lag is being introduced by the PC or video card as a result of scaling the image to two different sized displays.

People frequently incorrectly attribute what they see to the wrong reason - this might be one of those times. There weren't any attempts made to determine or eliminate possible sources of errors beyond attributing the delay to the monitors themselves.

There are a couple ways to address this:

1) Compare screens with identical resolution. During testing swap monitors between video output connectors (do not change video card settings) to see if a consistent delay exists, and if it sticks with the monitors, or video output connectors.

2) Using test equipment (oscilloscope) check for delays between the video outputs from the video card. You would need to compare the horizontal and vertical sync pulse timing between video connectors.

3) Connect both monitors to a video splitter, and drive them with the same signal. A delay in this test eliminates all possible delay sources except the monitors themselves. (Such splitters may add a small delay from its input to all outputs, but all outputs should be in sync with each other.

Rather than illustrate problems with monitors, this article illustrates problems with the test set-up. _ALL_ of my questions revolve around the test set-up rather than the monitors.

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The Dark Side of Overdrive

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