I was curious to experience high refresh rates in FPS games. But I didn't want to buy a new monitor knowing G-SYNC monitors will be dropping soon. The Asus RoG Swift 1440p with GSYNC is coming soon. I wanted to see if my 680s in SLI could or would be able to handle that resolution and give me good frames. So I asked myself, is all this G-SYNC talk going to be worth the wait? I don't know.
 
I unplugged my vanilla 1080p 60hz 27 inch Samsung LED, and dusted off my old 21 inch Sony Trinitron E540 CRT. Sure there are plenty high refresh rate LCD/LED monitors out but I don't own any.

I fired up some FPS games (BF4/Titanfall) and cranked them up as much as possible (bf4 1440p maxed out with 150% resolution scale). And holy crap I cant go back now. WTH was I thinking leaving this CRT sitting around for so long.
 
If I can expect this kind of smoothness, responsiveness, no input lag, no blur out of the RoG Swift in a bigger screen size, I will be all over it when it launches. I hope this pans out. In the mean time I have my trusty no longer dusty Sony CRT plugged in just for FPS gaming.
 
This is coming from a pure gaming experience hence why I put this in the gaming section. Specifically for FPS gamers. If you own a CRT, Plug that bad boy in !!!!!
 

SirJamesDTech
Isn't that thing like 70 pounds with awful energy performance? And you "can't go back now"?
 

 
Can you go back to a 60hz LCD after experiencing your 120hz?
 
Yes this monster is HEAVY! Power concerns are overrated. And until the RoG Swift launches I will continue to have this beast plugged in for my gaming.
 

Frankly, my current LCDs have better color and all around produce a better picture, I have a 60hz monitor currently, but for FPS's, especially as someone who was a competitive player in older twitch games, I can see the point, as the refresh rate can make a big difference, it definitely does add something the 60hz LCDs do not have, but really, it is a tradeoff, both have some advantages.

ARMYguy
I have to admit, i agree with jgonz. I used to have a 21 inch sony trinitron and i "upgraded" straight to a 120 hz alienware lcd. The 120 hz LCD still can't compete with a CRT in any way except picture quality of still pictures. As soon as anything moves, the LCD blurs and looks bad. Try this as a test. Load up cs, or any game where you have fast movement, and pick words on a wall, and walk up to that wall and start strafing. on the CRT, there is no ghosting at all on the letters,  you can read them as if they were not moving. LCDs have this blur when stuff moves fast, that its harder to notice when walking forward but when you do this strafe test, its night and day.
 
Long story short, LCD tech will never match CRT for gaming. But as CRTs die, you can't really find replacements. This makes me sad.

 
 
This is true! It was one of the biggest hurdles to overcome when I went from CRT to LCD. I liked scrolling web pages while reading them but doing it on an LCD panel makes me nauseous.  
 
As for CRT's and power consumption?  my 19" 4:3 CRT consumed 40 watts while the 22" 16:10 (non LED) LCD also consumed 40 watts. I know LED LCD's of the same size now consume 20 watts but I'd have to sink in a few hundred dollars to upgrade (3 of them) just to save a couple of dollars per year.
 
They look great at ANY resolution!  No silly native resolution or scaling, looks as good and sharp at 800x600 as it does at 1600x1200@80hz.  Aliasing also wasn't much of a problem.  
 
I miss hitting the DEGAUSS button   

I just got a Asus 24" VG248QE a few weeks ago, its 144hz, and believe me refresh rate does matter, its very smooth. I notice a big difference upgrading from my old 60hz lcd.

ARMYguy
I think there is more at play than just refresh rate, cause the movement itself is what feels superior on a CRT as opposed to a LCD. LCDs for some reason blur edges when stuff moves fast. CRT has a perfect picture no matter how fast something moves. I wish there was a way for me to get a wide screen CRT....

The bluring of the edges on the LCD is the response time, it was really bad with 16ms, 12ms, 5ms, etc, but my new 144hz screen is 1ms and I don't see that blur anymore.
 
As for Widescreen CRT, they do make them
 
check around on craigslist or ebay maybe, this is an example of one in my state. It even has an HDMI port surprisingly, back then I thought only component was available for HD
 
http://seattle.craigslist.org/kit/ele/4546793089.html
 
 

ARMYguy

_Nite_

ARMYguy
I think there is more at play than just refresh rate, cause the movement itself is what feels superior on a CRT as opposed to a LCD. LCDs for some reason blur edges when stuff moves fast. CRT has a perfect picture no matter how fast something moves. I wish there was a way for me to get a wide screen CRT....

The bluring of the edges on the LCD is the response time, it was really bad with 16ms, 12ms, 5ms, etc, but my new 144hz screen is 1ms and I don't see that blur anymore.
 
As for Widescreen CRT, they do make them
 
check around on craigslist or ebay maybe, this is an example of one in my state. It even has an HDMI port surprisingly, back then I thought only component was available for HD
 
http://seattle.craigslist.org/kit/ele/4546793089.html
 
 

Is there a large difference between a 2 ms and a 1 ms response time? Cause there is tons of this ghosting on my 2 ms response time 120 hz screen.

 
there must be something wrong if your seeing ghosting.   what  games you playing where you see the ghosting.  i have myself not seen ghosting since i had a 16ms screen and even then it was not that bad   it was tolerable  

This is a great site for this thread. Check it out.
They have an article here regarding the use of Nvidia's 3D Vision 2 technology to "tweak" a 120Hz LCD with it built in to smooth out frames to get close to CRT in smoothness. This also explains a bit of why LCDs look the way they do vs. CRTs. I'm sure you'll find the rest of the site informative too.
I have the monitor mentioned and I must say the difference is quite stunning.

I am going to have to try this out..... or dust off my CRT... which is not wide screen,  oh the pain. lol

chrisdglong

ARMYguy
I am going to have to try this out..... or dust off my CRT... which is not wide screen,  oh the pain. lol

If you have a lightboost monitor, then the lightboost hack is really the way to go. Honestly, I wish Nvidia was allow makers of these monitors to have an always on setting. However, once you setup the lightboost hack, the lightboost will be on as long as you select the refresh rate it is set to. If you use 3d, then you will want the strobelight beta 4 swapped.  

How can i tell if my LCD supports lightboost?
 
NM mine does not.

 
Memory of My EVGA 680i, EVGA 9800GT-SLI n' Sony CRT, HandyCam.
 

 
 
・Memory Crash　7mm57ss  : Non EVGA Support Memory ≒ Non Recommend Memory
 
2x 1G Non Recommend Memory
Core2-Duo E8500 3.16GHz 0%OC
EVGA 680i-SLI
EVGA 9800GT-SLI
Sound Blaster X-Fi
GDM-FW900
Handy-Cam
 
 

Again, lightboost pretty much eliminates motion blur. I'm waiting for the Asus PG278Q for lightboost and gsync.