The Display
Almost everyone uses a LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) these days. They do not take up a lot of desk space, save energy and the best of all are getting cheaper all the time, while the screen sizes are getting bigger and bigger. They are also available in wide-screen format, which is more close to our natural viewing position. The things to consider when shopping for one are:
- The Screen Resolution
- The Refresh Time
- The Panel Technology
- Looking at LCDs from Video card brand specifics
The Screen Resolution
So why factor in a LCD? This has to do with something called a “Native” display mode. LCDs are designed to work with one single optimal resolution. Other resolutions are scaled to fit on to the screen which is less than an ideal situation.
Lets say you have a brand spanking 22” LCD with a native resolution of 1680x1050.
That means that it pushes about 1.8 million pixels. Now you pair it to a mid level graphics card like a 9600GT expecting to play crysis at that resolution with eye candy and a conservative 4x Anti aliasing. Factor in everything and you’ll be disappointed.
Scaling to a lower resolution is not much of a problem as it once was, but it is still not the ideal setting.
Keep in mind the display size when dishing out for a graphics card. Again if you are upgrading, keep this in the mix as well.
The Refresh Time
Apart from the resolution, the other important factor is the refresh time. This is the time taken by the LCD elements to turn from one color to another. This is usually quoted as a Black-to-Black time or Grey-to-Grey time, the latter is more commonly quoted. A Grey-to-Grey time of 2ms is pretty common these days. Anything better than 8ms Black-to-Black is decent enough. But make sure when comparing different LCDs you are looking at the same color change time.
The Panel Technology
Yet another factor is the "technology" that goes into making the LCD panel. This itself deserves an article of its own. Suffice to say that the more expensive an LCD, the better technology it will use. The best for gaming panels are In-Panel Switching (IPS) type. They have higher refresh times (6ms is still good enough). The most common ones available here are the Twisted Nematic (TN) type. They have really fast refresh times of 2ms, but lag behind in other areas.
Looking at LCDs from Video card brand specifics
With ATi's latest cards it is possible to hookup more than a single display and make "one" larger display. This is called Eye-finity (more on this a little later). Once the 5 series cards are available locally, you might also want to factor this in. After all as you'll learn later on in this article, all this graphics power has to be utilized some where.
Nvidia touts 3D vision as the next level in gaming. This not only requires special Nvidia hardware but also needs specific LCDs that have a 120 Hz refresh rate (more on this later as well).
Keep in mind these specifics when shopping for an LCD.
The Motherboard
There are two things that you’ll need to keep in mind with regards to a motherboard when buying a graphics card
- If you want to pair two Nvidia cards your board MUST support SLI.
- If you plan on using a secondary card for in game physics your board must have two physical PCI-e x16 slots.
The first point is Nvidia’s lock on SLI tech. Things are much simpler if you consider a core series processor. All p55 boards support SLI and most x58 boards support SLI as well.
For Core2 series you will need a Nvidia chipset based board. Though a recent hack has made it possible for intel chipset based boards to run SLI, it still is pretty much up in the air.
The second point is not really important now, unless you must have have phys-X physics effects (more on this coming up later in the article). Two Physical PCI-e x16 slots are a requirement for this. (Notice I say, Physical. They need not have 16 lanes, only have the size of a 16 lane slot).
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
