Maximum PC

topic^

traditionally, the answer to that question would be CRT. however, lately, LCD manufacturers have been making products more and more suited towards gamers, and that have solved the problems that used to plague LCD's, such as ghosting and bad interpolation. at this point, you can decide whether you want an lcd or crt, IMHO.

btw, what video card do you have, and what size monitor are you considering buying?

for videocard, im ganna be using an NVidia geforce ultra 6800 pci express
and the two t.v.'s im thinking about are- the nec 19" lcd 1960nxi-bk multisync, and the maximum pc award winner nec 22" crt flat screen multisync fe2111.

i have another question, do surround sound headphones(zalman zm-rs6f)
work on any sound card?...how exaclty does it work, do i just plug it into a headphone jack and get the true surround sound effect?...i can't get speakers at the moment, so are surround headphones worth it?

HI

I have the Zalman headphones and they are amazing for gaming. You need a 5.1 surround capable sound card. Instead of 1 headphone jack there are 3, front, back and center.

Hope this helps

as for the two monitors, the crt seems like a good choice, but with the lcd's, you might want to consider something else. for 20" lcd, maximum pc recommends the dell 2001fp:

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=320-1578&category_id=4009

for 17" they gave the samsung 172x a great review:

http://www.samsungusa.com/cgi-bin/nabc/product/b2c_product_detail.jsp?eUser=&prod_id=DS17BSDSV

best LCD is like a middle range CRT

thx for the replies!

post back when you make your decision

Ya, for the same price as an LCD, you could get a CRT that is bigger. So unless you go to LAN parties a lot I would say CRT.

im going with the crt, its cheaper than the lcd, its bigger, and the maximum pc award was the main bait. and im getting an nvidia geforce ultra 6800 pci express videocard, you know what, how about i tell you why im getting this, well i was a hardcore console gamer, but latley i've been getting tired of all these console games, then i remembered the days where i would spend hours playing half-life and tfc. and theres all these great fps games coming out for pc, joint ops especially has me excited, and battle for middle earth really grabbed my attention and i don't even play rts games, so i decided that its time to leave console gaming and come back to pc's. i guess since im getting older im demanding more from my games,(turning 20 next month) and i really look forward to learning how to make maps and mods, and playing other mods, so just recently i went into searching for a very high-end pc, and went to alienware, they look cool sophisticated, might be the only thing with class in my messy room, and they offer top of the line gaming pc's. im hooking up my pc with some pretty high settings, 2gb memory, two 120gb hardrive, and a pentium 4 3.4 2mb cache, with all the triimings for it to stay cool. so this is my story. i appreciate your responses, so keep them coming!

Don't forget about the native resolution you must live with on LCD's. If you play current games, then you shouldn't have a problem. But some of my favorite games (Silent Hunter2, Destroyer Command, etc...) don't offer any resolution above 800x600. It's just something you have to give up...choice in resolution.

Also, CRT's take up a huge amount of real estate and weigh a ton. I had a corner desk that had the opening to accept a large monitor, but it wiggled pretty fierce with 19" as it was. Scroll down. And ignore the specs...it's an old page:p http://www.geocities.com/chumly409/PCpage
I put a 17" on that flat on the top after that pick. Having it up there and the regular 19" for a year or so pretty much destroyed all the joints. Anyway...

I've since left that pig back in bakersfield and bought another desk. I set this new Viewsonic 22" CRT on it and it takes the entire thing up. It's fregg'n huge:D

By the way...no one posted in my thread about BNC connectors. WTF are these things for!?



F U cn rd dis U mst uz UNIX™

Hey Chumly

BNC aren't, well they shouldn't be, used for anything anymore. I think it stood for "British Naval Connector". Anyway they were used for really old token ring Co-axial (sp) networks. Think of them as an old version of today's network cabling.

I would have to place my vote with CRT still, but LCD technology is startin to look pretty good

I would still say CRT, but LCD's have been making progress lately...

If you already have a big CRT, then stick with it for a while I would say

If you're buying soon, consider price and your desk space situation as well as performance.

Chumly,

The BNC connectors are / used to be used as a different type input RGB or RGBHV for Red, Green, Blue, Horizontal & Vertical Sync. We had them on our Dec monitors and my old NEC 21" had them. I had an adapter cable for the NEC that had a standard VGA connector on one end and the RGBHV on the other.

BNC stands for Bayonet Neill Concelman connector (not British ...). heh, I had to look that one up.

One of their uses is to connect a monitor to your computer. The advantage is an increased accuracy in signal from video card. Generally, professional graphic artists use it along with high end monitors. I don't think the difference justifies the price (my display looks more or less the same when I switch from VGA to BNC), but I got em free with my monitor.

I wouldn't trade my Samsung 172x for the world. I have had absolutely no ghosting with any of the games that I play, and if there were any, I didn't notice them. I play a lot of fast moving games too (UT2004 and Joint Ops. most recent). I would definitely (note that it is spelled correctly) recommend this LCD to any gamer just like MaxPC did.

BTW, when I said the world, I meant anything less than $650

CRT you already know that, why you ask ?

Since you only have stereo sound inputs in your head, 5.1 headphones aren't necessary to simulate surround/3D sound.

I'm not saying that the Zalman's aren't cool, just that if you are looking for gaming headphones, you won't get appreciably better 3D out of them