maxtherabbit wrote:

I have always found 60Hz perfectly adequate for gaming - for GUI and text I can see 75Hz being a "minimum"

Adequate? It gave me terrible headaches when I had to go from 70Hz DOS games to 60Hz Windows games on my ultra-low-end-crappy 14" monitor back in the day. The relief I felt after upgrade to an IBM G50 (still low-end, but able to do 800x600@85Hz and 1024x768@75Hz) when playing long sessions of Civ II or Battle Isle 3 was huge.

dionb wrote:

maxtherabbit wrote:

I have always found 60Hz perfectly adequate for gaming - for GUI and text I can see 75Hz being a "minimum"

Adequate? It gave me terrible headaches when I had to go from 70Hz DOS games to 60Hz Windows games on my ultra-low-end-crappy 14" monitor back in the day. The relief I felt after upgrade to an IBM G50 (still low-end, but able to do 800x600@85Hz and 1024x768@75Hz) when playing long sessions of Civ II or Battle Isle 3 was huge.

well it's never bothered me, perhaps it had something to do with you using such a small screen?

but then again, nothing gives me a literal headache from simply looking at it, so idk

all console games in the SD era were 60Hz, did you find those unplayable as well?

maxtherabbit wrote:

[...] well it's never bothered me, perhaps it had something to do with you using such a small screen? […]
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[...]
well it's never bothered me, perhaps it had something to do with you using such a small screen?

but then again, nothing gives me a literal headache from simply looking at it, so idk

all console games in the SD era were 60Hz, did you find those unplayable as well?

Consoles were never my thing, so can't say. In fact over here in Europe they were probably 50Hz. I wouldn't call it unplayable, just headache-inducing. Then again, I am particularly sensitive to flashing lights between 20 and 70-odd Hz, I can't stand fluorescent strip lighting either. In fact I'd say it's less of a problem on a small screen, as the fovea (center of vision, where colour perception and detail are best) is relatively slow; its the edges of vision where the (fast-switching) rods are concentrated, and where you (at least: where I) get a sort of stroboscope-effect when there is a ~50-60Hz display present.

ynari wrote:

Auron, honestly bite the hand off of the local guy selling a 15" Viewsonic for £25. It's not very much money, it's a decent bran […]
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Auron, honestly bite the hand off of the local guy selling a 15" Viewsonic for £25. It's not very much money, it's a decent brand, you can see it working in the screenshots, and it'll do a decent refresh rate (85Hz) at 1024x768. It's also 'period appropriate' - as I mentioned previously, first time I played Fate of Atlantis I played it on a not very good 14" monitor. If it all goes wrong you'll have lost very little money, whilst everything else is a lottery.

CRTs don't have a 'native resolution' but they do have a maximum resolvable resolution - after that the unresolvable pixels blur into the other ones, but due to the way CRT works it's pretty seamless.

I'd agree that you need 75Hz as a usable minimum for use. Regardless of what the monitor supports, you should probably be running a 17" at a maximum of 1280x1024, and a 21" at a maximum of 1600x1200. My C220p monitors are high end 20" CRTs capable of synching to 2048x1536x75Hz, but what it can fully resolve based on the dot pitch (0.24mm) and screen size (16" x 12") is 1702x1276 pixels. The closest common resolution to that is 1600x1200 with a little left over, you could push this to 1792x1344 or 1920x1440, but you're losing detail at that stage. I have used it at 2048x1536 but everything is very small and it's hard on the eyes!

It's also an issue if you're running non retro games. Practically all CRT monitors have a 4:3 aspect ratio, a rarity in TFT these days which are usually 16:9 or 16:10, with a minority of super wide aspect ratios. Some games simply don't support 4:3 at all, and the older ones tend to top out at 1600x1200.

What the specification says you can do, and what your drivers support are also two different things. The C220p is capable of running 1600x1200x100Hz all day, but not all drivers support it. This is not restricted to closed source operating systems; if you're going to be running something open source based be aware that as CRTs are no longer produced, they are rarely tested against now and the defaults are for TFTs. You will probably have to do some tweaking, especially if your monitor is connected via BNC and therefore can't supply an EDID over DDC to specify what resolutions it can handle.

Well I couldn't get the local seller to reply BUT i did get my hands on a Sony GDM-F500R montitor.

dionb wrote:

Consoles were never my thing, so can't say. In fact over here in Europe they were probably 50Hz. I wouldn't call it unplayable, just headache-inducing. Then again, I am particularly sensitive to flashing lights between 20 and 70-odd Hz, I can't stand fluorescent strip lighting either. In fact I'd say it's less of a problem on a small screen, as the fovea (center of vision, where colour perception and detail are best) is relatively slow; its the edges of vision where the (fast-switching) rods are concentrated, and where you (at least: where I) get a sort of stroboscope-effect when there is a ~50-60Hz display present.

Same here, a classmate had an Amiga back in the day and while (some) Amiga games looked amazing, I just couldn't stand staring at the flickering 50Hz picture and much preferred playing on my 286 because of its 70Hz refresh rate (I didn't know anything about refresh rates back then, I just knew his Amiga gave me headaches).

Auron359 wrote:

i did get my hands on a Sony GDM-F500R montitor.

oooo nice :3
congrats