VOGONS


What display do you use for gaming ?

Topic actions

First post, by gear

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Hello,

what kind of display do you use for old games. Main problemes for LCD are:

- low resolution aren't well "done"
- black don't really exist (maybe OLED but never try)
- format used to exist (5/4 and so)

with time CRT quality are decreassing, their disponibility too.
Never try a projector or a TV.

So what do you use, what kind of issues and solutions do you find with time ?

Thanks.

Reply 1 of 30, by SVD

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I use a samtron 96p 19" CRT, but will change to a Nokia 445xi 21" when i feel like lifting it up on to the table. I have enough CRT's so even if one brakes, i will just use another. Maybe i will recap the Nokia for good measure.
With my modern computer i use a samsung 4k 60hz.

Reply 2 of 30, by Con 2 botones

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
gear wrote on 2020-10-20, 11:47:
Hello, […]
Show full quote

Hello,

what kind of display do you use for old games. Main problemes for LCD are:

- low resolution aren't well "done"
- black don't really exist (maybe OLED but never try)
- format used to exist (5/4 and so)

with time CRT quality are decreassing, their disponibility too.
Never try a projector or a TV.

So what do you use, what kind of issues and solutions do you find with time ?

Thanks.

Hello there.
Unfortunately, I don´t have room for a 19´ CRT. Dell Ultrasharp 1908fp (5:4, 75hz, silver colour) is what I chose. I Love it.

Last edited by Con 2 botones on 2020-10-26, 14:45. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 3 of 30, by Standard Def Steve

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I use a bunch of different display devices for gaming!

34" 16:9 CRT TV - 1080i - Older consoles, up to the original Xbox.
64" 16:9 plasma TV - 1080p - PS3/Xbox360, right on up to current gen consoles.

34" 21:9 LCD monitor - 3440x1440 - gaming on the main PC
32" 16:9 LCD monitor - 2560x1440 - gaming on the secondary PC

21" 4:3 CRT monitor - typically @ 1600x1200, but can go lower (or higher!) - my Win98 and WinXP machines share this monitor
17" 4:3 CRT monitor - typically @ 640x400 - DOS gaming

D-ILA (LCoS) projector - 17:9 AR (4096x2160) - Mainly used for movies, but I sometimes bring my gaming PC down to the batcave for a big screen flight sim experience.

P6 chip. Triple the speed of the Pentium.
Tualatin: PIII-S @ 1628MHz | QDI Advance 12T | 2GB DDR-310 | 6800GT | X-Fi | 500GB HDD | 3DMark01: 14,059
Dothan: PM @ 2.9GHz | MSI Speedster FA4 | 2GB DDR2-580 | GTX 750Ti | X-Fi | 500GB SSD | 3DMark01: 43,190

Reply 4 of 30, by Almoststew1990

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I use a modern 5:4 1280x1024 75hz LCD for my xp and older gaming because it has both a DVI and VGA input. I can keep a PC under and on the desk so it's space efficient and I can have an XP and DOS PC hooked up at the same time.

My main PC is a 16:9 1440p 144hz screen

Ryzen 3700X | 16GB 3600MHz RAM | AMD 6800XT | 2Tb NVME SSD | Windows 10
AMD DX2-80 | 16MB RAM | STB LIghtspeed 128 | AWE32 CT3910
I have a vacancy for a main Windows 98 PC

Reply 5 of 30, by Doornkaat

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
Standard Def Steve wrote on 2020-10-21, 06:18:
I use a bunch of different display devices for gaming! […]
Show full quote

I use a bunch of different display devices for gaming!

34" 16:9 CRT TV - 1080i - Older consoles, up to the original Xbox.
64" 16:9 plasma TV - 1080p - PS3/Xbox360, right on up to current gen consoles.

34" 21:9 LCD monitor - 3440x1440 - gaming on the main PC
32" 16:9 LCD monitor - 2560x1440 - gaming on the secondary PC

21" 4:3 CRT monitor - typically @ 1600x1200, but can go lower (or higher!) - my Win98 and WinXP machines share this monitor
17" 4:3 CRT monitor - typically @ 640x400 - DOS gaming

D-ILA (LCoS) projector - 17:9 AR (4096x2160) - Mainly used for movies, but I sometimes bring my gaming PC down to the batcave for a big screen flight sim experience.

This post makes 'Standard Def Steve' feel like false advertisement.😉

Reply 6 of 30, by chinny22

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I use whatever I can get for free 😉

Up till recently I used a few old Dell 5:4 screens
They suffer from all the problems you listed but for me its a compromise I can live with.
Other issue is they don't support some of the more exotic settings some games require (namely Screamer using the MSI API)

I've just moved over to using 3 HP EliteDisplay E201
Plenty of inputs for different systems, better picture, able to lock the aspect ratio for 640x480 and above.
Anything below 640x480 is a stretched out mess, but was surprised that some games don't look that bad. not great, but not bad.

Also have 2 CRT's but just don't have the room to setup even 1 of them at the moment.

Reply 7 of 30, by Cyberdyne

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Cheap 1 year old 300EUR 55" LG TV, but it has VGA in sooooo SCORE. Few other 32" noname (Funai) under 100 EUR VGA in capable TV-s. And multitude of 17" and 19" LCD-s and well i have one 19" Black Compaq CRT.

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

Reply 8 of 30, by kixs

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

At the moment I don't play at all and use just any LCD at hand - currently Samsung 154v. Otherwise I have prepared some Trinitrons for use - 17" for DOS and 21" for Windows. Just in case I also have 15" and 19" in storage and even smaller dimensions - not sure what will I do with them?!

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 9 of 30, by Standard Def Steve

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Doornkaat wrote on 2020-10-21, 09:32:
Standard Def Steve wrote on 2020-10-21, 06:18:
I use a bunch of different display devices for gaming! […]
Show full quote

I use a bunch of different display devices for gaming!

34" 16:9 CRT TV - 1080i - Older consoles, up to the original Xbox.
64" 16:9 plasma TV - 1080p - PS3/Xbox360, right on up to current gen consoles.

34" 21:9 LCD monitor - 3440x1440 - gaming on the main PC
32" 16:9 LCD monitor - 2560x1440 - gaming on the secondary PC

21" 4:3 CRT monitor - typically @ 1600x1200, but can go lower (or higher!) - my Win98 and WinXP machines share this monitor
17" 4:3 CRT monitor - typically @ 640x400 - DOS gaming

D-ILA (LCoS) projector - 17:9 AR (4096x2160) - Mainly used for movies, but I sometimes bring my gaming PC down to the batcave for a big screen flight sim experience.

This post makes 'Standard Def Steve' feel like false advertisement.😉

Well, I'm just about ready to pop in my Evil Dead II laserdisc & watch it on the 1080i CRT TV, which can display 480i natively. Do I get some of my standard def cred back? 😜

P6 chip. Triple the speed of the Pentium.
Tualatin: PIII-S @ 1628MHz | QDI Advance 12T | 2GB DDR-310 | 6800GT | X-Fi | 500GB HDD | 3DMark01: 14,059
Dothan: PM @ 2.9GHz | MSI Speedster FA4 | 2GB DDR2-580 | GTX 750Ti | X-Fi | 500GB SSD | 3DMark01: 43,190

Reply 10 of 30, by sledge

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

1) Modern PC with Dosbox - IPS 24" with 1920x1200 resolution and Dosbox set to pixel-perfect scaling (1600x1200).
2) Retro PC with DOS / Win98 - 15" CRT monitor (Compaq V55). Smaller screen is intentional, even 17" is imho too big for playing DOS games with 320x200/70Hz because of the low refresh rate.

doshaven.eu / high-voltage.cz

Reply 11 of 30, by Joseph_Joestar

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Ever since I had it repaired, I'm mostly using my old Samsung SyncMaster 795MB 17" CRT monitor for DOS, Win9x and even some WinXP retro gaming. This particular model is capable of reaching 120Hz at 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions, which looks super crisp. Using that refresh rate is also possible in DOS, thanks to the VBEHz utility.

It's also apparent that the majority of Win9x era games (and even some early WinXP games) were designed with the aforementioned resolutions in mind, and their UI becomes too small if you go higher than that. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I was using a CRT until 2006, so playing XP era games on one feels natural to me.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 12 of 30, by amadeus777999

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I'm using an old Sony LCD TV right now.
My top choice for CRTs is the IIyama 451 or one of the 21"'s with a Trinitron or Diamondtron tube. Other than that for general toying around a 19" Samsung or Philips has to suffice. I had a nice big 22" IIyama but the green cannon was failing and the screen was not really usable in DOS anymore... total shame as DoomII looked outstanding on it.

I do not really use windows so 800x600 is my max. Nearly all of the time is spent in DOS.

Reply 14 of 30, by Baoran

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

For gaming.
Main PC has 5120x1440 widescreen 49" 240Hz monitor for modern games.
With consoles I use 13 year old 45" 1080p sony tv.
With retro PCs I use 19" HP 91 1600x1200 crt monitor.
My Gaming laptop has 144Hz 1080p display.

Reply 15 of 30, by newtmonkey

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I've got the following:

  • IBM 83h7062 CRT monitor - Connected to my DOS machine [office]
  • Sony PVM-14M1J CRT TV - Connected to my 8-bit computers (C64/MSX2/Atari 800XL/Apple IIc) [office]
  • LG OLED55B7P - Connected to my consoles through upscalers (RetroTINK 2X-Pro and Framemeister) [living room]
  • BenQ RL2460HT - Connected to my laptop primarily for work but also the occasional PC game [office]

Reply 16 of 30, by gravitone

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I'm currently using a philips 20PF5121 EDTV.
It has a 20" 640x480 IPS panel, and a 450+ NITS max brightness.
Perfect for early 3dfx glide titles,dos svga titles, and windows 95/98 software that runs in 640x480 since there is no scaling but 1:1 pixel mapping.
Dos games that run at 320x240 scale perfectly at 2x.

Reply 17 of 30, by PC-Engineer

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
  • DOS with VGA/SVGA - 15" CRT Sony Multiscan 100ES / 4:3
  • Windows 98 / 2000 - 17" CRT Nokia 447XiPlus / 4:3
  • Windows XP / Windows 7 - 20" LCD Samsung SyncMaster 204Ts / 4:3
  • Windows 10 - 34" LCD Dell AW3420DW / 21:9

Since the display is the most important interface between man and PC, I attach great importance to authenticity. If I could keep only two of them, then the Dell (Windows 7/10) and the Nokia (Windows XP and earlier).

Epox 7KXA Slot A / Athlon 950MHz / Voodoo 5 5500 / PowerVR / 512 MB / AWE32 / SCSI - Windows 98SE

Reply 18 of 30, by ultimate386

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Modern rig: ViewSonic XG2401 (24" 1080p)
Retro rigs: Sony CPD G220r (17" CRT, 1600x1200 max)
Wife's rig: Samsumg 226BW (22" 1680x1050)

Also have a 14" Samsung CRT and a 15" Impression 5+ CRT in storage.
A circa 2004 37" Sony Trinitron TV still getting daily use.

AMD386/IIT387DX40, 32MB, ATi Mach64, AWE64
Compaq Prolinea 4/33, 32MB, Tseng ET4000, SB16
AMD X5, 64MB, S3 Virge/Voodoo1, AWE64
AMD K62+550, 256MB, Voodoo3, AWE64 Gold
P3 1.2Ghz, 512MB, Radeon 7500/Voodoo2 SLI, SB Live!

Reply 19 of 30, by shamino

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

For 2D era game consoles, and maybe a future MAME setup:
I've held on to 3 CRT TVs, all from ~2005 when the last of them were being made.
14" Toshiba (14AF45?)
20" Panasonic Tau
24" Toshiba 24AF44
Of these I think I like the 20" Panasonic the best. I need to try making service menu adjustments on the 24" Toshiba though. The 14" is great but it's only 14".
Thanks to their late production, all of these have a full set of analog connections including SVideo and YPbPr but not RGB (consumer TVs never had that in the US). I've tried using the YPbPr inputs with a Geforce card at one point but NVidia drivers apparently refuse to output 480i signals over Component.

When I bought the 24" Toshiba at a thrift store, just a few days later I saw an identical twin of the same model TV at the same store. I thought really hard about buying it just to have a matched pair.. but didn't due to space.
It's been a few years since I saw a CRT at a thrift, so I think my "collection" is settled unless I want to mess with Craigslist.

For modern PC games:
When I have a dedicated gaming PC (which I've had in the past, but currently don't), I've hooked it up to a 45" 1080i LCD TV. It's unfortunately just a bit too old to recognize 1080p signals, but most games will run in 1080i. Dark Souls won't, but 720p is fine as a fallback.
That TV was made in the transitional era and has inputs for everything. It's input lag is almost negligible (I don't notice it in most situations, and when I do it's very tiny). If I couldn't keep the CRTs then it's probably the best substitute for them that I could hope to find, but I prefer to keep the CRTs.

For older PC games:
I've held on to an NEC 17" aperture grille CRT monitor but it doesn't work. It always had a beautiful picture but after a power outage it wouldn't turn on anymore. I'm hoping it's a simple fix but I have no experience troubleshooting these things.
I've decided to get rid of an iMac with a working CRT in it. I'm giving up the bird in the hand for two in the bush, I guess.