Hi,

This unfortunately a common problem, I still have to use my old CRTs to do 4:3 aspect rate gaming with high frequencies.

Consumer display manufacturers abandoned the 4:3 aspect ratio, so buying a new one from them is not an option.
Industrial display manufacturers still have new 4:3 displays, but their refresh rates are low mostly 60Hz, and a few 80Hz ones as they aren't made for gaming in mind but for clearly readable data output.

If someone can find a manufacturer of monitors with both 4:3 aspect ratio and good refresh rates I'm also interested about it, good 4:3 monitors are getting harder and harder to get.

I unfortunately have no electrical engineering experience or further indepth knowledge of how displays work, but from my naive point of view, it can't be that hard to get a modern driving board capabable of delivering HDMI and DP and a chinese manufactorer of 4:3 IPS panels to work together.

This is as close to what I mean possible, with the exemption that is only delivers 60hz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1rN8Xl4Ssc

akais3000 wrote on Yesterday, 16:29:

I unfortunately have no electrical engineering experience or further indepth knowledge of how displays work, but from my naive point of view, it can't be that hard to get a modern driving board capabable of delivering HDMI and DP and a chinese manufactorer of 4:3 IPS panels to work together.

I'm also not an electrical engineer, I have some DIY electronics hobby experience with digital electronics and microcontrollers, but that doesn't really translate into working with current display technology. From what I understand giving HDMI and DP input for a 4:3 IPS panel is not the hard part of the equation, it is that the 4:3 IPS panels are not designed to work above 60 or 80 Hz as they are now produced not for the Consumer monitor market but for Industrial or Medical displays where the high refresh rate is not that important. Like all electronics overclocking of IPS panels is most likely possible(No personal experience, but as modern displays are also based on semi-conductors it is logical to assume), but the results will differ on the quality of the individual silicon so results will be most likely all around the place, and not reliable as the factory wouldn't test the panels at such high refresh rates.

EDIT: I have asked some of my friends about this, one of them is an Electrical Engineer and he basically said what I have suspected, currently no display panel manufacturer creates 4:3 panels with high refresh rates because there is no demand for it. I also asked him about the possibility of overclocking, and he basically told me to not bother with it, as display panels are large pieces of semi-conductor not small ones like a regular microchip, so overclocking a display panel is a whole degree harder than a regular IC, and as the panels produced typically tops at 80Hz for a 144Hz refresh rate that is a 80% OC, basically and practically impossible. He also remarked that the best possibility is with an OLED panel as OLED has the best response times of common technologies and the LEDs output the light directly so the chemical and electric properties of the liquid crystals present in other display technologies that uses a backlight would not interfere, but according to him the best OC result with them would be still only ~100Hz and he says that would still need a hand picked panel and custom driving circuitry, so not impossible but "very hard and with a lot of effort". So the best thing with modern technology is to run the game on a wide-screen panel and use a 4:3 resolution centred instead of stretched and trying to tolerate the two black bars on the side 🙁.

akais3000 wrote on Yesterday, 16:29:

I unfortunately have no electrical engineering experience or further indepth knowledge of how displays work, but from my naive point of view, it can't be that hard to get a modern driving board capabable of delivering HDMI and DP and a chinese manufactorer of 4:3 IPS panels to work together.

There is a Russian forum that hacks lcd tv/monitor firmware and junction boards.

There is believe it or not a finite number of lcd panels and a more finite number of junction boards with a handful of strange junction boards that can control a few different panels types.

Years ago The final TV repair guy in town was swapping junction boards on some form of large monitor he got in bulk for pennies with a better junction board for some form of tv set that was compatible adding a tuner, HDMI and oddly smooth sub pixel scaling with blank insertion. He then could sell a non-proprietary moderately cheap gaming tv/monitor.

This is something that is done in China and Russia to improve the scrap/recycled stuff we inevitably send there and likely due to cost is pretty much completely ignored in the west.

Many limitations on old LCDs like bad scaling, poor resolution support, poor video input options, poor refresh rate support , lack of blank insertion could theoretically be improved with a new board , even a new firmware might help.

MagefromAntares wrote on Yesterday, 16:43:

I have suspected, currently no display panel manufacturer creates 4:3 panels with high refresh rates because there is no demand for it. I also asked him about the possibility of overclocking, and he basically told me to not bother with it, as display panels are large pieces of semi-conductor not small ones like a regular microchip, so overclocking a display panel is a whole degree harder than a regular IC, and as the panels produced typically tops at 80Hz for a 144Hz refresh rate that is a 80% OC, basically and practically impossible. He also remarked that the best possibility is with an OLED panel as OLED has the best response times of common technologies and the LEDs output the light directly so the chemical and electric properties of the liquid crystals present in other display technologies that uses a backlight would not interfere, but according to him the best OC result with them would be still only ~100Hz and he says that would still need a hand picked panel and custom driving circuitry, so not impossible but "very hard and with a lot of effort". So the best thing with modern technology is to run the game on a wide-screen panel and use a 4:3 resolution centred instead of stretched and trying to tolerate the two black bars on the side 🙁.

An LCD is more like a bunch of batteries that can charge or discharge at a specific rate, the tcon and junction board can affect the refresh irregardless of the panels physical reaction time, either by frame skip or by just clocking inputs faster or by inserting blank frames.

The belief that you can’t send more frames physical is mostly false, very old LCDs were maybe capable of 10hz but were almost always driven around 60hz, just had a lot of ghosting.

If you had a new tcon and junction board designed for vintage panels (I use 1600x1200) you could definitely eliminate all frame skipping issues on 70/72/75hz
With fancier electronics blank frames and higher refresh rates would open up also, just would have ghosting.

And believe it or not the 15-20ns response panels were the same panels that became 8-12ns panels just because of blank

akais3000 wrote on Yesterday, 16:37:

This is as close to what I mean possible, with the exemption that is only delivers 60hz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1rN8Xl4Ssc

I read through the complete comment section and found this comment by the manufacturer, so there will be a 4:3 display with 140hz available later this year. Though probably for a hefty price of about 800€ and upwards, which kind of defeats the purpose but again, that's better than nothing.

akais3000 wrote on Yesterday, 19:55:

I read through the complete comment section and found this comment by the manufacturer, so there will be a 4:3 display with 140h […]
Show full quote

akais3000 wrote on Yesterday, 16:37:

This is as close to what I mean possible, with the exemption that is only delivers 60hz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1rN8Xl4Ssc

I read through the complete comment section and found this comment by the manufacturer, so there will be a 4:3 display with 140hz available later this year. Though probably for a hefty price of about 800€ and upwards, which kind of defeats the purpose but again, that's better than nothing.

Well there is hope(however small) that it will get bought by enough people that they consider it profitable, and upscaling production and possibly others entering the market will mean lowering prices, of course in the current world where most games are made for wide screen aspect ratios it is unlikely that it will be a huge success, but hopefully enough nostalgic people will buy it that it becomes a workable business model and at least it will be available even with a high price tag when the last CRTs and 4:3 LCDs that came of the production lines become unreliable due to components ageing. (Actually I'm more worried about the LCDs than the CRTs, a CRT tube is quite resilient if not mishandled and most likely someone can find a professional to repair the attached components even later on, but an LCD panel is easier to get damaged both physically and electronically)

Here you talk about new monitors, i cant find 4:3 monitors out there, old monitors that i can find are usually 5:4 1280x10124 .
Talking about old monitors, is there some kind of list of 4:3 monitors, so its easier to look and find them or i need take fat crt?

With those high prices i would not buy new 4:3 monitor (normal prices i would love to have one).

marxveix wrote on Yesterday, 21:31:

Here you talk about new monitors, i cant find 4:3 monitors out there, old monitors that i can find are usually 5:4 1280x10124 .
Talking about old monitors, is there some kind of list of 4:3 monitors, so its easier to look and find them or i need take fat crt?

With those high prices i would not buy new 4:3 monitor (normal prices i would love to have one).

I believe the issue is that when the price of LCD desktop monitors dropped below CRT, 1280x1024 was the baseline so those are everywhere.
True 4:3 does exist, e.g. Apple Studio Display 1024x768, or Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh 800x600, but those are from "executives" paying a premium for a desktop LCD when a CRT had better display and was cheaper. When their backlights blew they were probably scrapped since a far better, cheaper, higher resolution "consumer" LCD was available by that point.

Some specialized old videocards tend to output 90hz vertical vga signal.
Remember having issues with that.
Scalers and modern monitors seem to max-out handling up to 60hz vga, regardless what the display and other circuitry can do.
Usually the peak frequency in the specification of such scaler or monitor refers to hdmi, dp, etc.
It is not clear if the monitors linked above through the youtube video have this taken care of.
What other monitors can do it?
Any hints from direct empirical experience as online searches dont reveal anything concrete.