For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

[Behemot]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

This Eizo I know I ran it up to 2048x1536 ("officially" it can do 1920x1200) but it's painful to use it like that, too low refresh, too small pixels, and mine is not exactly 100% geometrically accurate after so many years of usage.

Which one is that, is it the T57? I have similar looking at home. All of these can do 2048x1536, they just don't have it in EDID so I had to buy PowerStrip. Usually they do 1920x1440 at 85 Hz (that's why I also run them at this resolution ).

And as for the geeometry, you can correct most of that in settings if the cirtcuitry inside is not deteriorating itself.

Anyway, guys, I don't want to touch your feelings or be rude or something. But the reality is, if you run some 20" LCD and think what miracle you got, let me tell you you only got piece of shit. High-quality flat 22"+ CRT with resolution such high as 1920x1440 is not to be compared with anything on the current market besides the 2560x1440 displays which cost fortune and still are shit ratio.

[lti]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

(2MB S3 ViRGE for the... loss)

I still have one of those. It sucks.

You need a Compaq V55 monitor to go with it. Those monitors really sucked.

I can run my old K6-2 system with an SiS 5598 chipset at 1280x1024, and it still performs better than some newer computers (like my parents' computer with a GeForce 4 graphics card) at that resolution. It only supports 16-bit color and 60Hz refresh rate at that resolution.

[mariushm]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

Which one is that, is it the T57?

Yes, I have the T57s.

It was bought by a friend of mine at photography school second hand, I bought it from him and used it for a few years while I was a student.
It probably had some fixes (refurbished by the store technicians that brought the truck-full of monitors to sell here) but while I had it the geometry was ok.
Only towards the end of me using it, on high resolutions it wasn't that great anymore.

I'm really not interested in using it anymore, and here, people aren't interested in them even if I put ad in newspapers to get it for free, they're just too heavy at 20+ kilos.

In my case, unfortunately I have problems with one of my eyes, even had surgery on it. I can see reasonably well with that eye, with the other I can see almost perfectly so my brain got used to it and "repairs" the not so good information it gets so I can see perfectly on the LCD screens.. However, due to the differences between eyes, I'm really sensitive to flicker from refresh rates..

So the 24" lcd monitors are awesome, really dig the resolution, and being lcd's refresh rate isn't a problem. I couldn't handle the refresh rates of crt monitors these days.

I do want to make a sort of teardown video, i'm going to save some electronics if they're worth it and throw the tube to trash, and I'm probably gonna finally see if they actually did some fixes on the boards... but when i'm gonna get around to do it, I really don't know.

ps. as for video cards, the first I personally owned was an s3 trio 3d card... upgraded that to s3 savage 3d, then s3 savage 4 (both these savage cards died within weeks of purchase with bios corruption), then nvidia vanta, then ati radeon 9200 which I think i still have in my parents' computer.
But while i was a student, i did work with some servers that had trident isa video cards, a cirrus logic card on pci that I still have in my box of parts, I think even some tseng labs based video card that was in a server i decommissioned.

[Behemot]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

I see. I can tell 75 Hz too by peripheral vision, but starting from 85 Hz it is fine for me. Great about CRTs is that you can run them anywhere from 320x240 to their max and the image is still great (if you have VGA output without filtering caps and inductors which in 80 % cases are responsible for blurring higher resolutions) and you also get much higher resfresh rate. I can get 200 Hz at 800x600, which I do sometimes shile playing Baldur's gate and such games

[momaka]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

Whooo how's that I haven't noticed this thread before?

Better late then never. Welcome to the CRT monitor freak club .

Anyway, guys, I don't want to touch your feelings or be rude or something. But the reality is, if you run some 20" LCD and think what miracle you got, let me tell you you only got piece of shit. High-quality flat 22"+ CRT with resolution such high as 1920x1440 is not to be compared with anything on the current market besides the 2560x1440 displays which cost fortune and still are shit ratio.

+1
I can't stand the contrast of LCDs, especially cheap LCDs (Chi Mei anyone?). No matter how nice and big they are, I can still see the backlight bleeding through and the other thing that annoys me is the black levels. Wait, what black levels? - there are none on a LCD.

Biggest CRT I've ever owned was a HP 17". I never ran it past 1024x768. It would run up to something like 1600x1200, but I could hardly read anything with it that high. Eventually, I ended up getting my hands on a few cheap and free LCDs, and never looked back.

I think that's why you hate CRT monitors so much. If you ever saw some 21" CRTs, you wouldn't use anything else. Even some 19" CRTs can be pretty decent too. And then there's the king of all: the 24" GDM-FW900. I consider myself absolutely lucky to own one (2 actually, but 1 is dead). It's capable of the high resolutions of modern LCDs and has great colors like any CRT.

I see. I can tell 75 Hz too by peripheral vision, but starting from 85 Hz it is fine for me.

Same here. 75 Hz I can usually tell with peripheral vision, but above that it's fine. I run all of my CRTs at 85 Hz now, except for the HP A4032A in this post. That one I actually just got it running at 75 Hz last summer. Had to use PowerStrip for that. I think I tried it even all the way up to 85 Hz, but the picture got too blurry (it's an old Trinitron from 1994 so give it a break). All of this is at 1024x768 resolution, by the way. Most people find that resolution too small, but I like it. Even started running my 21" Dell D1626HT at 1024x768. Although I am slightly near-sighted, I can read text on it just fine even from over a meter away. And it looks sharp. Do that with a large LCD and you get a horrible blurry mess of pixels.

By the way, I might be getting another SyncMaster 955DF this weekend .

[Behemot]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

Yeaaah, FW900 is nice, but it is wide so thank you very much. I'll sick with my 4:3 ratio

Have you tried to remove output filter on graphics card under the A4032A? It actually helps more than just sometimes. Just remove SMD ceramics and inductors (bridge them with solder or a tiny piece of wire) on RGB signal paths, it's directly next to D-Sub. It is supposed to remove some electromagnetic noise, but who the hell cares when the CRT itselfs radiates like 100000times more?

[momaka]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

Yeaaah, FW900 is nice, but it is wide so thank you very much. I'll sick with my 4:3 ratio

What's wrong with 16:10? I don't mind the FW900 for doing work. And for movies and games, it's wicked!

Have you tried to remove output filter on graphics card under the A4032A?

Nope. I never even though that could be the issue. I have tried several different video cards, though, and they all yield the same result, so I am almost certain it's the monitor.

It actually helps more than just sometimes. Just remove SMD ceramics and inductors (bridge them with solder or a tiny piece of wire) on RGB signal paths, it's directly next to D-Sub.

Interesting. I might try it next summer when I'm there (at my grandmother's house) if I have time. I'll probably try it on my S3 Savage 4 video card, though. The Radeon 7200 I have in that computer currently is too nice to mess with IMO. (For an old P3 computer, anyways.)

It is supposed to remove some electromagnetic noise, but who the hell cares when the CRT itselfs radiates like 100000times more?

I think they are there to protect the computer from external EMI rather than the outside from the computer EMI. But like you said, who cares .

[Hemingray]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

Now I gotta get out my best CRT monitor (19" NEC Multisync) and see what that beast can do.

[Behemot]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

momaka: from my experience all the cards from that times but Matrox sucked. It did not matter as not many ppl had displays capable of such resolution. Later it got better (without any word that they ever improved the filters ), maybe some other things got better (the actual RAMDACs?), who knows. People started using LCDs where it did not matter that much, although with DVI there has been some improvement. Question is if anybody ever compared card with good analog output and card with bad output on LCD Or whether they just all said D-Sub is crap and DVI is way superior every time…cause there may be cards where even using D-Sub on high resolution the LCD image may actually be good.

Fact is, almost everything from that time is blurred like hell even on my Dell P1130 at say 1600x1200. Similar problem with e.g. Compaq DC7700p desktop. With for example Radeon X1950XT it was just fine (actually with two such displays both at 1920x1440 ). Now I have the Philips on HD 6670 with DVI>D-Sub adapter and it is godo as well.

ADD// I have just recently acquired active adapter from DisplayPort to D-Sub but it is too wide and I cannot squeeze it next to DVI>-D-Sub adapter so I have to buy DP extender first (I need jsut 10 cm but shortest are 2 meters, isnt it just great?). Curious on how the image will look like.

[momaka]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

Fact is, almost everything from that time is blurred like hell even on my Dell P1130 at say 1600x1200.

Not so sure about that. I've used my Radeon 7200 to drive a big 40" LCD TV running at 1920x1080, and there was no blurriness at all. I would have noticed it if there was any because of the large screen size. Same when I hooked it up to a 26" Westinghouse LCD monitor running at 1920x1080 again.

1920x1080 is the max resolution that the Radeon 7200 supports. But maybe it's just a decent old video card?

[Behemot]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

May be. It is less obvious on LCDs actually because they transfer the signal back to digital, but I could tell difference between analog and digital just fine on Radeon 9700 with 1m+ TV.

[lti]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

The old Compaq V55 monitors looked the worst on Matrox cards. Those monitors were extremely blurry on every video card, but whatever Matrox card Compaq was using in the Deskpro EN (designed for Windows 95, but used a Pentium II) made them almost unusable.

I mentioned in another thread that my laptop's VGA output looks horrible on a CRT monitor, but not on an LCD. The picture is blurry and extremely bright, dark objects are too dark, and light objects are too light.

The only CRT monitor I still have is the 15" Sony with a maximum resolution of 1024x768.

[momaka]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

May be. It is less obvious on LCDs actually because they transfer the signal back to digital, but I could tell difference between analog and digital just fine on Radeon 9700 with 1m+ TV.

Well I also used that video card to drive both my 21" Dell D1626HT and the FW900. The D1626HT looked very sharp as usual, even all the way down to 1600x1200 @ 75 Hz, which is it's max resolution and refresh rate. The FW900 looked blurry, but that's the FW900's fault - either the flyback or the tube is starting to go bad . I've used different video cards to drive all of these devices as well, namely a GeForce 6200 and a Radeon 9700. At least on analog input, I didn't see any difference.

I mentioned in another thread that my laptop's VGA output looks horrible on a CRT monitor, but not on an LCD. The picture is blurry and extremely bright, dark objects are too dark, and light objects are too light.

I'm not familiar with Win 7 that much, but a friend of my roommate tried my 17" Dell Trinitron on his laptop and it looked alright until he changed some setting in the display properties (I didn't really notice which). After that the image on the CRT became kind of like you described and even standard 4:3 resolutions were not displaying properly (not stretching all the way up on the screen). So it could be a settings issue. You may also have to play with the brightness/contrast and color temperature (if your monitor has this option) to get it to look right.

[eccerr0r]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

I still have two CRTs that I haven't dumped yet:

trinitron 21" 2048x1536@60Hz (normally use at 1600x1200@85)
shadowmask 19" 1600x1200@60Hz (normally use at 1280x1024@75)

While I really can't discern too much flicker (takes some effort to see it) running these monitors at this spec is getting close to their bandwidth limits and the dots aren't as sharp as with a lower resolution - though at max resolution it's still not that bad and very usable. But both these CRTs exceed the resolution of all my other displays... and I still don't use them - I solely use my LCDs...

[rs232killer]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

Obrigado

[TechGeek]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

People were always complaining about the motion in LCDs for games... I think this is a bunch of hooey. I have played countless hours of Age Of Chivalry on an LCD, I never noticed any fluidity ptoblems.

But I agree that CRTs are still better. Why? No fixed aspect ratio and the light from a CRT is good for your eyes.

You're saying that I can drive a CRT at 2000x2000 or more at a 16:9 aspect ratio(because why not)?

[momaka]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

You're saying that I can drive a CRT at 2000x2000 or more at a 16:9 aspect ratio(because why not)?

Well, at 2000x2000, the aspect ratio wouldn't be 16:9... it would be 1:1

But yes, you can drive a CRT at that or any other resolution you like, as long as the monitor supports it. For newer PnP (Plug-n-Play) monitors, normally the resolution is limited by the electronics in the CRT (you get an out-of-sync, unrecognized resolution, no signal, or other similar message when trying to over-drive the CRT). This limitation usually comes from the CRT's maximum horizontal and vertical scan rates and the signal bandwidth.

What mockingbird was trying to say in his comment is, that with CRTs you don't really have a "native" resolution like you do with LCDs. With LCDs, it is best to run it at the resolution that it is made for (usually maximum). That's because in an LCD, you have a set number of vertical and horizontal pixels. So unless you run some resolution that has its vertical and horizontal size as a multiple of the native, the screen will usually look more blurry.

With a CRT this doesn't happen because you don't have a set number of pixels. You have dot triads (shadow mask screens) or dot rows (aperture grille screens - which is basically the Sony Trinitron technology). But neither the vertical nor the horizontal pixel count is set in a CRT screen. So running at a lower resolution than the "recommended" usually gives you an even more clear picture.

Also, because the "pixels" in CRTs not exactly square, the picture on the screen usually has a slightly anti-aliased look. This is great news if you have a gaming computer and can't do the native resolution of your monitor. On a CRT, you can do any resolution, and you are a lot less likely do notice any "dancing pixels", even without anti-aliasing.

[TechGeek]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

You have any Trinitrons? I had one, but it almost caught on fire.

[Pentium4]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

I spotted this thing in the music store the other day. I of course went straight to the back of it and was really surprised. a Micron CRT?! Never knew they ventured in that area. Maybe it's rebranded? There is almost zero information on it. I gladly accepted the weird looks for admiring this old thing in the store

[momaka]

Re: For the CRT monitor freaks - highest resolution you ran on your tube?

You have any Trinitrons? I had one, but it almost caught on fire.

Yes, five of them
Dell D1025HTX (17")
Dell D1025TM (17")
Dell D1626HT (21")
Sony E-540 (21")
two Sony GDM-FW900 (24") (one is dead, so I am not counting it above)

I doubt yours could have caught fire. They have some of the best protection circuits I've seen. My dead GDM-FW900 can even detect when the HV is overloaded and automatically cuts off. No damage to the flyback whatsoever.

a Micron CRT?! Never knew they ventured in that area. Maybe it's rebranded?

Just to make sure... you're not confusing that with Macron (the PSU brand), are you?

I'm not too surprised to see a Micron CRT. They also had cases, keyboards, mice, and probably some other hardware with their brand on them. Not sure who made it for them, but they were usually decent quality as far as I remember. When I was in middle school, all of our classrooms were equipped with Pentium 3 Macron PCs, Macron CRT monitors, and Macron keyboards.
I think it was these ones:
http://www.sabcal.com/images/micron_pc.jpg
I learned to (properly) type on one of these back then.

I gladly accepted the weird looks for admiring this old thing in the store

Well, you should have seen the looks on people's faces when I moved out of my first college apartment 2 summers ago . Some people even asked me if I was shooting a film taking place in the 90's (similar to Office Space ). No one could believe that anyone (sane) would still use these old things.