Samsung 181T : My Gaming Review

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Neil_is_Dead

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Apr 25, 2002
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Hi Guys,

I have just had confirmed my delivery for a Samsung 181T 18.1 inch LCD Display for tomorrow Wednesday. These have been in very very short supply in the UK, and as such objective reviews are a little thin on the ground.

If people are interested (express here) I'll put up my thoughts in the next couple of days.

I'll do a:
- CounterStrike review (runs at 1024x768 not native)
- Quake 3 at 1280 (native) FSAA.
- Web Browsing
- Some general metrics.

I have this display on a trial so don't expect any prejudice or me to hold back if I don't like it.

It will be running on a GeForce4, and I'll try both the Digital and Analog connector.

If your interested I have a modest 19" Hansol 920D CRT, so I'll be hoping this can act as a direct replacement.

Neil
 
Please do post your experiences. Why only run CS at 1024x768 though? Half-Life offers 1280x960, I know it would stretch vertically but better than both ways surely?

Do you have a DVD player? If so some testing of that would be helpful.
 
OK its arrived now, just landed at my feet at work, I've tried it quickly here just to make sure:

a) it works
b) all the bits are there.

It comes with both a DVI connector and Analog, as well as natural colour software.

The display seems very crisp and sharp, with a nice brightness (I only needed to set it on 50 of 100).

And not a single dead pixel.

I'll be installed at home this evening, and tested to death, watch this space.

For you HL/Counterstrike, fanatics, I'll try both resolutions.

Neil
 
OK 1st Thoughts:

Install was a breeze in fact with the DVI input the windows driver would probably have sufficed, but I went with the supplied driver, followed by an update from Microsofts site.

I have yet to run any formal tests so please bear in mind these are my opinions and just that:

1) Game 1
Spiderman Movie (new 3rd Person Game)

Strangely I expected this game to throw up some problems, to my surprise the colours were vivid and no ghosting was evident unless my eyes were squinted and a couple of inches from the screen.

2) Quake 3 (running Native)

Stationery, the picture was crystal however my first (and not last) dissapointment came when I started trudging around the level. Now I have played this game for years and know the levels back to front and god was that a good job. Moving forward and backwards, no ghosting and CRT like smoothness. Spin the mouse and boy does things go tits up, firstly the blurring is bad, very very bad. Secondly I'm not sure why but rockets for example seem to appear mid screen. I'm presuming this is due to the LCD update, its hard to describe, but either way renders the game unplayable at all but the sedatest of paces.

3) CounterStrike (not native)

I'm sorry to say that this game suffers in the same way as Q3, the only difference being that the pace is somewhat slower and as such the effects are less noticable but still there. Maybe some people could live with this, however as an ardent fps games player I can't.

4) Warrior Kings (3D RTS)

Superb, the colour and picture quality were awesome, contrast fantastic. If you play this style of game I'm sure you would fall in love with the LCD.

5) DVD's

Now I'm used to watching DVD's on a good large TV with a very good player so I have a refernce point that is perhaps higher than most. I'd like to say that I first ran a DivX encoded CD, and second an original Region 2 Phantom Mennace DVD... I was a little disapointed. I could make out artefacts (on DivX) that on the CRT weren't visable. Again ghosting was evident but only on panning shots, facial quality was good (note not excellent) and general nondescript shots were OK. I'd have to say that I wouln't choose this display if watching DVD's was a high priority. For me it would only be occasional use to which I wouldn't hesitate using the 181T.

Windows Display, Web Browsing Word Processing etc....

Absolutely knocked back by the quality, this is the samsungs saving grace, I am a programmer by trade and as such view a lot of text in a quite small font, the 181T is great. Web browsing is a dream although there is blurring when scrolling, but I don't see this as an issue. Font reproduction in word seems good if a tad distorted at the edge on very large (30pt).

A few General points:
Brightness and Viewing Angle are superb. Contrast is again great (I checked out some very deep shadows in CS and the greys were reproduced well). The look of the damn thing is sooo sexy from the front you get 2/3 of an inch around the side and the base obviously). The cables drop straight out of the bottom which means you can't hide them totally but thats not a big issue. The power connector is non standard which means you cant run a pass through into your PC which is a pain.

So overall what would I give it:

Well I am not qualified to score a monitor like this, it is a high(ish) end monitor so I think I have a right to expect a lot (price approx 950 GBP). Overall I am erring on dissapointed, I was hoping to play fast paced FPS games which catagorically I cannot. For everything else, I would say the display is sufficient and better than my CRT.

Will I keep it, hmmmm thats the question. Probably not, I wanted the extra desk space and I can't have that because I need to keep my CRT around. I'll let you know when its been on another hour..

Oh NVidia's TwinView works very well.

Neil
 
yeah, i have the ati 8500 with the 170T monitor and i cant say that i notice any ghosting, but what i notice on a divx is that it does not look as smooth, but i thinbk that because the lcd is sharper. anyway i like my monitor and you might not like your monitor, but anyway if your not happy about the montitor then return it
 
Hiya,

I'm intrigued as to why the ATI cards could offer a better picture on an LCD, maybe its the interpretation of Ghosting. As I think I said, I don't see ghosting during non fps gaming, word processing, DVD playback or web browsing. And its maybe not ghosting I'm complaining about in Quake3 and CounterStrike. Its more a breakup of the picture which only stabilises when the view is not moving from side to side. I would be VERY surprised if the RAMDAC was anything to do with this problem, if it was the problem would be evident elsewhere... in addition a friend of mine has the same nvidia card and a sony screen and he doesn't see the problem.

FYI: I tried the following.
a) With/Without VSync.
b) OpenGL and DirectX.
c) Restricted frame rate. (120/100/80/60/40/20) fps_max
d) With without FSAA
e) Windows98/XP and Linux (Mandrake 8.1)
f) Default Windows Driver and Samsung with XP update

If anyone knows anything else which I could try I'd be grateful. The Samsung 170xx that people are talking about, on the specs the pixel refresh is <25 whereas mine is 25. Maybe the 180T is slower.

Anyway
I'm waiting for the tech suppport to call me for a chat in detail, if not I'm afraid the UK post will be taking it away.

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!! what I should I go for now?

Neil
 
Thanks for sharing your impressions of this monitor! To me this is of special value, as I'm bothered by the constant motion blur I'm experiencing with my Samsung 171B. I've also noticed breakups like you've experienced in Quake3, apart from the regular ghosting. Sometimes in MOHAA its like the whole picture suffers from some heavy lag. Kinda good to see you don't notice any "regular" ghosting though, as I suspect my unit isn't as fast as it should be. I've contacted Samsung support anyway, nice to have other Samsung owners experiences as a reference.
Btw, what refreshrate are you using? Using the max refreshrate (75Hz) here, the response is noticably slower.
 
Hiya

I left the refresh rate at standard for 1280 which was 72 (or 75) if I remember. I didn't think to try it at 60 is there a big difference?

When people say its fine for gaming, I think they need to qualify whether they are talking RTS/FPS other.. this seems very very important. The 181T is amazing at everything except fast changes.. i.e. panning shots on DVD and FPS games.

Come on guys, if you know a good monitor for FPS, let us all know.

Neil
 
The technical expert at DigiUK is going to call me and speak about LCD suitability.

I'd like to add that I understand an LCD (for the time being) is not going to match a CRT for FPS, all I want is a workable solution.

Neil
 
I am very much interested in this thread as well. I am looking at picking up a 15inch LCD with a similar hope in usability. I am curious as the whether or not a smaller screen size improves some of the reported ghosting issues, even at similar refresh rate specs. Anyone got a thought on that?

Steph


--------------------------
Just a broke Canadian Boy!
 
Yes it does make a big difference, unless Samsung have made some big changes (my monitor isn't that old). When I contacted tech support the first thing they asked me was if I was using 75Hz. Try 60, and see if it makes a difference for you. Which OS are you running btw? I have to manually apply the Natural Color profile, when I boot into Win2k :\
 
maybe the effect you are complaining about when playing
Quake 3 is "tearing". Tearing happens when the image buffer
of your graphic card is not updated in sync with the
vertical frequency. This effect is especially visible for
horizontal movements (left-right) at vertical
lines/boundaries which are distorted.

I did a quick search and may be the following might help you (geforce FAQ):

----------------------------------------------------
Q. I get tearing on Quake 3 Arena, whether I set VSYNC on
or off. How can I fix this?
Use the 3.76 drivers or later. These may fix the problem.

This solution was provided by Chas Profitt:

Delete your q3config.cfg file and let Quake 3 Arena rebuild
it. You will lose all your settings but this may help!

If this doesn't help, enable VSYNC in the NVIDIA control
panel and try typing:

/r_swapinterval 1
at the console. This may slow you down.

------------------------------------------------------


Maybe this link about "Unraveling the mystery of VSYNC " is of help as well:

http://www.d-silence.com/video/vsync2.shtml


Ok, thats only any idea.

This tearing effect has nothing to do with the response
time of the monitor. It is very dependent on the vertical
frequency. If you compare a CRT with a LCD monitor you must
be sure to run them both at the same vertical frequency.

The best way to evaluate the response time of and LCD is
to concentrate only on strictly vertical movements.

When I play Quake 2 on my system (ATIRadeon7500) connected
to a 171p via DVI i notice some blur in the dark areas but
nothing really disturbing....this kind of blur is just a
nice visualization of speed.

The only thing I have to complain about are the hard to read fonts on the 171p (I have) because they are super fine
now..I dont like that. But I saw a demo with the
new 'revolutionary' ClearType fonts which was quite
impressing for me and it seems that I am forced to use XP only because of this.
 
Hummm, do i keep my CRT Sony G500 or buy right now a LCD ?
Difficult question, i'm not a FPS addict but sometimes i like to play that kind of games...
 
that depend entirely on what is the reasoning for your decision to use lcd! there is no perfect monitor!

so you have to ask yourself what do you use your computer 90percent of the time for!
 
Imo you bought a Viewsonic VG191 ?
So tell me, have you tried to run some FPS games ? Are there some ghosting problems or not ? I just want to know if the MVA panel with 25ms response time is fast enought...
 
Does anyone know how the 181T performs when compared to the 170T? I been putting off buying the 170T for the longest time now (haven't had the money yet) but if it performs this poorly with fast 3D games then I might think twice about it. Is there a chance that the 170T outperforms the 181T???
 
This is what I'm currently trying to find out. Heres my take:
Samsung has developed a new panel technology called "PVA". This panel is build into the following monitor models:
181T, 210T, 240T, 191T, 171P
I've cross checked this across various country sites of samsung. The panel type for the 170T model is specified at the samsung.ch site as a "a-SI TFT/CE" panel. Thats not PVA-Technology and for sure will have a slower response time. The fact that samsung notoriously specifies a response time of 25ms for nearly all monitors, I suspect that this is sometimes only the on (or off) response time and not the total. I've checked out the **data sheets** of various samsung ***panels*** and found out that the total response time of samsungs TFT/CE panels are always slower than PVA panels.

To keep it simple: 181T is better than 170T.
 
You know, there are monitors that don't use PVA that have a good response time. There are users here who are very satisfied w/ teh 170T, and have you ever considered that the thing that may be causing teh ghosting isn't the rise/fall times but rather the gray responses? A test was conducted, and it showed MVA to have higher than others for gray response. PVA is very similar (check it out at SID).

Sig of the week.
 
sure I know... gray response is important when it comes to motion blur... you are absolutely right. It seems that MVA and PVA are optimized for best black/white response.
But this is what counts for me. Why do I need a good gray response time for lets say dark gray to black when I cant see anything? But when I open my file explorer window with black text on white back ground I dont want to have a 'smearing' of the letters when scrolling.
This topic is difficult to evaluate since there is no best LCD panel, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Maybe PVA/MVA is not so good for games where a lot of scenes appear very dark.
Anyway, the 181T is PVA while the 170T is not...I would pick the first.
Currently i dont know what samsungs (old (?) technology) "TFT/CE" stands for but I'll find out soon.
 
Actually, I'm wondering whether I should get a 171P over the 170T or not. The 171P sells for around $170 more than the 170T. That's a pretty big price jump for a few fancy buttons (if nothing else).
 
the 171p has samsungs latest panel technology build in.
This technology called PVA has a slightly shorter (=better)
response time. Whether its worth the extra money..I dont
know.
In europe the 171p is cheaper than the 170T..for example
here:

http://www.itbutikken.dk/
171P:1020Euro 170T: 1110 Euro
BTW they sell the 181T for only 1336Euro

So i picked the 171P.
 
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