Response Time for LCD Gaming Monitors

[Lion Heart]

Hi Guys

What is the minimum suitable monitor response time for gaming?

I noticed on Wikipedia they say 16ms and under is fine and you'd struggle to tell the difference at response times under this by the human eye.

I'm thinking for Mame, but also for Xbox 360 as well (as intend to install one in my new cab).

I have my eye on a lovely large LCD monitor, but the refresh rate is 12ms. I notice most monitors are 5ms as standard these days (pretty much), and just wanted to make sure that 12ms would do the job and not look ghosty or blurry etc for high speed gaming.

Any help much appreciated - and opinions too!

Lion Heart 

[Donkbaca]

Response time is a worthless stat. Its the time it takes a pixel to go from white to black to white.  This is useless for 2 reasons: 1- it is rarely the case that this happens. Very few pixels in normal operations go from off to on to off, mostly they go from one state of gray to another. 2- there is no universal way this is measured.  Realizing that number 1 is true, manufacturers basically cheat. They usually measure response time as the time it takes to go from one shade of gray to off to gray. Problem is they don't tell you what shade of gray, and there is no universal metric so the same panel can have a 12ms response time with one monitor and a 8ms response time win another. Basically it's worthless since you cant readily compare response times; it's apples to oranges, much like dynamic contrast ratio.

Response time is different from lag. Lag is the time it takes for the monitor to get the signal and process and display the image. Problem is most manufacturers don't readily advertise lag, but you can usually find it if you google

[Blanka]

Funny thing is that modern TN large panel displays have more lag than a lot of old IPS and VA panels! The Samsung 260HD is such a famous piece of lag. This is because TN is often just a 6-bit per channel panel, so PWM and stuff like that is needed to simulate "true" colours.

For gaming the best is small TN panels (<24 inch), IPS and MVA panels. Anything under 15-20ms will be ok. If you measure lag, you automatically know the time between input and display, so response time is included.