Plasma for PC Gaming - Looking for advice

Originally Posted by Felgar

I've been using my plasma as a TV monitor for quite a while now, so I can hopefully shed some light and general comments. I have an industrial 50" Panasonic. Some comments and responses to you questions:

- Plasma's with VGA and/or DVI inputs will accept varying refresh rates much like a regular CRT will. However I can't be certain if the Panasonic panel will take the 75Hz signal and just display it at 60Hz, or if it really switches to 75Hz because really the screen doesn't even refresh like we used to think of a CRT as refreshing. Regardless, because the screen never flickers, I find 60Hz to be most suitable, and it is also the documented native refresh rate of the monitor, so it makes the most sense.
- It will make a big difference in clarity and visual quality if you can achieve 1:1 pixel mapping. This means I'd advise against a consumer panel with only HDMI and no 1:1 pixel mode. Anything with a DVI input or VGA input should work. Also, because 42" panels use non-square pixels you can't get 1:1 with them and maintain proper aspect ratio, so I'd rule them out for explicit PC use like you're planning. If you have lots of cash to blow get a 65" 1080p panel, but for a more modest budget then get a 1366x768 panel.
- For gaming your goal should be to run the screen's native res at 60+ fps. Then you can turn vsync on and your game will run perfectly smooth. Playing Oblivion my PC usually can't even get up to 30 fps, but I still leave vsync on to eliminate tearing which IMO is much worse than a dropped frame. Also count on requiring at least 2x AA to get the most out of the PQ. The good news is that for the life of the vid card it only has to produce 1 resolution, and then the rest of the PQ is up to the power you can dedicate to AA, AF, etc.
- The ghosting can be a problem as these displays still aren't perfect. By ghosting, the effect I mean is that green trials follow bright objects as they pass through a dark background. Once you see it for the first time you can always pick it up again, but honestly it's a very minor issue IMO. It's difficult to reproduce unless you have control over the picture and can get white scrolling over black. I'd still take the minimal green trail effect over the artifacts that other display technologies reproduce...
- The burn-in issue really is a non-issue, even for 'reasonable' desktop usage. I got this TV about 18 months ago and havent used a PC monitor since. Granted I only use it for surfing and games, etc and not 6 hours a day with the taskbar showing. But plenty of days have 1-2 hours of windows desktop and there are no ill effects at all. This could be due to the varied content (TV, games, etc) that it gets between the PC sessions.

Oh, Pioneer TV's will also do native 72Hz refresh. Nevertheless, in summary I'd say that you need to map 1:1 as a first priority (thus a 1366x768 or 1920x1080 panel), you should run vsync'd at 60Hz and strive to clear that fps in your games, and finally that Plasma offers the best PQ for an immersive (large screen) PC gaming experience despite the fact that they arent perfect.

For the money, the Panasonic industrial monitor 50ph9uk available at the forum sponsor Visual Apex will work very well for you (the 8uk works great for me). No speakers but if you don't already have a surround sound system that should be a part of your new PC gaming plans anyways, so speakers aren't needed (or wanted, IMO).