Responsiveness - Dell UltraSharp 2209WA

Lag

The picture below compares the responsiveness of Dell 2209WA (on the left, connected to DVI connector), and a CRT monitor (on the right, connected to D-SUB VGA connector). CRT monitors have almost perfect responsiveness.

Responsiveness test. On left: Dell UltraSharp 2209WA. On right : CRT. Bars and squares are moving from left to right.

Vertical synchronization has been turned of in the testing program, which results in a visible tear at the very moment when graphic's card DAC is reading the frame buffer. On the picture we can see that the tear on Dell 2209WA is below the tear on the CRT, suggesting that the DVI output is actually faster than D-SUB. Since the framerate is set to 60Hz, from the distances we can calculate that the DVI output is about 3.5 ms ahead of D-SUB. So, the monitor connected to D-SUB always has the advantage, by the virtue of how the graphics card DACs are set up, and the intricacies of DVI-D protocol.

Apart from that, it can be observed from the picture that Dell 2209WA is on par with CRT, except (in this case) in the middle of the screen where the CRT electron gun has just redrawn the picture, and Dell 2209WA is in a transition, about half a frame behind. From this we can conclude that Dell 2209WA has almost no lag, which is perfect for fast gaming.

Middle part of the picture is late because of response time, which can be estimated to 13 ms. The displayed bars and squares 'move' from left to right, and the bars are actually a thin gradient on a background colored with RGB (70,70,70). On the left part of the picture you can observe the entire transition, in time, from background color to the bar gradient.

Response time and black-clear

Response time has been estimated to 13 ms, which is good. Anything below 16 ms (one frame) will be hard to notice by the eye.

When response time is lover then 16 ms, the effect of blurred edges (in moving objects) is not caused by the response time, but by the eye tracking the moving object, moving the focus over the displayed edge, which is static for a moment. This is an inherent problem in all LCD technologies. The only way to cancel this blurring effect on LCD is for it to switch the backlight off for a moment, to 'clear' the image. This technology is very rare and is not featured on this monitor. Even if it were, it usually increases the lag by one frame, and has other problems.

Altogether, we can conclude that this monitor is suitable for fast games.

Overdrive quality

Transition time has low deviation (good). Green tint is only slightly visible on transitions to white.

In the picture on the right you can observe the various transitions. All transitions seem to be well synchronized, with low deviation. The only exception is the transition to white color, which displays obvious green tint.