@@GTXDash have you ever done any testing to see how much input lag that hdmi/dp to vga adapters add? i assumed dp adapters were slightly better because its more flexible but idk
another method could also be done assuming you have integrated graphics and a motherboard with vga is set the gpu to high performance in the application, and allow the integrated graphics to output from the vga port. i was thinking of trying to find a board like that when i do a platform upgrade. its rarer now but some asrock boards still have a vga port
@gamagama69 dp to hdmi adds no additional lag. There's a tiny bit of latency from hdmi to vga or dp to vga. However, because a CRT doesn't wait for an internal frame buffer before drawing the frame on screen, a CRT even with an active converter still has a lot less lag than an LCD.
A note to anyone who's new to crts: If your Crt isn't pitch black after the contrast adjustments you might need to mess with the flyback transformer. Don't worry you won't get shocked by doing something as easy as that.
This is usually unnecessary. If you have the capability to access the factory adjustment menu (also called the service menu) of your monitor, you can lower its "sub-brightness" setting. This is just a simple setting that determines the range of the normal brightness setting, usually by its center point. On VGA monitors, this setting is usually set too high to achieve a deep black. On some TVs it's actually a physical potentiometer, but I doubt that's the case with any VGA monitor that sports digital adjustments. However, if you don't have the ability to access the factory adjustment menu on your particular monitor, then the G2 adjustment may be a good idea, though it could mess with color in slightly unusual ways. Also, some VGA monitors, mostly just Sony sets, don't have a physical G2 adjustment potentiometer on the flyback. Those sets have digital G2 adjustment, which is well-documented on Sony sets because of how terribly it was implemented. I am unaware of any others aside from weird freak stuff.
@@Wyatt_James well I only owned samsung tubes so far and to access their factory settings you need to connect a "service jig" to the crt. G2 adjustment is way easier to do instead of going through some guerilla cabling only to adjust your brightness
I forgot to state in my other comment, but if you use an HDMI DAC, make sure that you have it set to the correct setting between full/limited range RGB. You need to just try both out and pick the correct one; a mismatch will either cause clipping of near-blacks and highlights, if the DAC is expecting limited range and receives full, or it will cause lifted blacks and lowered whites, if it is expecting full and receives limited.
When you mention "DOS runs in 640x400" because the lines are doubled (320x200), that's actually not entirely true, only for games/programs using the graphics modes. DOS (the prompt or whatever you'd call it) runs in 720x400 in VGA (textmode). And I believe it's usually at 72Hz, not 70Hz (yes, very weird). The characters are 9x16 pixels each, resulting in (80*9)x(16*25) = 720x400 resolution. MDA/Hercules is 720x350, EGA is 640x350, and CGA is 640x200 (respectively 9x14, 8x14 and 8x8 fonts). Otherwise thank you for a very interesting video. I've got a Samsung Syncmaster 1200nf (a beast of a monitor) which is currently used with my retro PCs, but could be fun to hook it up to my modern gaming PC, especially for when I run PCem and DOSBox on it.
For clarification: With VGA, DOS was indeed 720x400. But since SVGA, DOS has always been 640x400. Edit: I did not know that Dos also ran in 72Hz. Interesting.
@@tisen1241 I’ve connected it to my steamdeck and for me I think it was very much worth it. It’s resolution fits perfectly with the capabilities of the device plus I get a neat linux desktop now too.
People complaining about how heavy a CRT monitor is is invited to carry the 29" Sharp TV I used to have. All of its weight was at the glass tube, there was no reasonable place to grab it for transport and it weighted around 45 Kg or 99 lbs.
I got a 2004 29" Philips TV from a friend some years ago. Moving it was a pain, but the results are glorious. I still have to try it out as a PC monitor.
One very important thing i would like to add, while the cheap HDMI to VGA adapters that you showed are fine, they have a very limited pixelclock. They are made to not support anything over 1920x1080 at 60hz, in the description for most of them it even says so. For monitors with smaller resolutions (1280×960 or under), that isn't a problem at all. However if you have a 1600x1200 monitor and want to do even 65hz, these cheap adapters will not be enough! If you have a monitor like this, you will need a more specialized adapter. I believe the Delock 62967 is what a lot of people recommend. It supports resolutions up to 2560x1600 @ 60hz, which for most monitors should be more than enough. I myself am using that adapter with a Fujitsu Siemens 19T3 which i am running at 1600x1200 @ 85hz.
This is true. In those rare situations if a person has one of those legendary monitors, then that person buying the adapter need to check the max res and hz on the packaging. Fortunately, nowadays, hdmi 1.3 to VGA adapters aren't expensive at all. Between $15 and $30 last I checked.
I found some, but I was never sure if they'd match up to the Sunix DPU3000, Icy Box IB-SPL1031 DeLock 87685 These are the most commonly known to be the best for this purpose, and unfortunately they seem to be out of stock and out of production.
no need for Delocks and such, I have a Vention DAC which was about 15 bucks and it runs my FW900 without any issues at 1920/85Hz. As long as it is a newish active converter it should do the job
Wow, so much good info in this video. You definitely know your stuff. Thank you for putting this all together into one clean video. There's a plethora of CRT info out there but it's all buried in obscure forums. Also, like you said, knowing the 'why' behind all these settings really helps. Seriously, thank you.
If anyone is searching for an old 4:3 LCD monitor, look for 20" models instead of 17" or 19" ones. They usually have a resolution of 1600x1200 instead of 1280x1024 and higher-end models used IPS panels.
I really need to look up the e-waste facilities around here. I've been maining a Trinitron for a while now, and it's really great (for everything except reading) compared to an LCD, and every day of my life I've regretted throwing out the Dell P1130 I pulled from a dumpster 10 years ago (threw it out in the name of "saving space on my desk" - and my desk did look great afterward, but... I was a fool). The monitor I have now was being thrown away at work, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time (covering in a department I didn't actually work in, happened to be sitting there when someone walked by with it). I need to channel that kind of luck more...
I was ultra close to go with CRT route for pc but instead settled with grandmas CRT TV for retro consoles + emulation with SCART converter from laptop. I hit jackpot after discovering that this old Phillips is capable of running both PAL and NTSC. When it comes to pc gaming, for me "CRT's are better" argument has finally fallen after experiencing recent 2024 OLED monitors, with HDR and VRR, running at over 120 fps.
Lmao the dell m991 that is on your eBay screen shot just so happens to be the exact one I purchased. A few weeks ago. I offered the guy 50 for it not expecting him to accept it but he did anyways. I couldn’t be happier with the monitor. 19 inches is the perfect screen size in my opinion
Yoo. I have to that monitor as well, it's amazing, the curved screen has an unmatched image quality, also it does 1600x1200 60hz or 1280x960 75hz, it's sweet!, Enjoy it!. You might have to replace the capacitors on it at some point because that tends to fail early, but with maintenance it will last you years and years
I have a bunch of tips for using a crt in modern games. Tip 1- most crt's are 4:3 but many modern games dont support that aspect ratio! You can add 16-9 or 16 -10 resolutions to get around this. Tip-2 because these aspect ratios are shorter, they use up less bandwidth for the crt. With a 16-9/10 aspect ratio you will be able to get even higher refresh rates than at 4-3. Tip-3 some games dont play well with weird or low resolutions. On amd cards(im sure this can be done on nvidia too) there is a feature called vsr that lets your gpu display a high res image on the native res screen, without software even knowing. For example my settings are 1022 by 600(16-9~) but with vsr windows lets me choose 1080p or 1440p 4k etc. -Tip-4 -experimental stuff. If you want the highest refresh rate, you need a shorter hight res, but that makes you loose out on detail. One way to this is with a 21 by 9 resolution! This will be quite narrow on an already small screen, but allows for some really high refresh rates while still maintaining a high res(on the witdth ) image. Ive gotten 150 hz with a res of 1260-540. Or 130hz at 1470 by 630
🙂 neat, i have a Sony CRT in the attic, it was my brothers, I kept it for nostalgic reasons and because I felt sorry to throw it away, I'll bring it down one of these days and try some of ur recommendations, thanks and be good.
Im 21 and wanted a crt for the longest time found a gateway evf720 next door for 15 bucks i have 3070ti and since its a vga monitor it took some jerry rigging it but im running a hdmi to vga from the motherboard hdmi so i think the crt is running off of my integrated graphics either way having a crt in adition to your 240hz is such a nice contrast and is really fun to mess with im so glad people are starting to realize dont overpay you can find them all over. love the video keep it up
Appently, there's a way to get your graphics card to work through your motherboards video port or through a 2nd older card that still supports VGA. I mean, I don't know how to do it, atleast not yet.
My issue isn't price or anything like that... The issue is that I can't actually can't find a used CRTs for "pickup" here in south of Sweden. I have found a couple of CRTs, but they are generally quite old. Like Hansol monitors from the mid 90's for over 100EUR (which is pricey considering the age and they are not really that sought after), or really old monochrome CRTs from the 80's. I just want a decent CRT that can display 1280x1024 at 75Hz, preferably built in the early to mid-2000's.
I've found it can be even easier, I live in a town with a population of 500 so everybody knows each other so I just went door to door asking if they had any "old box computer screens". Got 2 for free!
You just earned yourself a lifetime subscriber, this is beyond great! I want a crt now. I owned one as a kid, but it was massive, so as soon lcd displays became affordable it was sent to the ewaste facility.
The most adapters are low quality, this one is with ite chip is one of the top, synoptic chip is good also and analogix and one with CS and one with Lk
This was such an awesome video. I have been daily driving my Sun CRT for almost a year now, and I love it pieces, and I discovered most of the guidelines here on my own. Thanks for making a video that condenses the best tips for CRT usage all in one video! I will definitely make a resolution just for movies at 72 hz, I had no idea about that, and will definitely make a 640x400 resolution as well. Here are some CRT tips I can provide as well. 1. If a game will still not adhere to the resolution or refresh rate you have set up, try running the game in borderless windowed mode. If the game supports it, the game will adhere to your current desktop resolution and refresh rate and it will be really nice. If the game doesn't have borderless windowed, get Borderless Gaming. 2. Some games, mostly older ones still have dev consoles or CFG files to configure to fix resolution and refresh rate disparities. For example, 2 commands I use all the time in id tech games are r_displayRefresh "x", and vid_restart. Some of these games are locked to 60hz by default, and by putting r_displayRefresh and vid restart once you start up the game will force the game to run at that refresh and resolution combo you set up. Removing those unwanted resolutions and refresh combos like in the video will also fix this problem, but for some reason if I screw with my resolutions to much, the name of my monitor will be "wired display" in the settings pannel and in some games and that bugs me a bunch. 3. Some games will not support 4:3 aspect ratios anymore. Examples of these include the newer RE Engine games, the newer call of duty games, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and The Last of Us Remake. A common fix for this is to get flawless widescreen and fix the aspect ratio that way, or to get a ultwawide mod. Try that or in the case of call of duty, check out the config files and set the aspect ratio to "standard." 4. It also doesn't hurt to run games at stretched 16:9 aspect ratios if you cannot fix the problem at all. I run Pizza Tower at 950x540, and Syndicate 2011 at 1280x720, and they look fine for the most part. Pizza Tower in particular looks incredible with the perfect scan lines. Also 1280x720 can produce very faint scan lines, not as noticble as 1024x768, but it is still there. Running a game like Eastward at that resolution is really awesome, as that is a game that is letterboxed and has a native resolution of 720p given it is a Switch port. 5. If a game as a super sampling option and your GPU can handle it, definitely take advantage of it! In the case of Call of Duty, The game has a super sampling slider in the options, so I can run the game at 800x600 at 160hz and with 2x super sampling making it 1600x1200, it really sharpens up the image making almost look like 1600x1200. You get the advantage of high refresh rate, higher performance and a sharp image. 6. A good fix for most of these problems is just launching your game at the resolution and refresh rate you want to play at before you launch the game. This is especially good for games running in Unity or Unreal Engine. If the resolution and refresh rate is different when you start the game, change it to the resolution you want, leave the game and come back and it will most likely adhere to what you want. 7. Finally, TURN OFF YOUR CRT WHEN YOU ARE NOT USING IT. Not only do they eat up more power than LCDs, but they can burn in as well if you have the same image on them for a really long time. I don't know if CRTs burn in faster than oleds, but its good to be safe. Use a screen saver, have your displays turn off automatically, and when you are done using your tube for the day, turn it off. If any of these tips are incorrect or there are anythings I am forgetting, please tell me. CRTs are so incredible, and we definitely lost a ton of awesome stuff when we switched to LCDs. Even though CRTs exited my life around age 12, I am so fortunate to have a 21 inch beast of a display to play games on.
And if you have integrated graphics like most Intel CPUs you can just plug the thing into your motherboard's VGA port and enable onboard video through the BIOS, if it isn't already enabled, in which it likely is through VGA because that's what's commonly used for debugging.
I'm using Windows 11 and surprisingly I feel that changing main display for it became way easier - to select my Samsung CRT I just open menu, select monitor and click "make this display Primary" and presto - every game by default launches with this monitor despite it being Monitor 4 normally (with 2 of my LCD monitors and TV being considered as monitors 1, 2 and 3 respectively). Can't say how it works on Intel or AMD since I only have one Windows PC and it has Nvidia card. But everything works and I'm glad that I have 30X0 series.
keep in mind in the nvidia control panel you need to disable scaling for the CRT. It might be buggy since a year or more due to windows stuff... You should be able to see scan lines for supported games which are also not borderless window and also allow the correct resolutions choices, not needing to set windows desktop resolution first.
Worth noting on VGA converters, to run very high refresh rates or resolutions you need a very fast pixel clock in the adapter, some delock adapters will over 400+ mhz although a startech DP2VGAHD2 will run at 375 mhz which is overkill for most any monitor.
"highly covered E series" LOL they are ewaste, and I have many for free 20" viewable pc crts are vastly better than 17", much higher stats and very well worth it on modern systems Intel iGPU is actually the best scenario for connecting pc crt, since you can access interlacing resolution for things like 1440x1080i@120hz, looks progressive due to high hz and res Your explanation of cru was pretty alright, so far best part of the video besides where you have to be running cru on the crt, this is not true. you are also adding resolutions to the wrong field ive never had the issue you're describing with the nvidia control panel across 3 computers, and in fact it is the preferred custom res UI due to how well it saves your custom resolution and how compatible it is absolutely DO NOT do that gamma fuckery in the gpu control panel, raising the gamma level causes BIT CRUSH and you are crushing a lot of detail. you need to do a proper calibration. for black levels (which I thought you were gonna go into), search for the lagom black level test and lower or raise brightness until you barely see the second square, first can be crushed. then your blacks are fine. And finally the MOST important thing you completely skipped is MAKE SURE the gpu is outputting FULL color space and NOT LIMITED. limited is selected a lot by default. overall decent video but shoulda done more research
tip: you can plug into your motherboard vga port and utilize GPU pass through, that way you dont need adapters and your cpu's onboards graphics will convert everything. may or may not work depending on what GPU you have, I have an i7 7700k and it worked without any issue whatsoever also, what makes it even better, is it allows you to use interlaced resolutions (unless you have an older GPU that supports it natively - mine doesnt but the onboard graphics will do it for you) interlacing is an absolute game changer with CRTs and doesnt get mentioned enough I was running my cheap 19" at 1600x1200@120i - it was beautiful. with normal progressive scan resolutions i would only be able to get 1600x1200 @60p, or 800x600 @120p - basically half of the equivalent interlaced resolution
Me being poor: Before watching this video: I've been using CRT monitor all along as I can't afford anything newer. Me now: Hmm I guess maybe now I got an excuse for using a CRT monitor.
Worth mentioning is that the fastest video card (I think) with a native VGA analog output is the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. btw, I have for years now been using as my main PC monitor a Phillips 22-inch CRT running at a resolution of 1152x864 at 100hz.
Great video. Only have a couple of things to add which I feel are important. First off, a lot of these crts are from the late 90's/early 2000's, and as a result, are plagued by bad capacitors (a lot of tech from back then have bad caps in them). This is, afaik, the reason a lot of these monitors get really hot (at least in my experience), or stop working altogether. Working on crts is really dangerous, and not everyone has soldering irons lying around, so if you have issues, you may wanna get the service of a modder to recap your monitor, which can sadly get pricey. Second. Most vga adapters (both hdmi and dp) are capped at old hdmi specs, which afaik, is a maximum of 1920x1080@60hz. This is fine for most crt monitors, like the ones you have, but if you're like me and have an LG monitor capable of 1600x1200@75hz, those cheap adapters won't support the full capabilities of the monitor. In this case, you have, afaik, two options. The 'Delock 62967 displayport 1.2 to vga adapter' which I couldn't find in stock and is unreliable , and the, in my experience, much better 'StarTech DisplayPort to HDMI VGA Adapter - DP 1.2 HBR2 to HDMI 2.0'. These, afaik, support even the highest quality crts you can get. If you're unsure whether you're looking at the right product, just look at the reviews, as they should have people talking about how well they work for high-res crts. Hope this helps anyone who may need it
Most standard hdmi to vga adapters can do 1600x1200 @ 75hz. The 1080p 60hz thing isn't a hard limit. Because it can't do 1440p @ 60hz, the next best STANDARD mode they can list is 1080p 60hz.
@@GTXDash I'm pretty sure the hdmi to vga thing I had was unable to support 1200p at 75hz, but I had other issues with that adapter anyways, so I'm happy I got the new one anyways. Nice to know at least
CRT is better for super low resolution videos, reason why 240p TV video was looking good back then and looks bad on lcd monitor is because CRT screen scales video in optical way like a projector... Let's say projector is 480p but, displaying on the wall - 40-50'' size image will look good even when projector is only showing 480p resolution and if we try watching 480p video on 40-50'' TV it will look like crap because - it's upscaled in a digital way and not optical like an image in CRT would be upscaled...
Good morning, I was fortunate enough to find a NEC MS97F a little over a year at the local thrift store. It only cost 35$ and after a lot of trial and error; it is now my daily driver running at 3200x2400
I got so lucky dude, after I watched this video I went outside and saw a CRT monitor sitting on the side of the road. I picked it up and it worked, so lucky!
This was a very well-informed, honest video. Good job! Here are my notes, in the same order as they become relevant in the video: 1. If desk space is a concern, and you'd like your CRT monitor to face directly outward, you can usually scoot the desk away from the wall and let the back of the tube hang off. It's safe so long as the stand is fully on the desk, and it's a great way to keep the space hog at bay. 2. Using the on-board VGA output can be very convenient, but sometimes, the output won't be as sharp as an external DAC. I have an old ATI Radeon HD 5770 that I used to use in a dual-card setp just for its VGA output, but when I finally got around to buying some StarTech DisplayPort DACs, they blew the ATI card away in sharpness. 3. DisplayPort and HDMI DACs do actually have some trade-offs. DisplayPort DACs tend to support higher bandwidth output, allowing you to use higher resolutions and refresh rates without your GPU driver crashing or giving an out-of-range error (NOT your monitor). However, DP DACs cannot do interlaced output, and I can only assume that this is due to GPU firmware bugs. Unfortunately, Nvidia RTX cards also cannot do interlaced output at all for seemingly no reason, no matter the output, and I believe that modern AMD is similar. Intel... is a special case that I won't get into. Interlaced output can allow you to essentially double the perceived framerate of your monitor at no real downside in the context of gaming, which can be very nice across the board, though a select few games don't handle it correctly out of the box. 4. With HDMI DACs, you have to worry about the RGB full vs RGB limited range toggle in your GPU driver. Usually the DAC will simply be built to use one type, and will either clip or lose dynamic range depending on how the PC is set. Doing some testing with near-black and near-white patterns will help you to get proper black and white levels out of your DAC. 5. It helps to be familiar with the win+arrow key and win+shift+arrow key hotkeys to move programs from one monitor to another. Very useful! 6. I understand that you wouldn't want to go so in-depth, but knowing how the vertical refresh rate, horizontal refresh rate, and signal bandwith interact is very useful when creating weird silly resolutions. Obviously not good for a beginner's guide. 7. Your monitor ought to be able to handle 640x480p 140Hz, but only if you reduce the blanking and get lucky. Obviously not within the scope of this video. 8. You can add the detailed resolution of 1366x1024 if you'd like 4:3 1024p, and any DAC should be able to handle it. I don't remember how well games interact with detailed resolutions but I think it's fairly plug-and-play. Just be sure to use CRT Standard timings unless you know what you're doing. 9. I have never experienced issues using the Nvidia Control Panel for my custom resolution settings. Games pick up on my weird settings just fine, though admittedly I don't play many older games. 10. I appreciate the note on gamma and black levels at the end. Not too many people know about that.
Thanks for all the useful info, I have your comment copied in a .txt somewhere :D Now im wondering something though, how is it possible that the external DACs produced a sharper image than the second GPU with analog out? I'm quite happy with my cheap amazon dac because for some reason I was able to raise the pixelclock limit in CRU and have been fairing pretty well so far. But I really wanna see if interlacing is as great as it sounds. My plan is to set up a second GPU as a glorified DAC for the CRT as a second monitor, with hopes that that will allow me to try out some ridiculous res/Hz combos while also maybe making my pc properly recognize the CRT but youre saying that I'm going to lose imagine fidelity that way? Hope to hear from you as knowledge on this topic seems to be very scarce.
I'm not sure why. It could be that my 5770's DAC has degraded, or maybe this unit is faulty, or maybe ATI even cheaped out on the DAC in that model. Perhaps technology has just improved, but I seriously doubt that. I'll ask around to see if anybody else in-the-know can run some comparisons.
@@Wyatt_James It works! 1920x1440i@144Hz on amonitor thats older than I am. I don't think i can confidently say I saw a difference in quality between my HDMI to VGA dac and the 750 Ti, if anything it's a little better but I don't have experts eyes so idk. Though, seeing my display recognized by name was a little more satisfying than I imagined I gotta say! :D
The quality gap was pretty obvious on my ATI card, so your 750ti must just be pretty sharp. I'm glad you got it running nicely. Yeah I'm not sure why some displays hate being recognized. There's a firmware update for some Nvidia cards that may also help with that, but if it's working right now I wouldn't bother.
This is an amazing video with a wealth of knowledge that everyone into CRT’s should watch. It’s really helpful if you ever need to set up an old CRT again. I wish I had mine, I only have 4 CRT TV’s here, but no monitors. I got rid of mine probably back in 2010
Sometimes find CRT monitors so hard, damn it, the only things I found near me is Samsung Samtron 56e and some god-forgotten Digital Vision pro1570f I cant even properly google, both are 15"
Interesting thing. I have two 21" monitors. The IBM flat crt works with the DP to vga converter and is detected by windows. My dell curved trinitron will not. Displays no signal, but is detected by windows and nvidia and shows its even displaying. Might need to try a different adaptor or even the BNC connections. Im on a i7-12700K and 2080ti so it should work. Also watch your vga cables. Older ones sometimes had the bare minimum of pins and while it will display, it wont detect the specific model of display.
Priceless video. I am really new to windows as I am from the Mac side but I love my CRT. I have to watch this again closely. I appreciate all the background historical aspects. Awesome.
I personally use a Apple Multiple Scan 20 for my VGA CRT. Using it at 1600x1200@60hz is great. I use a USB C to VGA adapter and then an old VGA to Apple DB-15 converter. Never had any issue with either my 1060 laptop or 3060 laptop
hi, life time an current CRT pc gamer here for either retro and modern gaming. at 10:07 i have to disagree with your claims about 60hz being that flickery, that flash and definitely is not as flickery or flashing as shown at the 10:33 60hz bulb animation, indeed i am writing it from a CRT pc monitor at 60hz after watching your video as well on it and definitely not just in this one but any CRT pc monitor i have used in my life it doesnt flicker or flashes that bad as shown in that animation at 60hz, as a matter of fact, i dont see any flashing, to the contrary, using 70hz instead, specialy for 60fps locked games will provide a rather stuttery motion feeling due to the refresh rate missmatch to the capped 60hz frame rate, i would agree for 70 fps gaming 70hz would be a littler more convenient, its important to have the refresh rate matching the framerate for the best motion experience, but not for 60fps capped gaming definitely, and when is true i notice more flicker at 60hz compared to 70hz at desktop usage, specialy on a white backgournd, isnt definitely that badly flickery and flashing as in the mentioned bulb animation, and to my eyes 60hz is completely unotable when gaming. my personal advice, as a long time CRT pc gamer that is very detallist and seek a smooth motion experice as well, that love to have as close experiencie to the original hardware for retro games using CRT pc monitors and the best experience for 60fps locked games is to use 60hz for 60fps locked content or at least try it specialy for games, not for desktop usage, at least give a try. 70hz for 60fps locked games is unpleasant, makes feel game motion stutteriy , not smooth, not authentic, sure not everyone have the same sensitivy to CRT flicker, but its very worth a try 60hz for 60fps locked games, i guaranty base on my own experience 60hz CRT flicker will be hardly notable in games and rather motion will be better, that at 70hz for those locked 60 fps games, the experience will be better, specialy for those like me that grew up in the 90s, where 60hz CRT tech were the norm, for the arcades, for the consoles, etc.
It depends on the monitor. The flicker on my Dell isn't too bad. But is worse on my syncmaster. There's a lot of games that can run perfectly smooth on 70hz or more. And when a game can only do 60fps, I either set it to 90 or 120. Doest look bad at all.
@@GTXDash then that syncmaster CRT must be in really bad condition or you tested it in way lower than 60hz refresh rate and wasnt aware of it, rather someting like 50hz or below, because again i never seen a CRT based display, either CRT pc monitors, CRT TVs in my life no matter the size for over 25 years and still currently witnessing a lot of different CRT based displays at 60hz, flickering or flashing that bad as shown in your 60hz real time bulb light animation, i dont pretend to be mad but that bulp animation is not acurate and does not represent a real CRT display 60hz behavior, it rather exaggerates it. i do not contradict you when you claiming a lot of games runs perfectly smooth at 70hz or more, my point i feel you miss and you dont seem to be aware of, is the importance to match the constant frame rate to the refresh rate to achieve that CRT motion goddess which is the only way to truly achieve that on a CRT, so undoubtedly a lot of games running at 70 fps constantly at 70hz (or more hz, as long as the framerate matches the refresh rate) will have excelent motion looking. be carefull i am refering to how a game "looks" while in motion, not how it looks overall at certain refresh rate, i am specialy refering to game motion quality here, which is one of the strong points if not the best point that makes a CRT pc monitors worth to use even on modern games. but to achieve this the only real way is to have a matching framerate constalty to the refresh rate. also accompanied with a form of sync is important for this to avoid screen tearing while in motion, for example, constant 60fps at 60hz with disabled vertical sync (vsync OFF) will make the tear line (horizontal line) visible while in motion, so to achieve the best motion quality on a CRT is ideal to have constant fps matching equivalent refresh rate with vertical sync ON, the issue here is that vsync"ON" increases inputlag, but CRT latency is so good, that for example i play some modern games at 90hz that can run at constant 90 fps and vsync "ON" and even inputlag still feels very responsive although using vsync ON, there are other ways of using sync, like "scaline sync" that can help reducing input lag while hiding the tear line. which is vey helpful specialy for some retro games that runs at 60fps only and are not that heavy gpu wise since scanline sync requieres some gpu headroom for proper working, for example i use scanline sync when i play some superNES emulated 60fps only games at 60hz with very low input lag, which makes feel the game experience very close to the original console motion, latency and overall wise. with due respect, but advicing not to use 60hz on A CRT for gaming based on an "ultimate" CRT PC gaming guide and using 90hz or 120hz for 60fps limited gaming is a sacrilege on a CRT monitor because it will not give the perfect life like motion quality CRT pc monitors are known for, rather at 90hz i can clearly see smaller but notable stuttery motion on a 60fps constant running game while image is motion, sure not as badly stuttery notable as playing a 60fps constant game at 70hz, but notable, and at 120hz 60fps constant game i can see how motion looks rather like blury and creates a dupicated image when in motion, just test yourself those 60 fps capped and constant running games at 60hz instead of 90, 120hz and you will note how better motion looks on them that proper way
@@GTXDash yes, its not being denied that 60hz on CRT monitors have a noticable flicker, specialy on a white background, more notable at a full screen white image mainly, for me is smooth enough that is not noticiable in games which rarely have a full screen white background and far to be as noticiable as that flashing in that 60hz bulb animation which is exaggerated, misinformative and inaccurate at representing real CRT PC monitor 60hz flashing-flicker behaviour. as a matter of fact even when playing that animation at video playback speed of "2" still shows and exagerated 60hz bulb animation flashing not seen that notably on a real CRT pc monitor at 60hz.
once i realized that crts are still useful, ive been seeing them in alleys and dumpsters all over. they really are easy to find if you just keep and eye out
For older games yes, but I can't play most modern games on my 17" CRT monitor. There is just so much fine detail in the interfaces and textures that you loose a lot while playing below 1080p. Cyberpunk 2077 for example I think even 1080p already doesn't look that great. I got this 17" monitor new in box in 2020 and it looks super sharp, but 1280x1024 or 1024x768 can only do so much. I also keep a 14" PVM at my desk to use with CRT Emudriver and emulators, but each has it's uses. Even with the CRT superior motion handling I'll choose my shitty VA 24" 1080@144hz any day for a game of Overwatch 2.
i personally use those tv color bars for brightness and contrast and lagom test for gamma when entering the color bars i go down the contrast to 50 and up the brightness till i see the 3 black bars in the down right and then take down the brightness untill only one of the dark bars is visible then i up the contrast at 100 and turn it a bit down till the brightest black bar starts changing i end up always with contrast 99 and brightness right now is at 20 in lagom i just adjust the gamma accordingly so all those color, white point and black level tests are ideal as possible and i ended up in the gamma test with a 2.4 which from what i understand is pretty good
The MAG brand vga crt that I love I actually picked up off the side of the road in a small neighborhood back in 2017/2018. My large Phillips crt Television I picked up in a parking lot at a clothes donation box next to an oil change center back in 2019. Since then I have not been able to spot any crts anywhere where I am. I got very lucky. Donation centers don't take them and if they do they go in their dumpsters. Ewaste and hazardous waste disposals charge you quite a bit to get rid of them as well so most of the time at least where I am people throw them in dumpsters. I have an old Viewsonic E or F series (don't remember) put up that needs repairs. I wonder if I should fix it and list it for a reasonable amount locally. For the MAG monitor I've always just used a HDMI to VGA converter for it.
Technically, HDMI and Display Port are the same thing, just in differently shaped connectors. As in, the signals are the same. It's just that HDMI has a patent (requires a license to be used in products), and Display Port is more open-source-y.
28:00 Instead of adjusting gamma, you should make sure that the colour settings under change resolution are set to 0-255 and not 16-235. That setting is why black levels might look white.
I just started getting into this but another avenue is actually schools for acquiring crts. It may also help to give a call to your local schools and ask if they are selling any old hardware like pcs and monitors. They typically do bids on this kinda stuff so it can’t hurt to go especially if they’re in good condition. Also Facebook marketplace and local shopping apps are good I got 2 off of that
Great video! I did want to point out that with the HDMI to VGA adapters you mentioned, there is a decent amount of added latency. This sadly defeats one of the main benefits of a CRT What you could maybe do instead is install an older GPU as a secondary GPU in your main PC, connect that to the monitor through native VGA, then pass the main graphics through that
That totally works as well. However, believe it or not, the latency in the hdmi to vga converter is so tiny that there is in fact a noticeable improvement in latency on the CRT when compared to the LCD. Really. And that's because there's no frame buffer or some form of post-processing. It just converts the signal on the fly. Now, of course, this doesn't apply to all adapters. 1 out of 3 of the converters I use does have some latency. Might be because it's more complicated and can also do S-video and Composite.
@@GTXDash That's very interesting. I've owned multiple and they all had noticeably high latency, it's nice to know there are some lower latency units out there. If you can, could you share the model number or listings for some of the known good ones? I'd love to get one Thanks for the info
hi, CRT pc monitors are a wonderfull displays even in 2024 for modern gaming, i love them and i stil use them for overall gaming but, their worth usage against a modern display depends on some factors i see this video doesnt cover and also missinform: for me and many CRT pc monitors enthusiasts, one of the best worth use of a pc CRT monitor against a modern display for even modern gaming is because its image motion quality which the vast mayority of modern displays fails to show as good or without tradeoffs making it not as enjoyable as it is on a pc CRT monitor, but to achieve the CRT motion goddess there are rules to follow: you need to run the game at a constant framerate matching the refresh rate, for example: if you use 70hz, make sure your game is able to run at constant 70 FPSs, for 60fps, use 60hz and so on and a form of sync like vertical sync, scanlinesync, etc, to avoid seeing a horizontal line (tear line) across the screen during motion, although enabling vertical sync can increase inpulag, for example when i play some 60fps limited framerate games like console emulators at 60hz i disable vertical sync and use scanlinesync (from RTSS Rivatuner Server Statistics software which come with the afterburner software) instead which does a good job lowering input lag and hiding the tear line while in image is in motion just be aware scanline sync requieres some gpu headroom. or when i play a 90fps constant game at 90hz, i just leave vertical sync enabled since higher refresh rates and framerates also help reducing inpulag, and i feel it inputlag responsive enough that way to my likes. 60hz for 60fps gaming on CRT monitors is beautifull and one of CRT strong points as well due to this motion quality again. be aware 60hz is not that badly flickery - flashing as this video bulp animation inaccurately shows, i dont say it is not noticiable at all, specialy on a white full screen background, but it stil feels way smoother than in that animation and i have watched this animation from my own CRT pc monitor at 60hz and is far smoother and non flashing than i see in that animation, as a matter of fact i see the CRT "flash" at 60hz more like the 70hz bulb, almost flash free on my CRT at 60hz, even watching it from flicker free devices like phone, and from LCD screens that real time bulb 60hz animation speed looks way exaggerated, and i have used many CRT pc monitor for decades on pc at 60hz and none of them flickers-flashes that exaggeratedly, and in games i dont note it, sure i would agree with this video 60hz is not recomended for CRT pc desktop usage (internet surfing, other uses rather than gaming) by the way i personaly dont have issues using 60hz on my CRT for desktop usage, but i am aware not everyone have the same eye sensitivity to CRT flicker. but for games i recomend to use 60hz for games that can not run higher framerate than 60 fps either because being locker at that frame rate like retro games, console emulators or pc being unable to run higher constant framerate than 60fps etc for the best motion experience on them, and since games rarely have full screen white backgounds, most time screen feels flicker free on games at 60hz. sure the higher the refresh rate the better, i dont deny that as long as the framerate can constatly be matched with the higher refresh rate, i personally don't have issues with CRT pc monitor 60hz flicker but i prefer higher refresh rates with matching framerate mainly because i feel less stroboscopic effect specially at mouse movements on games where i use the mouse since that makes feel motion even more responsive and more natural more lifelike. but i would NOT recommend to use higher refreshes like 70hz on a 60fps capable only game because it will make game feel way stuttery when in motion due to the framerate missmatch with the refresh rate.
Funny thing is, some DOS games weren't always 70Hz or 70Hz at all. Take a good few of the titles from Epic MegaGames in the 90s (Jazz Jackrabbit, Epic Pinball, Extreme Pinball, Silverball Deluxe), or really ANY game that used VESA BIOS Extensions support. For the latter, you could usually run higher resolutions and/or refresh rates. For the former, menus were 320x200p70 while gameplay was something akin to 320x199p60.
I already had a rtx 2070 on my rig when i got my crt monitor. I watched a video about a gpu pastrough with an older card that has analog out... They had a gtx 1070 and a 980ti, I though i would try this with an old gtx 550ti that i found but the drivers would not work together with my rtx2070! Afterwards i bought an AMD radeon HD 7870, and plugged that in with my rtx 2070 and they work together nicely. Now i have 1280x960 @120hz because of interlacing and i can run modern games with fps that high too since my newer gpu is doing all the rendering... (I needed windows 11 for this to work too) If you have a modern AMD card i guess you could do the same with an old Nvidia card for output. Different generations of cards from the same manufacturers dont work together because of the drivers i guess...
I also saw that video. It was one of the catalysts (a long with the LTT video where they said that they had to use an old Titan because it had the most performance still with an analogue output) that motivated me to make this video because... damn, that's complicated and too expensive for a lot of people. I'm glad that it works in your case, but the fact that the 550ti didn't work with an RTX, may have been enough to cause someone to give up.
I really wish that AMD's modern GPUs let you run the CRT at a resolution lower than 640x480. I want natural scanlines in games on emulators, but seemingly Linux (under X11 at that) is the only thing that lets me do custom resolutions below 480p easily. I'd have to boot a live USB and run a script that I made to add the custom resolutions in order to even play retro games at their intended resolution. I've tried scanline shaders, and they don't look good at 480p. Honestly, even with a basic CRT monitor from back in the day, if it's 75KHz, getting 160Hz out of it at 480p looks fantastic with no perceivable flickering. Better than 240Hz monitors in some regards. Downside is having to reposition and rescale the image every time you change the screen resolution, at least on a Viewsonic monitor. It's a cheap RGB capable CRT display without spending a ton on a Trinitron or PVM/BVM that only does 60Hz and 480i/240p output. I do have a weird issue with my CRT though, where when there's gray contrasts on the screen, there's a strange multiple vertical bar effect that goes on, and it makes me a bit worried that mine is gonna stop working soon.
Sometimes I see strange lines on the screen when I'm using a cheap VGA cable. Worser case is the caps inside the monitor will need replacing. It can be saved depending on how much work you wanna put in.
@@GTXDash yeah I figured it could potentially be a capacitor issue. I guess now the problem is finding someone who knows what they’re doing with CRT repairs.
A 19 to 21 CRT monitor is not needed for the scalines 14-inch monitor with the cru program in standard CRT mode, just set the resolution to 640x320 at 100Hz and beautiful 17-inch scalines come out and set 480x320 at 120hz, that's the trick. They need an expensive Sony CRT monitor, so I use it on my 2 14 and 17 inch monitors, beautiful scalines come out without so much fart (note CRT monitor with cru program
Most VGA CRTs cannot do lower than 480p @60hz. That's because most monitors are limited to 31khz minimum. So for 240p to be done you have to use 120hz, which can be done on RTX cards. 10 series card were the last cards to support interlaced resolutions not 240p
I like to do 75 Hz at 1200x900 instead of 72, though 70 Hz at 1280x960 is just snappy enough to not be a flickering mess. I had run 1024x768 at 85 Hz for the longest time but found that legibility in some games is important so I cranked the resolution.
I kind of get why people are into CRTs: nostalgia, high contrast, and resolution forgiveness. The latter is crucial for games designed with them in mind (like the waterfalls in Sonic games). Plus, it's an excellent way to give the aging monitors a new chance, as the former owners have gone for flat panels. Personally, though, I'd go for an OLED screen if it was just for content and gaming instead of "real work" like writing, editing, etc. As far as I know, CRTs are bulky and consume a lot of power. Plus, if you go for a low-end unit like my small CRT TV that I've kept for memories, it can flicker noticeably, especially if it's a 50 Hz model like mine.
in my case, setting the HMDI→VGA adapter output to Limited RGB and YcBcR444 helped make it brighter than trying to push full RGB. I think it's because of the adapter expecting a TV on the other end and defaulting to limited RGB, but PC CRT is always full RGB. either way, i ended up hooking up my old laptop that has VGA, even gtx 310m runs games like Thief and American McGee's Alice at 800*600p 120-160fps. if you don't have lots of space for a desktop, this is also a good way, especially if you want to watch old TV shows on it.
My Sony Trinitron multiscan15sf2 is being displayed at windows as generic vga monitor but windows detects its resolutions... and it works fine... what is happening?
I wish my town had any CRTs just sitting somewhere. Last time I saw one at goodwill it was 130$ and people snatch em up in seconds on buy/sell sites if theyre cheap
Thank you for this fantastic tutorial. I don't have time right now, but I have questions. So I will be back. Just so you know, your knowledge is invaluable. Thanks.
I found a new sweet spot for modern games on my Dell E770s: 1280x800 at 85 Hz. It's more legible than 1024x768 while also being buttery smooth. A lot of modern games have small text that doesn't scale well. Sometimes I just want the full screen so I play at 1200x900 at 75 Hz or 1280x960 at 70 Hz.
Cinema will always run smooth if your refresh rate is a multiple of the frame rate (24 x 3 = 72). We used to use drop frames in AVI containers back in the day to help cope with Hybrid framerate anime (a lot of shows contained both 24 and 30 fps content) which would produce a 120fps file. (24 x 5 = 120, as does 30 x 4 = 120)
@@GTXDash big number, mostly. They weren't actual new frames or anything so it didn't really bloat files. It just repeated frames. It was kind of a niche solution some groups used until the MKV container came along and you could create VFR timecoded files that adjusted the playback rate on the fly to keep it smooth.
1:40 this can't be more accurate... My grandma still has her husband's 1980 model Hitachi B/W TV! I couldn't use it for movies so I cleaned it and gave it back
@23:38 nitpicking... graybeard here... the dos resolution natively booted into "mode 3" this was an 80x25 text mode, that had an interesting quirk, while the font for the screen was indeed 8x16 and 8*80 = 640 The far right column of the character cell was replicated, so all characters were drawn inside of a 7x16 area, leaving a minimum of 2 pixels between chars on the text screen... (block drawing chracters would still work in this mode with clean zero pixel gaps) so you ended up with a resolution of 720x400 not 640x400 - you'll notice this A LOT when you do retro game capturing as the default is to assume the vga signal is 640 and it ends up with banding, and not a clean signal, also mode 3 720x400 was @70hz which a lot of hdmi capture just .. hates...
VGA is indeed 720x400. But with many SVGA cards, XGA, and so on, 640x400 was what was mostly used. No harm in adding 720x400 in CRU. But if you want DosBox to display a 720x400 prompt, then you'll need to change the settings from "svga_s3" to just plain "vgaonly".
@@GTXDash That's interesting. I was under the impression that even my SVGA card from the era was still producing the 720x400 by default. I know a lot of bioses would boot up into the 640x400 or 480 because of the energy star logo. Some of those older bios were going a little extra like the compaq bios. Ipretty sure it was a Mode 12 interface.
Some SVGA cards do sometimes boot in 720x400. Not sure exactly what determines this. Maybe the version of DOS you're using? I really have no idea. All I know is that some time in the 90s, 720x400 was dropped as the default resolution. @@prozacgodretro
For some reason these past few months, any CRT I use on my PC appears to be much slower than it used to be even though they are always 85hz. To me 85hz on a CRT monitor feels like at least 120hz on a modern monitor, however now when i'm using it it feels much less smooth. I've tried multiple adapters and that hasn't made a difference. I'm definitely using 85hz refresh and windows 10 has picked up the name of the monitor and everything. I have no idea where to even start, but i'm pretty positive that whatever is causing this is to do with my PC and not the monitor itself as they are all slow.
@ice-in. I would first play around with the Nvidia control panel settings. Check/change vsync and triple buffering, and also the latency/prerendered frames option. The general rule is for better response time, turn off vsync and triple buffering whilst latency/prerendered frames is set to ultra. To have smoother frame times, set vsync to Adaptive and enable triple buffering whilst latency/prerendered frames are set to default or off. If that doesn't help, then rather than reinstalling the driver, use a different driver version. I recommend studio ready instead of game ready drivers because those have higher quality insurance. Also, during installation, you can choose to clear your old settings to start fresh. You can also use a gpu driver removal tool to get rid of any unwanted leftovers from previous driver versions. But I've only ever used them once. I don't even remember what the app is even called.
@@GTXDash Vertical sync and triple buffering were both off. The closest thing I found to the prerendered frames thing was something for virtual reality which I left at 1 (default) and something called 'low latency mode'. I tried putting low latency mode on ultra and there was no difference so I put it back to default (off). I then looked for a studio driver for windows 10 64 bit for gtx 970, however there was none, not even beta drivers. I guess I will try downloading an earlier driver for 970, idk... Will try doing clean installation when installing geforce card driver, also do you know if it's possible that geforce experience does anything? I usually only use it to update drivers and nothing else, this time I got driver off of nvidia website.
@ice-in. Actually, you need to turn on triple buffering and set vsync to Adaptive to improve the framerate. And yes, the Low Latency is what I was refering to (used to be called pre-rendered frames) and that should be off if more frames is what you want. Some games also don't allow for higher than 60fps and since 85hz doesn't run 60fps stuff all that well, you would need to run it at 60 or 120hz. However, some games let you remove the 60fps cap. Sometimes, this can be changed in the game's built-in command console. Just use a game ready driver.
I don't know if this apply to ever county but in Greece you able to find CRT monitor literally for free Don't expect good quality monitor But most people including my don't use CRT monitors and TV and the end up in warehouse bin street or recycling. But it's what you find it may end work not work at all good or bad quality you can't able to be 100% sure what i will end up to be.
i still got my crt from the 2004 FamilyFund in england im still shocked its like 20yrs old tho i think its more like 21 yrs old but its better than the first one they gave us that broke down sadly within one year that one had a boxer shape and looked older but i now think it looked more cool as a classic style setup of 1999 rather than 2002 style
5:55 or just get a Displayport to VGA adapter (i had one, nice lil thing)
I forgot to mention that 😅
@@GTXDash have you ever done any testing to see how much input lag that hdmi/dp to vga adapters add? i assumed dp adapters were slightly better because its more flexible but idk
another method could also be done assuming you have integrated graphics and a motherboard with vga is set the gpu to high performance in the application, and allow the integrated graphics to output from the vga port. i was thinking of trying to find a board like that when i do a platform upgrade. its rarer now but some asrock boards still have a vga port
@@gamagama69 I wanna try that. Perhaps there's more latency than using an adapter, though? 🤔
@gamagama69 dp to hdmi adds no additional lag. There's a tiny bit of latency from hdmi to vga or dp to vga. However, because a CRT doesn't wait for an internal frame buffer before drawing the frame on screen, a CRT even with an active converter still has a lot less lag than an LCD.
Pro tip from 1998:
-LCD Gamma: 2.1-2.4 (2.2 recommended)
-CRT Gamma: 1.64-1.78 (tweaking required)
A note to anyone who's new to crts: If your Crt isn't pitch black after the contrast adjustments you might need to mess with the flyback transformer. Don't worry you won't get shocked by doing something as easy as that.
This is usually unnecessary. If you have the capability to access the factory adjustment menu (also called the service menu) of your monitor, you can lower its "sub-brightness" setting. This is just a simple setting that determines the range of the normal brightness setting, usually by its center point. On VGA monitors, this setting is usually set too high to achieve a deep black. On some TVs it's actually a physical potentiometer, but I doubt that's the case with any VGA monitor that sports digital adjustments. However, if you don't have the ability to access the factory adjustment menu on your particular monitor, then the G2 adjustment may be a good idea, though it could mess with color in slightly unusual ways.
Also, some VGA monitors, mostly just Sony sets, don't have a physical G2 adjustment potentiometer on the flyback. Those sets have digital G2 adjustment, which is well-documented on Sony sets because of how terribly it was implemented. I am unaware of any others aside from weird freak stuff.
@@Wyatt_James well I only owned samsung tubes so far and to access their factory settings you need to connect a "service jig" to the crt. G2 adjustment is way easier to do instead of going through some guerilla cabling only to adjust your brightness
Yeah, some manufacturers were very rude. If you can't access the factory adjustment mode, the G2 adjustment is the second-best option.
I forgot to state in my other comment, but if you use an HDMI DAC, make sure that you have it set to the correct setting between full/limited range RGB. You need to just try both out and pick the correct one; a mismatch will either cause clipping of near-blacks and highlights, if the DAC is expecting limited range and receives full, or it will cause lifted blacks and lowered whites, if it is expecting full and receives limited.
Instructions unclear, turned into Electro
When you mention "DOS runs in 640x400" because the lines are doubled (320x200), that's actually not entirely true, only for games/programs using the graphics modes.
DOS (the prompt or whatever you'd call it) runs in 720x400 in VGA (textmode). And I believe it's usually at 72Hz, not 70Hz (yes, very weird).
The characters are 9x16 pixels each, resulting in (80*9)x(16*25) = 720x400 resolution.
MDA/Hercules is 720x350, EGA is 640x350, and CGA is 640x200 (respectively 9x14, 8x14 and 8x8 fonts).
Otherwise thank you for a very interesting video. I've got a Samsung Syncmaster 1200nf (a beast of a monitor) which is currently used with my retro PCs, but could be fun to hook it up to my modern gaming PC, especially for when I run PCem and DOSBox on it.
For clarification: With VGA, DOS was indeed 720x400. But since SVGA, DOS has always been 640x400.
Edit: I did not know that Dos also ran in 72Hz. Interesting.
FINE! I just bought a 19" CRT from a neighbour that can do 120hz at 720p just because of your videos. YOU HAPPY NOW!
XD
😂 happy and proud 😊
worth it?
@@tisen1241 I’ve connected it to my steamdeck and for me I think it was very much worth it. It’s resolution fits perfectly with the capabilities of the device plus I get a neat linux desktop now too.
That is very lucky
People complaining about how heavy a CRT monitor is is invited to carry the 29" Sharp TV I used to have. All of its weight was at the glass tube, there was no reasonable place to grab it for transport and it weighted around 45 Kg or 99 lbs.
I got a 2004 29" Philips TV from a friend some years ago. Moving it was a pain, but the results are glorious. I still have to try it out as a PC monitor.
There's nothing more annoying for me in this life than trying to Carry Something heavy somewhere and no place to grab it.good.
I have a 2006 32 inch Sony Wega Trinitron. In my trunk still. Found it on the curb.
My kv36fs300 weighs over 200lbs easily
My grandmother had a I-don’t-know-how-many-inch Toshiba CRT. The thing was probably around 60 LBS!
wish I could’ve gotten that beast for my PS1!
One very important thing i would like to add, while the cheap HDMI to VGA adapters that you showed are fine, they have a very limited pixelclock. They are made to not support anything over 1920x1080 at 60hz, in the description for most of them it even says so. For monitors with smaller resolutions (1280×960 or under), that isn't a problem at all. However if you have a 1600x1200 monitor and want to do even 65hz, these cheap adapters will not be enough!
If you have a monitor like this, you will need a more specialized adapter. I believe the Delock 62967 is what a lot of people recommend. It supports resolutions up to 2560x1600 @ 60hz, which for most monitors should be more than enough. I myself am using that adapter with a Fujitsu Siemens 19T3 which i am running at 1600x1200 @ 85hz.
This is true. In those rare situations if a person has one of those legendary monitors, then that person buying the adapter need to check the max res and hz on the packaging. Fortunately, nowadays, hdmi 1.3 to VGA adapters aren't expensive at all. Between $15 and $30 last I checked.
Yeah if only it was easy to find those higher pixel clock adapters. I went on a search for a few days and websites are all sold out
@phil_matic I was able to get better results by searching "4k hdmi to vga adapter".
I found some, but I was never sure if they'd match up to the
Sunix DPU3000,
Icy Box IB-SPL1031
DeLock 87685
These are the most commonly known to be the best for this purpose, and unfortunately they seem to be out of stock and out of production.
no need for Delocks and such, I have a Vention DAC which was about 15 bucks and it runs my FW900 without any issues at 1920/85Hz. As long as it is a newish active converter it should do the job
Wow, so much good info in this video. You definitely know your stuff. Thank you for putting this all together into one clean video. There's a plethora of CRT info out there but it's all buried in obscure forums. Also, like you said, knowing the 'why' behind all these settings really helps. Seriously, thank you.
If anyone is searching for an old 4:3 LCD monitor, look for 20" models instead of 17" or 19" ones. They usually have a resolution of 1600x1200 instead of 1280x1024 and higher-end models used IPS panels.
Yep. Or smaller ones that are 1024x768.
Recently bought a brand new (well, or at least unboxed for 20 years) HP s7502. Your channel's been a blessing!
I really need to look up the e-waste facilities around here. I've been maining a Trinitron for a while now, and it's really great (for everything except reading) compared to an LCD, and every day of my life I've regretted throwing out the Dell P1130 I pulled from a dumpster 10 years ago (threw it out in the name of "saving space on my desk" - and my desk did look great afterward, but... I was a fool).
The monitor I have now was being thrown away at work, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time (covering in a department I didn't actually work in, happened to be sitting there when someone walked by with it).
I need to channel that kind of luck more...
CRU is a blessing. Replaces old PowerStrip that used to do that way back in the day.
I was ultra close to go with CRT route for pc but instead settled with grandmas CRT TV for retro consoles + emulation with SCART converter from laptop. I hit jackpot after discovering that this old Phillips is capable of running both PAL and NTSC. When it comes to pc gaming, for me "CRT's are better" argument has finally fallen after experiencing recent 2024 OLED monitors, with HDR and VRR, running at over 120 fps.
Which I totally agree with. Apart from motion blur, OLEDs are superior in almost every way.
@@GTXDash They can be pretty expensive, though.
Still Oled are 16:9 aspect ratio, they suck for retro gaming because of that and super sharp pixels.
CRTs are still superior.
Lmao the dell m991 that is on your eBay screen shot just so happens to be the exact one I purchased. A few weeks ago. I offered the guy 50 for it not expecting him to accept it but he did anyways. I couldn’t be happier with the monitor. 19 inches is the perfect screen size in my opinion
Brilliant! So happy you got it for an excellent price.
@@GTXDash the shipping was the expensive part but it was 100% worth it
Yoo. I have to that monitor as well, it's amazing, the curved screen has an unmatched image quality, also it does 1600x1200 60hz or 1280x960 75hz, it's sweet!, Enjoy it!. You might have to replace the capacitors on it at some point because that tends to fail early, but with maintenance it will last you years and years
i got the same monitor and it hits 2548x1536 at 60hz
@@josephdias5859 you are right! It's 96khz max horizontal sync, it can do 1600x1200 75hz, or 2048x1536 60hz. It's a beast!
I have a bunch of tips for using a crt in modern games. Tip 1- most crt's are 4:3 but many modern games dont support that aspect ratio! You can add 16-9 or 16 -10 resolutions to get around this. Tip-2 because these aspect ratios are shorter, they use up less bandwidth for the crt. With a 16-9/10 aspect ratio you will be able to get even higher refresh rates than at 4-3. Tip-3 some games dont play well with weird or low resolutions. On amd cards(im sure this can be done on nvidia too) there is a feature called vsr that lets your gpu display a high res image on the native res screen, without software even knowing. For example my settings are 1022 by 600(16-9~) but with vsr windows lets me choose 1080p or 1440p 4k etc. -Tip-4 -experimental stuff. If you want the highest refresh rate, you need a shorter hight res, but that makes you loose out on detail. One way to this is with a 21 by 9 resolution! This will be quite narrow on an already small screen, but allows for some really high refresh rates while still maintaining a high res(on the witdth ) image. Ive gotten 150 hz with a res of 1260-540. Or 130hz at 1470 by 630
🙂 neat, i have a Sony CRT in the attic, it was my brothers, I kept it for nostalgic reasons and because I felt sorry to throw it away, I'll bring it down one of these days and try some of ur recommendations, thanks and be good.
Im 21 and wanted a crt for the longest time found a gateway evf720 next door for 15 bucks i have 3070ti and since its a vga monitor it took some jerry rigging it but im running a hdmi to vga from the motherboard hdmi so i think the crt is running off of my integrated graphics either way having a crt in adition to your 240hz is such a nice contrast and is really fun to mess with im so glad people are starting to realize dont overpay you can find them all over. love the video keep it up
Appently, there's a way to get your graphics card to work through your motherboards video port or through a 2nd older card that still supports VGA. I mean, I don't know how to do it, atleast not yet.
Damn, look how gorgeous it looks @19:12 with that clarity and no motion blur!
My issue isn't price or anything like that... The issue is that I can't actually can't find a used CRTs for "pickup" here in south of Sweden. I have found a couple of CRTs, but they are generally quite old. Like Hansol monitors from the mid 90's for over 100EUR (which is pricey considering the age and they are not really that sought after), or really old monochrome CRTs from the 80's. I just want a decent CRT that can display 1280x1024 at 75Hz, preferably built in the early to mid-2000's.
"unless you live in the middle of nowhere" ah,there it is. High prices for me.
Relatable.
I've found it can be even easier, I live in a town with a population of 500 so everybody knows each other so I just went door to door asking if they had any "old box computer screens". Got 2 for free!
They're all free in OLX (something like facebook marketplace) for Bulgaria.
Beauty of small towns @@Gr00t
You just earned yourself a lifetime subscriber, this is beyond great! I want a crt now. I owned one as a kid, but it was massive, so as soon lcd displays became affordable it was sent to the ewaste facility.
Loved your previous video and now this video on CRTs. Super underrated channel. ❤️
Startech DP2VGAHD20 for the win. Max. 370MHz pixel clock. Games look quite good on my LaCie Electron 22 Blue, 1800x1350 @85Hz.
The most adapters are low quality, this one is with ite chip is one of the top, synoptic chip is good also and analogix and one with CS and one with Lk
really wish there was some kind of comparable guide for linux users. this is one of the best sources available with general information at least.
This was such an awesome video. I have been daily driving my Sun CRT for almost a year now, and I love it pieces, and I discovered most of the guidelines here on my own. Thanks for making a video that condenses the best tips for CRT usage all in one video! I will definitely make a resolution just for movies at 72 hz, I had no idea about that, and will definitely make a 640x400 resolution as well.
Here are some CRT tips I can provide as well.
1. If a game will still not adhere to the resolution or refresh rate you have set up, try running the game in borderless windowed mode. If the game supports it, the game will adhere to your current desktop resolution and refresh rate and it will be really nice. If the game doesn't have borderless windowed, get Borderless Gaming.
2. Some games, mostly older ones still have dev consoles or CFG files to configure to fix resolution and refresh rate disparities. For example, 2 commands I use all the time in id tech games are r_displayRefresh "x", and vid_restart. Some of these games are locked to 60hz by default, and by putting r_displayRefresh and vid restart once you start up the game will force the game to run at that refresh and resolution combo you set up. Removing those unwanted resolutions and refresh combos like in the video will also fix this problem, but for some reason if I screw with my resolutions to much, the name of my monitor will be "wired display" in the settings pannel and in some games and that bugs me a bunch.
3. Some games will not support 4:3 aspect ratios anymore. Examples of these include the newer RE Engine games, the newer call of duty games, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and The Last of Us Remake. A common fix for this is to get flawless widescreen and fix the aspect ratio that way, or to get a ultwawide mod. Try that or in the case of call of duty, check out the config files and set the aspect ratio to "standard."
4. It also doesn't hurt to run games at stretched 16:9 aspect ratios if you cannot fix the problem at all. I run Pizza Tower at 950x540, and Syndicate 2011 at 1280x720, and they look fine for the most part. Pizza Tower in particular looks incredible with the perfect scan lines. Also 1280x720 can produce very faint scan lines, not as noticble as 1024x768, but it is still there. Running a game like Eastward at that resolution is really awesome, as that is a game that is letterboxed and has a native resolution of 720p given it is a Switch port.
5. If a game as a super sampling option and your GPU can handle it, definitely take advantage of it! In the case of Call of Duty, The game has a super sampling slider in the options, so I can run the game at 800x600 at 160hz and with 2x super sampling making it 1600x1200, it really sharpens up the image making almost look like 1600x1200. You get the advantage of high refresh rate, higher performance and a sharp image.
6. A good fix for most of these problems is just launching your game at the resolution and refresh rate you want to play at before you launch the game. This is especially good for games running in Unity or Unreal Engine. If the resolution and refresh rate is different when you start the game, change it to the resolution you want, leave the game and come back and it will most likely adhere to what you want.
7. Finally, TURN OFF YOUR CRT WHEN YOU ARE NOT USING IT. Not only do they eat up more power than LCDs, but they can burn in as well if you have the same image on them for a really long time. I don't know if CRTs burn in faster than oleds, but its good to be safe. Use a screen saver, have your displays turn off automatically, and when you are done using your tube for the day, turn it off.
If any of these tips are incorrect or there are anythings I am forgetting, please tell me. CRTs are so incredible, and we definitely lost a ton of awesome stuff when we switched to LCDs. Even though CRTs exited my life around age 12, I am so fortunate to have a 21 inch beast of a display to play games on.
Your tips are pretty spot-on.
Step 1: find a CRT
Step 2: plug it into a modern PC
Step 3: game
And now you can beat Tyson!!
-find a 80khz+ crt
-find 160hz lcd
~life's now good
You forgot an important step: find a good converter that doesn't screw up its image quality
Thank you for your video, I just bought my first CRT monitor and I cant wait to test it
And if you have integrated graphics like most Intel CPUs you can just plug the thing into your motherboard's VGA port and enable onboard video through the BIOS, if it isn't already enabled, in which it likely is through VGA because that's what's commonly used for debugging.
I'm using Windows 11 and surprisingly I feel that changing main display for it became way easier - to select my Samsung CRT I just open menu, select monitor and click "make this display Primary" and presto - every game by default launches with this monitor despite it being Monitor 4 normally (with 2 of my LCD monitors and TV being considered as monitors 1, 2 and 3 respectively). Can't say how it works on Intel or AMD since I only have one Windows PC and it has Nvidia card. But everything works and I'm glad that I have 30X0 series.
keep in mind in the nvidia control panel you need to disable scaling for the CRT. It might be buggy since a year or more due to windows stuff... You should be able to see scan lines for supported games which are also not borderless window and also allow the correct resolutions choices, not needing to set windows desktop resolution first.
Great video. Some of this stuff I knew, but its been 20 odd years and is a very good refresher. Retro games never looked so good than on a crt.
Worth noting on VGA converters, to run very high refresh rates or resolutions you need a very fast pixel clock in the adapter, some delock adapters will over 400+ mhz although a startech DP2VGAHD2 will run at 375 mhz which is overkill for most any monitor.
"highly covered E series" LOL they are ewaste, and I have many for free
20" viewable pc crts are vastly better than 17", much higher stats and very well worth it on modern systems
Intel iGPU is actually the best scenario for connecting pc crt, since you can access interlacing resolution for things like 1440x1080i@120hz, looks progressive due to high hz and res
Your explanation of cru was pretty alright, so far best part of the video besides where you have to be running cru on the crt, this is not true. you are also adding resolutions to the wrong field
ive never had the issue you're describing with the nvidia control panel across 3 computers, and in fact it is the preferred custom res UI due to how well it saves your custom resolution and how compatible it is
absolutely DO NOT do that gamma fuckery in the gpu control panel, raising the gamma level causes BIT CRUSH and you are crushing a lot of detail. you need to do a proper calibration. for black levels (which I thought you were gonna go into), search for the lagom black level test and lower or raise brightness until you barely see the second square, first can be crushed. then your blacks are fine.
And finally the MOST important thing you completely skipped is MAKE SURE the gpu is outputting FULL color space and NOT LIMITED. limited is selected a lot by default.
overall decent video but shoulda done more research
tip: you can plug into your motherboard vga port and utilize GPU pass through, that way you dont need adapters and your cpu's onboards graphics will convert everything. may or may not work depending on what GPU you have, I have an i7 7700k and it worked without any issue whatsoever
also, what makes it even better, is it allows you to use interlaced resolutions (unless you have an older GPU that supports it natively - mine doesnt but the onboard graphics will do it for you)
interlacing is an absolute game changer with CRTs and doesnt get mentioned enough
I was running my cheap 19" at 1600x1200@120i - it was beautiful. with normal progressive scan resolutions i would only be able to get 1600x1200 @60p, or 800x600 @120p - basically half of the equivalent interlaced resolution
one adapter i'd recommend is the startech displayport to vga adapter it works really well
Me being poor:
Before watching this video: I've been using CRT monitor all along as I can't afford anything newer.
Me now: Hmm I guess maybe now I got an excuse for using a CRT monitor.
What CRT you have?
Awesome video dude, especially the last bit about dos resolutions and what was considered "native" on PC back then. I remember...
Worth mentioning is that the fastest video card (I think) with a native VGA analog output is the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. btw, I have for years now been using as my main PC monitor a Phillips 22-inch CRT running at a resolution of 1152x864 at 100hz.
We need modern CRTs.
THIS
Why?
@@alexander1055 They are better than anything we are getting now.
That was all quite useful info. My co worker still has his CRT monitor from his teenager years. I told him I would take it off his hands.
Great video. Only have a couple of things to add which I feel are important.
First off, a lot of these crts are from the late 90's/early 2000's, and as a result, are plagued by bad capacitors (a lot of tech from back then have bad caps in them). This is, afaik, the reason a lot of these monitors get really hot (at least in my experience), or stop working altogether. Working on crts is really dangerous, and not everyone has soldering irons lying around, so if you have issues, you may wanna get the service of a modder to recap your monitor, which can sadly get pricey.
Second. Most vga adapters (both hdmi and dp) are capped at old hdmi specs, which afaik, is a maximum of 1920x1080@60hz. This is fine for most crt monitors, like the ones you have, but if you're like me and have an LG monitor capable of 1600x1200@75hz, those cheap adapters won't support the full capabilities of the monitor. In this case, you have, afaik, two options. The 'Delock 62967 displayport 1.2 to vga adapter' which I couldn't find in stock and is unreliable , and the, in my experience, much better 'StarTech DisplayPort to HDMI VGA Adapter - DP 1.2 HBR2 to HDMI 2.0'. These, afaik, support even the highest quality crts you can get. If you're unsure whether you're looking at the right product, just look at the reviews, as they should have people talking about how well they work for high-res crts.
Hope this helps anyone who may need it
Most standard hdmi to vga adapters can do 1600x1200 @ 75hz. The 1080p 60hz thing isn't a hard limit. Because it can't do 1440p @ 60hz, the next best STANDARD mode they can list is 1080p 60hz.
@@GTXDash I'm pretty sure the hdmi to vga thing I had was unable to support 1200p at 75hz, but I had other issues with that adapter anyways, so I'm happy I got the new one anyways. Nice to know at least
I have a 19 CRT Dell 100Hz Flatron it was Crazy good
CRT is better for super low resolution videos, reason why 240p TV video was looking good back then and looks bad on lcd monitor is because CRT screen scales video in optical way like a projector... Let's say projector is 480p but, displaying on the wall - 40-50'' size image will look good even when projector is only showing 480p resolution and if we try watching 480p video on 40-50'' TV it will look like crap because - it's upscaled in a digital way and not optical like an image in CRT would be upscaled...
Good morning, I was fortunate enough to find a NEC MS97F a little over a year at the local thrift store. It only cost 35$ and after a lot of trial and error; it is now my daily driver running at 3200x2400
I got so lucky dude, after I watched this video I went outside and saw a CRT monitor sitting on the side of the road. I picked it up and it worked, so lucky!
This was a very well-informed, honest video. Good job! Here are my notes, in the same order as they become relevant in the video:
1. If desk space is a concern, and you'd like your CRT monitor to face directly outward, you can usually scoot the desk away from the wall and let the back of the tube hang off. It's safe so long as the stand is fully on the desk, and it's a great way to keep the space hog at bay.
2. Using the on-board VGA output can be very convenient, but sometimes, the output won't be as sharp as an external DAC. I have an old ATI Radeon HD 5770 that I used to use in a dual-card setp just for its VGA output, but when I finally got around to buying some StarTech DisplayPort DACs, they blew the ATI card away in sharpness.
3. DisplayPort and HDMI DACs do actually have some trade-offs. DisplayPort DACs tend to support higher bandwidth output, allowing you to use higher resolutions and refresh rates without your GPU driver crashing or giving an out-of-range error (NOT your monitor). However, DP DACs cannot do interlaced output, and I can only assume that this is due to GPU firmware bugs. Unfortunately, Nvidia RTX cards also cannot do interlaced output at all for seemingly no reason, no matter the output, and I believe that modern AMD is similar. Intel... is a special case that I won't get into. Interlaced output can allow you to essentially double the perceived framerate of your monitor at no real downside in the context of gaming, which can be very nice across the board, though a select few games don't handle it correctly out of the box.
4. With HDMI DACs, you have to worry about the RGB full vs RGB limited range toggle in your GPU driver. Usually the DAC will simply be built to use one type, and will either clip or lose dynamic range depending on how the PC is set. Doing some testing with near-black and near-white patterns will help you to get proper black and white levels out of your DAC.
5. It helps to be familiar with the win+arrow key and win+shift+arrow key hotkeys to move programs from one monitor to another. Very useful!
6. I understand that you wouldn't want to go so in-depth, but knowing how the vertical refresh rate, horizontal refresh rate, and signal bandwith interact is very useful when creating weird silly resolutions. Obviously not good for a beginner's guide.
7. Your monitor ought to be able to handle 640x480p 140Hz, but only if you reduce the blanking and get lucky. Obviously not within the scope of this video.
8. You can add the detailed resolution of 1366x1024 if you'd like 4:3 1024p, and any DAC should be able to handle it. I don't remember how well games interact with detailed resolutions but I think it's fairly plug-and-play. Just be sure to use CRT Standard timings unless you know what you're doing.
9. I have never experienced issues using the Nvidia Control Panel for my custom resolution settings. Games pick up on my weird settings just fine, though admittedly I don't play many older games.
10. I appreciate the note on gamma and black levels at the end. Not too many people know about that.
Thanks for all the useful info, I have your comment copied in a .txt somewhere :D
Now im wondering something though, how is it possible that the external DACs produced a sharper image than the second GPU with analog out?
I'm quite happy with my cheap amazon dac because for some reason I was able to raise the pixelclock limit in CRU and have been fairing pretty well so far. But I really wanna see if interlacing is as great as it sounds.
My plan is to set up a second GPU as a glorified DAC for the CRT as a second monitor, with hopes that that will allow me to try out some ridiculous res/Hz combos while also maybe making my pc properly recognize the CRT but youre saying that I'm going to lose imagine fidelity that way?
Hope to hear from you as knowledge on this topic seems to be very scarce.
I'm not sure why. It could be that my 5770's DAC has degraded, or maybe this unit is faulty, or maybe ATI even cheaped out on the DAC in that model. Perhaps technology has just improved, but I seriously doubt that.
I'll ask around to see if anybody else in-the-know can run some comparisons.
@@Wyatt_James Thanks for the quick reply! I'll also chime back in once I'm able to test it for myself.
@@Wyatt_James It works! 1920x1440i@144Hz on amonitor thats older than I am.
I don't think i can confidently say I saw a difference in quality between my HDMI to VGA dac and the 750 Ti, if anything it's a little better but I don't have experts eyes so idk.
Though, seeing my display recognized by name was a little more satisfying than I imagined I gotta say! :D
The quality gap was pretty obvious on my ATI card, so your 750ti must just be pretty sharp. I'm glad you got it running nicely.
Yeah I'm not sure why some displays hate being recognized. There's a firmware update for some Nvidia cards that may also help with that, but if it's working right now I wouldn't bother.
This is an amazing video with a wealth of knowledge that everyone into CRT’s should watch.
It’s really helpful if you ever need to set up an old CRT again. I wish I had mine, I only have 4 CRT TV’s here, but no monitors. I got rid of mine probably back in 2010
Sometimes find CRT monitors so hard, damn it, the only things I found near me is Samsung Samtron 56e and some god-forgotten Digital Vision pro1570f I cant even properly google, both are 15"
Interesting thing. I have two 21" monitors. The IBM flat crt works with the DP to vga converter and is detected by windows.
My dell curved trinitron will not.
Displays no signal, but is detected by windows and nvidia and shows its even displaying.
Might need to try a different adaptor or even the BNC connections.
Im on a i7-12700K and 2080ti so it should work.
Also watch your vga cables. Older ones sometimes had the bare minimum of pins and while it will display, it wont detect the specific model of display.
27:09 RIP WeirdStuff, used to shop there all the time back in the day. A real treasure of a store that place was.
Priceless video. I am really new to windows as I am from the Mac side but I love my CRT. I have to watch this again closely. I appreciate all the background historical aspects. Awesome.
I personally use a Apple Multiple Scan 20 for my VGA CRT. Using it at 1600x1200@60hz is great. I use a USB C to VGA adapter and then an old VGA to Apple DB-15 converter. Never had any issue with either my 1060 laptop or 3060 laptop
hi, life time an current CRT pc gamer here for either retro and modern gaming.
at 10:07 i have to disagree with your claims about 60hz being that flickery, that flash and definitely is not as flickery or flashing as shown at the 10:33 60hz bulb animation, indeed i am writing it from a CRT pc monitor at 60hz after watching your video as well on it and definitely not just in this one but any CRT pc monitor i have used in my life it doesnt flicker or flashes that bad as shown in that animation at 60hz, as a matter of fact, i dont see any flashing, to the contrary, using 70hz instead, specialy for 60fps locked games will provide a rather stuttery motion feeling due to the refresh rate missmatch to the capped 60hz frame rate, i would agree for 70 fps gaming 70hz would be a littler more convenient, its important to have the refresh rate matching the framerate for the best motion experience, but not for 60fps capped gaming definitely, and when is true i notice more flicker at 60hz compared to 70hz at desktop usage, specialy on a white backgournd, isnt definitely that badly flickery and flashing as in the mentioned bulb animation, and to my eyes 60hz is completely unotable when gaming.
my personal advice, as a long time CRT pc gamer that is very detallist and seek a smooth motion experice as well, that love to have as close experiencie to the original hardware for retro games using CRT pc monitors and the best experience for 60fps locked games is to use 60hz for 60fps locked content or at least try it specialy for games, not for desktop usage, at least give a try.
70hz for 60fps locked games is unpleasant, makes feel game motion stutteriy , not smooth, not authentic, sure not everyone have the same sensitivy to CRT flicker, but its very worth a try 60hz for 60fps locked games, i guaranty base on my own experience 60hz CRT flicker will be hardly notable in games and rather motion will be better, that at 70hz for those locked 60 fps games, the experience will be better, specialy for those like me that grew up in the 90s, where 60hz CRT tech were the norm, for the arcades, for the consoles, etc.
It depends on the monitor. The flicker on my Dell isn't too bad. But is worse on my syncmaster.
There's a lot of games that can run perfectly smooth on 70hz or more. And when a game can only do 60fps, I either set it to 90 or 120. Doest look bad at all.
@@GTXDash then that syncmaster CRT must be in really bad condition or you tested it in way lower than 60hz refresh rate and wasnt aware of it, rather someting like 50hz or below, because again i never seen a CRT based display, either CRT pc monitors, CRT TVs in my life no matter the size for over 25 years and still currently witnessing a lot of different CRT based displays at 60hz, flickering or flashing that bad as shown in your 60hz real time bulb light animation,
i dont pretend to be mad but that bulp animation is not acurate and does not represent a real CRT display 60hz behavior, it rather exaggerates it.
i do not contradict you when you claiming a lot of games runs perfectly smooth at 70hz or more, my point i feel you miss and you dont seem to be aware of, is the importance to match the constant frame rate to the refresh rate to achieve that CRT motion goddess which is the only way to truly achieve that on a CRT, so undoubtedly a lot of games running at 70 fps constantly at 70hz (or more hz, as long as the framerate matches the refresh rate) will have excelent motion looking.
be carefull i am refering to how a game "looks" while in motion, not how it looks overall at certain refresh rate, i am specialy refering to game motion quality here, which is one of the strong points if not the best point that makes a CRT pc monitors worth to use even on modern games. but to achieve this the only real way is to have a matching framerate constalty to the refresh rate. also accompanied with a form of sync is important for this to avoid screen tearing while in motion, for example, constant 60fps at 60hz with disabled vertical sync (vsync OFF) will make the tear line (horizontal line) visible while in motion, so to achieve the best motion quality on a CRT is ideal to have constant fps matching equivalent refresh rate with vertical sync ON,
the issue here is that vsync"ON" increases inputlag, but CRT latency is so good, that for example i play some modern games at 90hz that can run at constant 90 fps and vsync "ON" and even inputlag still feels very responsive although using vsync ON, there are other ways of using sync, like "scaline sync" that can help reducing input lag while hiding the tear line. which is vey helpful specialy for some retro games that runs at 60fps only and are not that heavy gpu wise since scanline sync requieres some gpu headroom for proper working, for example i use scanline sync when i play some superNES emulated 60fps only games at 60hz with very low input lag, which makes feel the game experience very close to the original console motion, latency and overall wise.
with due respect, but advicing not to use 60hz on A CRT for gaming based on an "ultimate" CRT PC gaming guide and using 90hz or 120hz for 60fps limited gaming is a sacrilege on a CRT monitor because it will not give the perfect life like motion quality CRT pc monitors are known for, rather at 90hz i can clearly see smaller but notable stuttery motion on a 60fps constant running game while image is motion, sure not as badly stuttery notable as playing a 60fps constant game at 70hz, but notable, and at 120hz 60fps constant game i can see how motion looks rather like blury and creates a dupicated image when in motion, just test yourself those 60 fps capped and constant running games at 60hz instead of 90, 120hz and you will note how better motion looks on them that proper way
@3dfan797 My SyncMaster works just fine. All PC monitors I've experienced throughout my life always had a noticeable flicker at 60hz.
@@GTXDash yes, its not being denied that 60hz on CRT monitors have a noticable flicker, specialy on a white background, more notable at a full screen white image mainly, for me is smooth enough that is not noticiable in games which rarely have a full screen white background and far to be as noticiable as that flashing in that 60hz bulb animation which is exaggerated, misinformative and inaccurate at representing real CRT PC monitor 60hz flashing-flicker behaviour.
as a matter of fact even when playing that animation at video playback speed of "2" still shows and exagerated 60hz bulb animation flashing not seen that notably on a real CRT pc monitor at 60hz.
once i realized that crts are still useful, ive been seeing them in alleys and dumpsters all over. they really are easy to find if you just keep and eye out
Nice Logitech Z2300s! I still rock those same computer speakers.
For older games yes, but I can't play most modern games on my 17" CRT monitor. There is just so much fine detail in the interfaces and textures that you loose a lot while playing below 1080p. Cyberpunk 2077 for example I think even 1080p already doesn't look that great.
I got this 17" monitor new in box in 2020 and it looks super sharp, but 1280x1024 or 1024x768 can only do so much. I also keep a 14" PVM at my desk to use with CRT Emudriver and emulators, but each has it's uses.
Even with the CRT superior motion handling I'll choose my shitty VA 24" 1080@144hz any day for a game of Overwatch 2.
Indeed. This is why I recommended that people pair a CRT with a modern display.
i personally use those tv color bars for brightness and contrast and lagom test for gamma
when entering the color bars i go down the contrast to 50 and up the brightness till i see the 3 black bars in the down right and then take down the brightness untill only one of the dark bars is visible
then i up the contrast at 100 and turn it a bit down till the brightest black bar starts changing
i end up always with contrast 99 and brightness right now is at 20
in lagom i just adjust the gamma accordingly so all those color, white point and black level tests are ideal as possible and i ended up in the gamma test with a 2.4 which from what i understand is pretty good
The MAG brand vga crt that I love I actually picked up off the side of the road in a small neighborhood back in 2017/2018. My large Phillips crt Television I picked up in a parking lot at a clothes donation box next to an oil change center back in 2019. Since then I have not been able to spot any crts anywhere where I am. I got very lucky. Donation centers don't take them and if they do they go in their dumpsters. Ewaste and hazardous waste disposals charge you quite a bit to get rid of them as well so most of the time at least where I am people throw them in dumpsters. I have an old Viewsonic E or F series (don't remember) put up that needs repairs. I wonder if I should fix it and list it for a reasonable amount locally. For the MAG monitor I've always just used a HDMI to VGA converter for it.
I look forward to more videos on this subject. I am interested in CRT monitor technology and would like to learn more about it
Didn't think I could every find a CRT in my country that was not complete trash but then lo and behold a half-decent samsung in a nearby city.
Excellent video m8 - very informative
Technically, HDMI and Display Port are the same thing, just in differently shaped connectors. As in, the signals are the same. It's just that HDMI has a patent (requires a license to be used in products), and Display Port is more open-source-y.
Nice to see a fellow C70 enjoyer
congratulation for the HD subs
This video is a little gold mine :)
24:21 you have to choose "output=openglnb", or the colours will be wrong as well as the pixels being blurry.
Ah yes, i can finaly use my lighting McQueen crt for something
28:00 Instead of adjusting gamma, you should make sure that the colour settings under change resolution are set to 0-255 and not 16-235.
That setting is why black levels might look white.
Yes. Usually 0-255 is the default after installing a new driver, but I guess sometimes it isnt for some users.
15:06 If the CRT monitor operates at 160 hertz, this usually means that the monitor resolution at this frequency is 1024 by 768.
I just started getting into this but another avenue is actually schools for acquiring crts. It may also help to give a call to your local schools and ask if they are selling any old hardware like pcs and monitors. They typically do bids on this kinda stuff so it can’t hurt to go especially if they’re in good condition. Also Facebook marketplace and local shopping apps are good I got 2 off of that
I have a Compaq 7500 that I got for free. I connect my switch and ps3 to it. And the color looked amazing.
Great video! I did want to point out that with the HDMI to VGA adapters you mentioned, there is a decent amount of added latency. This sadly defeats one of the main benefits of a CRT
What you could maybe do instead is install an older GPU as a secondary GPU in your main PC, connect that to the monitor through native VGA, then pass the main graphics through that
That totally works as well. However, believe it or not, the latency in the hdmi to vga converter is so tiny that there is in fact a noticeable improvement in latency on the CRT when compared to the LCD.
Really. And that's because there's no frame buffer or some form of post-processing. It just converts the signal on the fly. Now, of course, this doesn't apply to all adapters. 1 out of 3 of the converters I use does have some latency. Might be because it's more complicated and can also do S-video and Composite.
@@GTXDash That's very interesting. I've owned multiple and they all had noticeably high latency, it's nice to know there are some lower latency units out there.
If you can, could you share the model number or listings for some of the known good ones? I'd love to get one
Thanks for the info
Very informative, and well put together video. I'm planning on getting my first crt monitor soon, and this is very helpful
hi, CRT pc monitors are a wonderfull displays even in 2024 for modern gaming, i love them and i stil use them for overall gaming but, their worth usage against a modern display depends on some factors i see this video doesnt cover and also missinform:
for me and many CRT pc monitors enthusiasts, one of the best worth use of a pc CRT monitor against a modern display for even modern gaming is because its image motion quality which the vast mayority of modern displays fails to show as good or without tradeoffs making it not as enjoyable as it is on a pc CRT monitor, but to achieve the CRT motion goddess there are rules to follow:
you need to run the game at a constant framerate matching the refresh rate, for example: if you use 70hz, make sure your game is able to run at constant 70 FPSs, for 60fps, use 60hz and so on and a form of sync like vertical sync, scanlinesync, etc, to avoid seeing a horizontal line (tear line) across the screen during motion, although enabling vertical sync can increase inpulag, for example when i play some 60fps limited framerate games like console emulators at 60hz i disable vertical sync and use scanlinesync (from RTSS Rivatuner Server Statistics software which come with the afterburner software) instead which does a good job lowering input lag and hiding the tear line while in image is in motion just be aware scanline sync requieres some gpu headroom. or when i play a 90fps constant game at 90hz, i just leave vertical sync enabled since higher refresh rates and framerates also help reducing inpulag, and i feel it inputlag responsive enough that way to my likes.
60hz for 60fps gaming on CRT monitors is beautifull and one of CRT strong points as well due to this motion quality again.
be aware 60hz is not that badly flickery - flashing as this video bulp animation inaccurately shows, i dont say it is not noticiable at all, specialy on a white full screen background, but it stil feels way smoother than in that animation and i have watched this animation from my own CRT pc monitor at 60hz and is far smoother and non flashing than i see in that animation, as a matter of fact i see the CRT "flash" at 60hz more like the 70hz bulb, almost flash free on my CRT at 60hz, even watching it from flicker free devices like phone, and from LCD screens that real time bulb 60hz animation speed looks way exaggerated, and i have used many CRT pc monitor for decades on pc at 60hz and none of them flickers-flashes that exaggeratedly, and in games i dont note it, sure i would agree with this video 60hz is not recomended for CRT pc desktop usage (internet surfing, other uses rather than gaming) by the way i personaly dont have issues using 60hz on my CRT for desktop usage, but i am aware not everyone have the same eye sensitivity to CRT flicker. but for games i recomend to use 60hz for games that can not run higher framerate than 60 fps either because being locker at that frame rate like retro games, console emulators or pc being unable to run higher constant framerate than 60fps etc for the best motion experience on them, and since games rarely have full screen white backgounds, most time screen feels flicker free on games at 60hz.
sure the higher the refresh rate the better, i dont deny that as long as the framerate can constatly be matched with the higher refresh rate,
i personally don't have issues with CRT pc monitor 60hz flicker but i prefer higher refresh rates with matching framerate mainly because i feel less stroboscopic effect specially at mouse movements on games where i use the mouse since that makes feel motion even more responsive and more natural more lifelike.
but i would NOT recommend to use higher refreshes like 70hz on a 60fps capable only game because it will make game feel way stuttery when in motion due to the framerate missmatch with the refresh rate.
@@3dfan797 You could have said all this in like 3 sentences lol
Funny thing is, some DOS games weren't always 70Hz or 70Hz at all. Take a good few of the titles from Epic MegaGames in the 90s (Jazz Jackrabbit, Epic Pinball, Extreme Pinball, Silverball Deluxe), or really ANY game that used VESA BIOS Extensions support. For the latter, you could usually run higher resolutions and/or refresh rates. For the former, menus were 320x200p70 while gameplay was something akin to 320x199p60.
what is the game at 27:25?
"Trackmania 2: Canyon". "Trackmania 2: Valley" is another good one to play. Lots of fun, lots of tracks to play.
I could find crts monitors for 5-40£ in uk so don't get discouraged they are still there
I already had a rtx 2070 on my rig when i got my crt monitor. I watched a video about a gpu pastrough with an older card that has analog out... They had a gtx 1070 and a 980ti, I though i would try this with an old gtx 550ti that i found but the drivers would not work together with my rtx2070!
Afterwards i bought an AMD radeon HD 7870, and plugged that in with my rtx 2070 and they work together nicely. Now i have 1280x960 @120hz because of interlacing and i can run modern games with fps that high too since my newer gpu is doing all the rendering... (I needed windows 11 for this to work too)
If you have a modern AMD card i guess you could do the same with an old Nvidia card for output. Different generations of cards from the same manufacturers dont work together because of the drivers i guess...
I also saw that video. It was one of the catalysts (a long with the LTT video where they said that they had to use an old Titan because it had the most performance still with an analogue output) that motivated me to make this video because... damn, that's complicated and too expensive for a lot of people.
I'm glad that it works in your case, but the fact that the 550ti didn't work with an RTX, may have been enough to cause someone to give up.
I really wish that AMD's modern GPUs let you run the CRT at a resolution lower than 640x480. I want natural scanlines in games on emulators, but seemingly Linux (under X11 at that) is the only thing that lets me do custom resolutions below 480p easily. I'd have to boot a live USB and run a script that I made to add the custom resolutions in order to even play retro games at their intended resolution. I've tried scanline shaders, and they don't look good at 480p.
Honestly, even with a basic CRT monitor from back in the day, if it's 75KHz, getting 160Hz out of it at 480p looks fantastic with no perceivable flickering. Better than 240Hz monitors in some regards. Downside is having to reposition and rescale the image every time you change the screen resolution, at least on a Viewsonic monitor. It's a cheap RGB capable CRT display without spending a ton on a Trinitron or PVM/BVM that only does 60Hz and 480i/240p output.
I do have a weird issue with my CRT though, where when there's gray contrasts on the screen, there's a strange multiple vertical bar effect that goes on, and it makes me a bit worried that mine is gonna stop working soon.
Sometimes I see strange lines on the screen when I'm using a cheap VGA cable.
Worser case is the caps inside the monitor will need replacing. It can be saved depending on how much work you wanna put in.
@@GTXDash yeah I figured it could potentially be a capacitor issue. I guess now the problem is finding someone who knows what they’re doing with CRT repairs.
A 19 to 21 CRT monitor is not needed for the scalines 14-inch monitor with the cru program in standard CRT mode, just set the resolution to 640x320 at 100Hz and beautiful 17-inch scalines come out and set 480x320 at 120hz, that's the trick. They need an expensive Sony CRT monitor, so I use it on my 2 14 and 17 inch monitors, beautiful scalines come out without so much fart (note CRT monitor with cru program
Maybe research Radeon GPUs and see what you find.
Most VGA CRTs cannot do lower than 480p @60hz. That's because most monitors are limited to 31khz minimum. So for 240p to be done you have to use 120hz, which can be done on RTX cards. 10 series card were the last cards to support interlaced resolutions not 240p
I like to do 75 Hz at 1200x900 instead of 72, though 70 Hz at 1280x960 is just snappy enough to not be a flickering mess. I had run 1024x768 at 85 Hz for the longest time but found that legibility in some games is important so I cranked the resolution.
I kind of get why people are into CRTs: nostalgia, high contrast, and resolution forgiveness. The latter is crucial for games designed with them in mind (like the waterfalls in Sonic games). Plus, it's an excellent way to give the aging monitors a new chance, as the former owners have gone for flat panels. Personally, though, I'd go for an OLED screen if it was just for content and gaming instead of "real work" like writing, editing, etc. As far as I know, CRTs are bulky and consume a lot of power. Plus, if you go for a low-end unit like my small CRT TV that I've kept for memories, it can flicker noticeably, especially if it's a 50 Hz model like mine.
in my case, setting the HMDI→VGA adapter output to Limited RGB and YcBcR444 helped make it brighter than trying to push full RGB. I think it's because of the adapter expecting a TV on the other end and defaulting to limited RGB, but PC CRT is always full RGB.
either way, i ended up hooking up my old laptop that has VGA, even gtx 310m runs games like Thief and American McGee's Alice at 800*600p 120-160fps. if you don't have lots of space for a desktop, this is also a good way, especially if you want to watch old TV shows on it.
My Sony Trinitron multiscan15sf2 is being displayed at windows as generic vga monitor but windows detects its resolutions... and it works fine... what is happening?
I wish my town had any CRTs just sitting somewhere. Last time I saw one at goodwill it was 130$ and people snatch em up in seconds on buy/sell sites if theyre cheap
Thank you for this fantastic tutorial. I don't have time right now, but I have questions. So I will be back.
Just so you know, your knowledge is invaluable. Thanks.
thank you for useful information.
Also I am not sensitive to the flicker of CRT. Can use 480i and 60hz on my CRT fine
Pretty sure there is a big market for it, if some company choose to re-produce high-level CRT's.
Great video. I have many crt tv use daily for tv and 1 like new dell pc crt. I play with on occasion.
I found a new sweet spot for modern games on my Dell E770s: 1280x800 at 85 Hz. It's more legible than 1024x768 while also being buttery smooth. A lot of modern games have small text that doesn't scale well. Sometimes I just want the full screen so I play at 1200x900 at 75 Hz or 1280x960 at 70 Hz.
I have a Viewsonic G220fb and it looks insane.
me2 XD
“CRT’s are good for one thing only, gaming”
Gotta disagree, watching 4:3 anime from the 90s is heaven on these monitors
Cinema will always run smooth if your refresh rate is a multiple of the frame rate (24 x 3 = 72). We used to use drop frames in AVI containers back in the day to help cope with Hybrid framerate anime (a lot of shows contained both 24 and 30 fps content) which would produce a 120fps file. (24 x 5 = 120, as does 30 x 4 = 120)
Geez. 😲 that's a big framerate.
@@GTXDash big number, mostly. They weren't actual new frames or anything so it didn't really bloat files. It just repeated frames. It was kind of a niche solution some groups used until the MKV container came along and you could create VFR timecoded files that adjusted the playback rate on the fly to keep it smooth.
Hell yeah, Old School RuneScape for the demonstration
worship the crt hp m900 owner here :D 1600/1200 goodness
1:40 this can't be more accurate... My grandma still has her husband's 1980 model Hitachi B/W TV! I couldn't use it for movies so I cleaned it and gave it back
@23:38 nitpicking... graybeard here... the dos resolution natively booted into "mode 3" this was an 80x25 text mode, that had an interesting quirk, while the font for the screen was indeed 8x16 and 8*80 = 640 The far right column of the character cell was replicated, so all characters were drawn inside of a 7x16 area, leaving a minimum of 2 pixels between chars on the text screen... (block drawing chracters would still work in this mode with clean zero pixel gaps)
so you ended up with a resolution of 720x400 not 640x400 - you'll notice this A LOT when you do retro game capturing as the default is to assume the vga signal is 640 and it ends up with banding, and not a clean signal, also mode 3 720x400 was @70hz which a lot of hdmi capture just .. hates...
VGA is indeed 720x400. But with many SVGA cards, XGA, and so on, 640x400 was what was mostly used. No harm in adding 720x400 in CRU. But if you want DosBox to display a 720x400 prompt, then you'll need to change the settings from "svga_s3" to just plain "vgaonly".
@@GTXDash That's interesting. I was under the impression that even my SVGA card from the era was still producing the 720x400 by default. I know a lot of bioses would boot up into the 640x400 or 480 because of the energy star logo. Some of those older bios were going a little extra like the compaq bios. Ipretty sure it was a Mode 12 interface.
Some SVGA cards do sometimes boot in 720x400. Not sure exactly what determines this. Maybe the version of DOS you're using? I really have no idea. All I know is that some time in the 90s, 720x400 was dropped as the default resolution. @@prozacgodretro
love the in depth explanation
For some reason these past few months, any CRT I use on my PC appears to be much slower than it used to be even though they are always 85hz. To me 85hz on a CRT monitor feels like at least 120hz on a modern monitor, however now when i'm using it it feels much less smooth. I've tried multiple adapters and that hasn't made a difference. I'm definitely using 85hz refresh and windows 10 has picked up the name of the monitor and everything.
I have no idea where to even start, but i'm pretty positive that whatever is causing this is to do with my PC and not the monitor itself as they are all slow.
Most likely a driver settings issue.
@@GTXDash Thanks for reply. I think so as well but I’m unsure what to do. Should I reinstall NVIDIA drivers and the driver for the monitor?
@ice-in. I would first play around with the Nvidia control panel settings. Check/change vsync and triple buffering, and also the latency/prerendered frames option. The general rule is for better response time, turn off vsync and triple buffering whilst latency/prerendered frames is set to ultra. To have smoother frame times, set vsync to Adaptive and enable triple buffering whilst latency/prerendered frames are set to default or off.
If that doesn't help, then rather than reinstalling the driver, use a different driver version. I recommend studio ready instead of game ready drivers because those have higher quality insurance. Also, during installation, you can choose to clear your old settings to start fresh.
You can also use a gpu driver removal tool to get rid of any unwanted leftovers from previous driver versions. But I've only ever used them once. I don't even remember what the app is even called.
@@GTXDash Vertical sync and triple buffering were both off. The closest thing I found to the prerendered frames thing was something for virtual reality which I left at 1 (default) and something called 'low latency mode'. I tried putting low latency mode on ultra and there was no difference so I put it back to default (off).
I then looked for a studio driver for windows 10 64 bit for gtx 970, however there was none, not even beta drivers. I guess I will try downloading an earlier driver for 970, idk...
Will try doing clean installation when installing geforce card driver, also do you know if it's possible that geforce experience does anything? I usually only use it to update drivers and nothing else, this time I got driver off of nvidia website.
@ice-in. Actually, you need to turn on triple buffering and set vsync to Adaptive to improve the framerate. And yes, the Low Latency is what I was refering to (used to be called pre-rendered frames) and that should be off if more frames is what you want.
Some games also don't allow for higher than 60fps and since 85hz doesn't run 60fps stuff all that well, you would need to run it at 60 or 120hz.
However, some games let you remove the 60fps cap. Sometimes, this can be changed in the game's built-in command console.
Just use a game ready driver.
I don't know if this apply to ever county but in Greece you able to find CRT monitor literally for free
Don't expect good quality monitor
But most people including my don't use CRT monitors and TV and the end up in warehouse bin street or recycling.
But it's what you find it may end work not work at all good or bad quality you can't able to be 100% sure what i will end up to be.
i still got my crt from the 2004 FamilyFund in england im still shocked its like 20yrs old tho i think its more like 21 yrs old
but its better than the first one they gave us that broke down sadly within one year that one had a boxer shape and looked older
but i now think it looked more cool as a classic style setup of 1999 rather than 2002 style
I watched for 2 seconds and was like "oh, modern games CAN look half decent, it REALLY IS THE DISPLAY!"
I will be following this. I got a Trinitron and a potato pc so this should be fun! Thanks!